Bureaucracy, State Terror, and Propaganda

We need bureaucracies, but "efficiency" is a tricky word. Just ask the cows on Animal Farm. They're pissed.

Orwell's Animal Farm

This is the fifth post in a series about techniques of propaganda, how they permeate public discourse, and how they threaten democracy. Earlier pieces include “Propaganda In Our Time” (posted March 16), “The Real Pronoun Problem” (posted March 19),“Who’s Your Daddy? The Father and Propaganda” (posted March 23), and “Words, Words, Words, and Propaganda” (posted April 2).

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the animals of Manor Farm, who have felt exploited, revolt against farmer Jones and take control. They are inspired by promises of equality, freedom, and self-determination—good democratic values. They believe they can create a “golden age,” a utopia. The pigs, who soon become the leaders, write the new society’s seven rules on the wall. This is a constitution that embodies the values of the revolution. Soon, the pigs start to rewrite the rules in the middle of the night. The values of equality, freedom, and self-determination are literally erased. The rules become a bureaucracy. The bureaucracy becomes a totalitarian state.

Orwell warned us that this transformation occurs largely through a language that allows us to look away from trauma.

To illustrate Orwell’s point, I will quote a bureaucratic document out of context. It will be hard to interpret. But, as a simple experiment, let’s see what sense you can make of it:

The vans’ normal load is usually nine per square yard. In Saurer vehicles, which are very spacious, maximum use of space is impossible, not because of any possible overload, but because loading to full capacity would affect the vehicle’s stability. So reduction of the load space seems necessary. It must absolutely be reduced by a yard, instead of trying to solve the problem, as hitherto, by reducing the number of pieces loaded.

You probably gathered that this document is analyzing the “efficiency”—that word is going to be crucial—of loading and transporting some kind of “pieces.”

Now, let’s return to the passage with some context. It is a technical memo written on June 5, 1942, in Germany. Its purpose is to analyze the “efficiency” of the vans being used as mobile gas chambers. With that context, reread the passage. At the end, I will add an additional sentence, in italics:

The vans’ normal load is usually nine per square yard. In Saurer vehicles, which are very spacious, maximum use of space is impossible, not because of any possible overload, but because loading to full capacity would affect the vehicle’s stability. So reduction of the load space seems necessary. It must absolutely be reduced by a yard, instead of trying to solve the problem, as hitherto, by reducing the number of pieces loaded. Besides this extends the operation time, as the empty void must also be filled with carbon monoxide.

The terms ”load” and “pieces” refer to the human beings who are being gassed—97,000 as of the writing of this memo. The memo later includes an analysis of the kind of drain needed for easy cleaning. The memo does not dare to use words like “people,” “citizens,” or “human beings.” There are no words that describe suffering. The technocratic language allows us to look away from horror.

(For a more detailed discussion of this memo, see Steven B. Katz’s “The Ethics of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust,” published in College English in March 1992.)

Time to state some obvious points. Well, maybe not quite so obvious.

Propaganda promises a utopia that is inherently flawed—as are all utopias, I would argue. The means of achieving that utopia is through efficient bureaucracies. In The Utopia of Rules, David Graeber wrote:

One can fairly say that bureaucracies are utopian forms of organization. After all, is this not what we always say of utopians: that they have a naive faith in the perfectibility of human nature and refuse to deal with humans as they actually are?

This is true of totalitarian governments whether they are on the left or the right—fascist or communist. They seek complete control of human beings and society through rigid bureaucracies. To efficiently perfect society, they must dehumanize it.

In my post on Montaigne, I argued that the perfection of human beings in an inherently anti-democratic value. We should not strive to be perfect; we should strive to be more human.

Propaganda is a tool of totalitarianism, and totalitarianism is about achieving complete control of society. This level of control is not possible without an efficient bureaucracy that intrudes into every aspect of the citizens’ lives. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrote:

Totalitarian bureaucracy, with a complete understanding of the meaning of absolute power, intruded upon the private individual and his inner life with equal brutality. The result of this radical efficiency has been that the inner spontaneity of people under its rule was killed along with their social and political activities, so that the merely political sterility under the old bureaucracies was followed by total sterility under totalitarian rule.

For Arendt, spontaneity is an essential feature of what it means to be human and to participate in a democracy. A society with spontaneity and play is a human society.

Propaganda might incite a revolution or allow a leader to gain more power in the short run, but it will eventually need to be supported by state terror. The terror need not be directed against a large number of citizens. A small number of random attacks on ordinary citizens serves as a lesson to the rest of the population.

Part of this process is the normalization of state terror, and nothing normalizes terror more effectively than a bureaucracy. The operations of a bureaucracy are typically hidden, even when its rules are public, and its efficiency is pervasive. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt calls this “pseudomysticism.” The operations of a bureaucracy seems like magic that comes from nowhere and everywhere. It cannot be controlled.

For citizens to look away from state terror, they must believe the Big Lie of totalitarianism—that the state will only come after the “bad people” (some vague “they”) and not the “good people” (that is, “us”). Even when due process has been suspended, the government claims that it is able to identify the “they” because they are marked by the color of their skin, their language, their facial features, or, more recently, their tattoos. The “they” are also identified by data in bureaucracies. In our age, this takes the form of databases controlled by tech bros.

If propaganda commands “us” to recognize the “they” as a threat, bureaucracy is the means to eliminate that threat. Its force seems absolute. Individuals who are part of a bureaucracy simply follow orders. There is no one who can be held accountable. The citizens do not need to act. They only need to look away.

If all this is true, then why is Trump using DOGE to destroy governmental agencies, which are bureaucracies?

Good, functional bureaucracies serve us. We want our government to run smoothly and efficiently. We want a government that treats all citizens equally. This requires a bureaucracy that has rules and regulations that allow lower-level clerks to make ordinary decisions. But, more importantly, a good bureaucracy has multiple points at which, with extraordinary cases, the rules can be overturned. In this way, it recognizes the complex or unusual cases that the rules, no matter how detailed, did not anticipate.

The problem is not with bureaucracies, per se. The problem is that the rules of bureaucracies keep expanding to account for as many cases as possible. As the rules become more and more complicated, mere citizens cannot understand them. The rules seem arbitrary and capacious. The clerks who work within a bureaucracy become the enemy. They do not seem to understand the needs of many citizens. They say, “I can’t do anything.” And, “It’s not my fault.”

A bureaucracy can dehumanize citizens, treating them as mere data points. The clerks who operate by following increasingly complex rules seem robotic. This is the world of Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, Kafka’s The Trial, and Heller’s Catch 22.

In this world, resentment for state bureaucracies builds. The clerks can be viewed, not as individuals with empathy, but as a collective mythical beast that is out of control, destroying everything it contacts. Fear of the Deep State, some hidden yet powerful force within the government, increases. It is easy for authoritarians to exploit this resentment to gain more power.

Citizens may experience a chain of no’s. As they are told “no” by clerks in bureaucracies, over and over, and “no” in other areas of their lives, over and over, they feel they have no power.

This resentment contributed to Trump’s rise to power. Many Americans have felt that our governmental agencies are not treating them fairly, that some groups have been granted special treatment, and that they have been treated like a data point.

This is the resentment that Trump is attempting to exploit with DOGE and the seemingly random firing of what he wants us to believe are unnecessary or uncaring personnel. It is revenge porn.

It is the same kind of revenge porn that made The Apprentice so popular. When Trump said, “You’re fired,” he never checked with HR. He never asked the lawyers if he were breaking any laws. He simply eliminated the inefficient worker.

That is the public face of DOGE. Remember, that the “E” in DOGE stands for “efficiency.” Elon Musk is transforming The Apprentice into a public spectacle.

Yet, something else is happening. The government workers being fired consider themselves to be public servants who took a pledge to support the constitution. While we might question some of the rules they follow, they are attempting, for the most part, to ensure that governmental programs serve the people. Is there waste? Yes, any large organization is going to have some waste. Could they be more efficient? Certainly. But, I would argue, our governmental agencies function pretty well, especially when compared to most countries.

However, to gain control of governmental bureaucracies, Trump must first eliminate a large number of employees who might follow the rules and the constitution instead of his orders. Those who have not been fired will likely be terrorized. They will want to hold onto their jobs and protect their families.

Trump is not attempting to destroy our governmental agencies. He is attempting to transform them into totalitarian bureaucracies.

In other words, the people who complain about the Deep State are the same people who are trying to create it.

At the end of each post about propaganda, I will outline a range of political rhetoric related to the topic of that post. This should serve as a summary that can be reviewed. I also hope that it will help us to be more aware of how we might promote democratic dialogue and resist the slow slip into propaganda and totalitarianism.

Democratic Dialogue: Bureaucracies have values, such as fairness, equality, and service. The focus is on empathy rather than efficiency. They follow not only rules but also the constitution. The move toward “better service” is incremental.

Propaganda Lite: Rules become rigid. Forms become difficult or impossible to fill out. Paperwork proliferates. The people who can make exceptions to the rules moves higher and higher up the chain of command. Exceptions become increasingly rare. Citizens begin to feel powerless.

Propaganda Complete: Efficiency erases empathy and all other values, including the value of an individual’s life. The exceptional cases that the rules fail to recognize are viewed as unimportant. All decisions within the bureaucracy are simple: Just follow the rules. Clerks carry out orders. Bureaucracies become the means to carry out state terror. Bureaucracies become what Graeber calls a “dead zone”: “There are dead zones that riddle our lives, areas so devoid of any possibility of interpretive depth that they repel every attempt to give them value or meaning.”