Podcast Summary: War Room Battleground EP 841

Episode Title: Auron MacIntyre – Confronting the Total State
Date: September 2, 2025
Host: Joe Allen (Sitting in for Steve Bannon)
Guest: Auron MacIntyre, author of The Total State: How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies

Overview

This episode of War Room Battleground features a deep and wide-ranging conversation between guest host Joe Allen and writer/political thinker Auron MacIntyre. The focus is MacIntyre’s book, The Total State, and the concepts underlying America’s transformation from a constitutional republic to what he calls a “managerial” or “total” state. Throughout the discussion, MacIntyre draws on political theory—especially the works of James Burnham, Curtis Yarvin, and Alexander Dugin—to analyze contemporary issues facing American governance and culture, as well as the deeper spiritual and technological crises of our era.

Main Discussion Points

1. The Managerial/Total State: Origins and Conceptual Framework

[02:30–06:34]

• MacIntyre’s Journey:
  • Began as a conventional conservative believing in civic structures and the Constitution’s protective power.
  • COVID-19 revealed to him a shocking lack of resistance against overreach across supposed firewalls (church closures, bureaucratic abuses, etc.).
  • Prompted a deep dive into political theory; concluded that American government now operates through an “entirely new political system”—the managerial state.
• The Managerial Revolution (Burnham):
  • 20th-century thinker James Burnham observed that across countries—democratic or otherwise—large bureaucracies became society’s true ruling class.
  • The focus shifted from citizen participation and virtue to the efficiency, scale, and technocratic management characteristic of “managers.”
  • Quote:

    “Because more and more of our society was scaling up, we were moving more and more of our investment in social structures into large bureaucratic Institutions. … The way that the managerial elite think … all carry over into our daily lives.” (Auron MacIntyre, 07:15)

2. Elites, Democracy, and Bureaucratic Technocracy

[09:23–14:59]

• Managerial vs. Republican Structures:

  • Republican government relies on decentralized virtue, individual agency, and local responsibility; managerial structures require conformity, standardization, and scale.
  • The transformation involves citizens acting as “cogs in the machine,” with diminished real agency.
  • The alternative to the managerial model is not another way of scaling, but abandoning excessive scale in favor of organic, local community.
  • Quote:

    “I don't think there is an effective way to organize at this level without dehumanizing ourselves, without giving in to the managerial impulse.” (Auron MacIntyre, 13:25)

• Pendulum of Civilization:

  • Drawing from Gaetano Mosca, MacIntyre notes that societies swing between bureaucratic centralization and decentralized, feudal structures—a never-ending pendulum.

3. Localism, Community, and the Pro-Human Stance

[14:34–16:08]

• Both Allen and MacIntyre emphasize “pro-human” politics, prioritizing local decision-making and organic communities.
• AI and automation are framed as the ultimate extension of managerial dehumanization.
• Quote:

  "AI is just the way the managers escape this problem. … It is the ultimate solution to the managerial problem of diminishing returns on complexity." (Auron MacIntyre, 15:21)

4. Interlocutors and Intellectual Influences

a. Curtis Yarvin and Monarchy

• Yarvin contributed significant systems analysis but is a materialist who downplays spiritual renewal.
• Supports the idea of a strong executive (“monarch”) to break bureaucratic paralysis—a pattern historically seen in sclerotic societies.
• MacIntyre is open to the necessity of elites but urges for “a better kind of elite.”
• Quote:

  "The organized minority will always lead the disorganized majority. … What we want is not the elimination of elites but a better kind of elite." (Auron MacIntyre, 18:32)

b. The American Future: Balkanization or Federal Renaissance?

• Post-COVID, regional self-selection and localism are accelerating, exemplified by political shifts in places like Florida.
• MacIntyre sees intentional, values-driven communities as essential to countering trends toward homogeneity and totalism.
• Quote:

  "This is really the lie that technology has told us—that we could just live wherever we wanted and it didn't matter who our neighbor was… But what we're doing is going back to a place where we live in real robust organic communities." (Auron MacIntyre, 22:45)

Notable Quotes & Moments (With Timestamps)

• On the Constitution’s Failure:
  • “Why did the Constitution not stop what happened during COVID? Did we fail the Constitution or did it fail us?” (Auron MacIntyre, 03:54)
• On Virtue and Scale:
  • “You cannot cultivate virtue at scale.” (Auron MacIntyre, 10:59)
• On AI as Embodiment of Managerialism:
  • “AI is just the way the managers escape this problem … It is the ultimate solution to the managerial problem of diminishing returns on complexity.” (Auron MacIntyre, 15:21)
• On Elites:
  • “The organized minority will always lead the disorganized majority. … What we want is not the elimination of elites but a better kind of elite.” (Auron MacIntyre, 18:32)
• On “The Great Sort”:
  • "It went from being a purple state trending blue to becoming a deep red state. … People simply did not want to live with the woke madness, didn't want to live with the COVID madness." (Auron MacIntyre, 22:25)
• On Spiritual Resistance to the Total State:
  • “When we are living in accordance with God's purpose … we can feel that we're acting in a way that makes us more human, but also connects us to the divine.” (Auron MacIntyre, 32:54)
• On the Need for Localism and Robust Federalism:
  • “We could return to a system in which we trust our locality. … Not as some subsidiary of the central government, but as a real living community.” (Auron MacIntyre, 36:31)
• On Liberal Democracy Turning Tyrannical:
  • “If you make popular sovereignty … the justification for rulers’ power, they don't just turn over power to the people. ... They get really good at controlling popular sovereignty, manipulating public opinion.” (Auron MacIntyre, 39:45)

Discussion of Key Thinkers

5. Critique of Liberal Democracy and the “Total State”

[38:35–44:18]

• MacIntyre argues that so-called “liberal democracy” enables manipulation via media, bureaucracy, and the managerial elite, devolving into a procedural tyranny.
• The expansion of the franchise and the manipulation of mass opinion make democracy susceptible to control by entrenched interests.

6. Spirituality, Tradition, and the Limits of Materialism

[31:47–37:59]

• Modern politics—left, right, and managerial—are predominantly materialist.
• MacIntyre maintains that spiritual values are essential for resisting dehumanization, and that American history’s regional and religious diversity offers a template for countering imposed homogeneity.
• Return to real federalism and localism is necessary to recover virtue and social meaning.

7. Alexander Dugin and the “Fourth Political Theory”

[44:18–47:18]

• Dugin’s philosophy, while controversial, suggests a post-liberal, post-fascist, post-communist era.
• MacIntyre is clear that he doesn’t share Dugin’s Russian imperialist agenda but agrees on the need to recover valuable pre-modern traditions and adapt them for present conditions.

8. Technology, AI, and Post-Human Politics

[47:18–50:50]

• Political manipulation increasingly carried out by algorithms and AI—heralding “post-human politics.”
• The danger is not only from overtly inhuman mechanisms, but the removal of human feedback and agency from all meaningful decision-making.
• Both technological and spiritual “non-human forces are on the move.”
• Quote:

  "The AI feeds you your ideology, it perfects the ideology … There's very little interaction you're having with the machine at this point." (Auron MacIntyre, 49:33)

Memorable Moments

• AI’s Political Agency:
  • The metaphor from Dugin: “A man used to send a text message; now the text message will send the man.” (Auron MacIntyre quoting Dugin, 48:26)
• Concluding Vision:
  • MacIntyre urges for a society oriented around virtue, spiritual meaning, local autonomy, and resilience in the face of techno-managerial challenges.

Closing

[51:01–51:24]

• MacIntyre points listeners to his book (The Total State) and his show (The Auron MacIntyre Show on Blaze TV, YouTube, etc.).
• “What we’re trying to do is carry traditions that were lost … intentionally [by] globalist liberalism … and marry it with where we are so [they] can move forward into something that can hopefully overcome our technological problems.”

Takeaways for Listeners

• The “total state” is not just a deep state or bureaucracy, but a pervasive system that replaces virtue with technocratic process and erodes local agency and spiritual meaning.
• Overcoming the managerial state is not simply political—it requires rebuilding organic communities, cultivating virtue, and reviving spiritual traditions.
• Technology (especially AI) is both a tool and a threat, amplifying the reach and power of managerial elites unless consciously resisted.
• The future will be determined by whether Americans choose human-scale, virtue-oriented communities, or continue to submit to impersonal, algorithmic control.
• The episode closes with a plea for engaged, spiritually rooted, and locally invested citizens—“pro-human” in the fullest sense.