This article is taken from the June 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here.
One of the great government lies of our time is that the compulsory is voluntary. It obliges citizens to perform certain bureaucratic tasks and then has the gall to call them customers.
Recently, I was obliged by the government, if I wanted to continue my activities in perfect legality, to perform a bureaucratic task — online, of course. To do so, I was obliged to identify myself, create a password, receive a number code and so forth.
At the beginning of this procedure, I was informed that, by continuing, I was agreeing to the terms and conditions of what was charmingly called “the service”.
The effect (or is it the purpose?) of this official misuse of language is to humiliate
It was not so much the task itself that infuriated me (though I had the strong suspicion that it was pointless in any sense other than that of giving someone something to do), but the implication of the word “agree” is that I had a choice in the matter.
Of course, I could always cease my activities, go to the Syrian desert and subsist on locusts and honey, but this is not what one normally considers a choice.
A man who holds a gun to the head of someone else does not say, “By not doing what I demand, you accept that I shoot you.” There is such a thing as duress.
The effect (or is it the purpose?) of this official misuse of language is to humiliate the “customer”. It is quite unnecessary to pretend that what is obligatory is voluntary and to oblige not only the original task, but also oblige the “customer” to be party to the pretence that it is voluntary.
This is bureaucratic Maoism, and there is no better or more powerful way to destroy people’s independence and probity — and to enforce their dependence — than to oblige them to subscribe to lies.
The full triumph of bureaucratic Maoism comes when people no longer care, notice or realise that they are party to lies merely for the sake of a quiet life.
