There is some discussion about Elias being, if not directly representative, at least reminiscent of a surveillance state (different from the capitalism takes), and on my end, I'm personally... sceptical that he's meant to speak to an anything state. The idea of totalitarianisms is that they have all the resources at their disposal. But Elias needs to use quick-thinking strategies and blackmail to keep a few police officers doing what he wants them to, and it still doesn't stop him from being punched in the gut by one of them. Maybe I'm taking things too literally, but I don't see an angle where he resonates as a political authority from our world.

He's not meant to represent a surveillance state. If we must bring politics into it, then Elias would be a representation of those within a surveillance state (but who do not control it) seeking to use its permeation of society to advance their own personal goals. He's not his own boss, he works for the Eye, which is using him just as it uses everyone else. The biggest lie Elias tells is the lie that he is in control. He's not.

That said, political and economic readings of Magnus rub me the wrong way because I feel they box the Fears into too small a space. They speak less about discrete systems and more about aspects of the human condition, regardless of the particular society humans happen to be in at any one point in history. That's why they resonate.

I fully agree! I think straight political readings are constrictive, but if we analyse which political ideas resonate with the text, Elias comes up as someone who is still a victim of the system but has a single ounce of power that he leverages against his fellow victims as an attempt to rise above his circumstances.

Oh yes

Basically, Elias is an opportunistic bastard. He sees a chance to rise to the top and in so doing just climbs over everyone else.

Also I thought about it some more and realized... Elias being an ideology within a reading doesn't make sense in the first place because he is a character, not a system. He can't *be* the system, that's not how systems work. Even those at the top who do control systems are operating within them.