How might a police state be a 'good thing'

To start with, obviously, a police state can be a good thing for selfish reasons for those at the top, and quite far down the power structure, down to petty officials who can lord it over their neighbors. That goes without saying.

So why could other people see a benefit, without invoking brainwashing and propaganda? It depends on the circumstances, but such a state can be welcomed because people want stability and safety. Or prioritize national aggrandizement.

El Salvador

The people of El Salvador are currently making that type of calculation, albeit in a very very different, and much less philosophical, context from what you probably had in mind (which is probably better asked on WorldBuilding ).

Basically, they've chosen a quite repressive police state, with essentially no due process for imprisonment, over extreme gang violence.

Preliminary results released after 70% of votes had been counted showed him securing a second term by winning 83% of the votes.

He had already claimed victory before the results were announced.

His popularity has soared following a crackdown on crime which drove down the country's murder rate.

Under his presidency, El Salvador has been transformed from one of the most violent countries in the world to one of the safest in Latin America.

Despite his popularity, Mr Bukele remains a controversial figure. Human rights groups say that thousands have been arbitrarily arrested during his anti-gang drive.

An estimated 75,000 people have been arrested under emergency measure that have been repeatedly extended.

In a report in December, Amnesty International criticised the "gradual replacement of gang violence with state violence".

One needs to remember that there is a continuum of things, from anarchy to total state control. Police forces are present in all(?) real states, with in most of them the motivation being to keep the population safe from crime. If the crime is dialed up high enough, people will start to welcome more unconstrained police, i.e. a police state of sorts, if not quite for 1984s reason. On the other hand a dictatorship wanting to 1984-ize will most likely justify its police's actions as required to keep the population safe from criminals, terrorists and external enemies.

(The Philippine's Duterte got elected on such a mandate, but a) the situation was nowhere as dire and b) he made a proper hash of things).

China

Another example is China. The CCP is certainly running some level of a police state. Yet, most of the population seems somewhat accepting of it in the analysis I've read. The motivations are different, but no less real for all the brainwashing and censorship deployed by the CCP: China spent much of the early 20th century in the grip of domestic warlords fighting with gigantic armies. And that's in a population that takes great pride in pointing out that they are an ancient, unified, civilization. And let's not forget the 100 years of so during which Europeans humiliated China for the most rapacious of reasons.

So they prize - or have been taught to prize - unity and national strength above liberty and take CCP control to enforce that unity and national strength as in the nature of things.

There is a difference between something being a good thing, and people who are living in it thinking that it's a good thing. Much of it is encapsulated in the saying:

"I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

Many people think that a police state will be good for themselves personally, even though lots of other people will suffer. "We'll get rid of those [whatever] people and then I can thrive as I was intended to thrive" kind of thing. They are afraid of particular people or actions, so hearing that those people or actions will be banned, and that those bans will be enforced with whatever level of force it takes, with no holding back because of human rights, appeals to them.

Other people believe they are positioned to exempt themselves from the rules, probably by having money, and that the police state will lead to them having even more money, so they don't really care what the rules are or how they are enforced. (Don't they have an innate sense of justice or fairness that would make them feel bad about what's happening to others? Maybe not, if they were raised to be selfish and dismissive of others, or if they've been taught the blame/fear thing and can be convinced those people deserve what they get anyway.)

You can put your character into either of these groups, slotting in appropriate specifics about who they have been encouraged to fear and blame (immigrants, deviants, etc etc) or about the way they feel above the rules.

A police state will not be a 'good thing' for anyone on the long run. But some people might think otherwise at first.

First you would have to define what exactly a 'police state' means. The concept can range from ideas like 'firm but fair' to 'brutal crackdown.'

• "Why do you fear surveillance if you have nothing to hide?"
  This line of thought is often brought up whenever someone argues for privacy protections. Many people argue that the state should not collect data on the people because that data may be abused later and because it is none of their business. Others point out how effectively crime could be prevented and how citizens could be protected if the police could tap phones without a warrant, record IPs at the internet providers, search people on the street, etc.
• "Getting off on a technicality."
  An exasperated complaint whenever a suspect seems clearly guilty, yet the key piece of evidence is ruled inadmissible or the statute of limitations has expired or there is no law exactly covering the conduct. Many people argue that the rule of law is vital for society, and that an especially firm line needs to be drawn against violations by the state. Others are unhappy whenever the law does not provide what they deem justice.
• "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."
  The snippy answer when a convict complains about a sentence. It tacitly assumes that only the guilty will be accused. Many people assume that the police and prosecution are quite fallible, and that a necessary safeguard against the power of the state is to require the prosecution to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, while the defense has the much easier task of simply raising reasonable doubt. Others have faith that the police would not bring the case if they were not sure, so why all the safeguards and delays?

Many supporters of police states suppose that they are among the "honest, law-abiding, normal" people and that the police will recognize this and act accordingly.

In 1935, the Nazis changed German law so that their courts could punish deeds which should be punished "according to the fundamental ideas of criminal law and healthy public sentiment" (gesundes Volksempfinden). Basically they said "throw out the law books, we can punish anyone for anything we define as deviant or unworthy." Even before that, they allowed the auxiliary police (party thugs with a cloth brassard) to lock Germans up in concentration camps without a trial. They started with the communists and socialists, but categories soon grew.

Most countries, including democratic ones, recognize that sometimes becoming a "police state" can be a necessary good for the country. That is why they include provisions for declaring an Emergency or Martial Law. These are often temporary measures though. No democratic country advocates for such long-term measures, as they are prone to political abuse.

But, a "police state" can sometimes be a reasonable long-term option in regions prone to violence (especially a civil strife), political instability and without good political institutions. It can temporarily provide some form of political stability and governance.

This is important as political stability is often an important factor necessary to create a democratic environment. This was partly why Gandhi's non-violent movement placed heavy emphasis on social stability.

Indian Express: For Gandhi, violence was a sign of the failure of a legitimate political power. At the core of Gandhi’s political theory is the view of politics as shaped by internal moral power, rather than from the standpoint of rational violence. Consequently, for Gandhi, the modern state contained forces that threatened, rather than enhanced, liberty. Therefore, he did not consider democracy as a political regime but as a value, which needed to be created and cherished ... Gandhi did not see the goal of political action as the immediate capture of office. According to him, the basic condition of political action was the elimination of violence ... Ultimately, what was important for him was to move from violence to politics.

References:

1. A Guide to Emergency Powers and Their Use
2. Safety at What Cost?: The Benefits of Martial Law and Why We Fail to Reap Them
3. Gandhi’s morality wasn’t denial of politics. His idealism was completed by realism

Speaking as someone who lived in a police state for many years, the answer might be both obvious and yet surprising.

The application of state infrastructure is concentrated against those who seek to break, subvert or exploit the system.

This includes dissidents who seek to overthrow or reform the system behind the scenes, but also includes those who seek to disrupt it infront of them.

My lived experience of a police state was that we experienced almost no crime from private citizens. The police had near impunity to deal with vandalism, robberies and anti-social behavior, so we had almost none of these things. It was safe for women to walk the streets alone at any time of night, and you could leave a bag unattended and it would still be there the next day.

We also had much less social division. People argued less and expressed fewer divisive opinions. Racial tension was almost non-existent, religious conflicts were almost non-existent.

This covered both genuine and malicious expressions. People didn't purposefully try to create tension by making provocative statements, or performing provocative actions, just to upset or offend people.

The internet didn't exist back then, but if it had we wouldn't have had people deliberately trying to create outrage on social media in order to attack clicks for advertising revenue, or because they enjoyed it. If someone wanted to "sit back and watch the world burn" they would have found themselves in prison for the crime of disrupting the social order or rumormongering. We didn't have an equivalent to people like Alex Jones claiming that the deep state was faking school shootings, and we didn't have people protesting outside of veteran's funerals with banners denouncing homosexuality.

We genuinely felt happy in our day to day lives, and we genuinely felt sorry for counites like the US which were having race riots and where more people were being murdered in small towns than we saw in large cities.

If you're views roughly aligned with those of the state, you barely even noticed that it was a police state.

Decreased crime, increase unity, greater social cohesion were the primary benefits. Those who went with the flow were genuinely content.

To answer some of the issues raised in the comment we absolutely had due process just like in a free and democratic state. If someone was accused of something they got their day in court. If they were accused of a non-political crime things went more or less how they would in the west. Though the punishments were a lot harsher. The idea being not to punish them for the crime, but to make an example of them so that other people wouldn't do it either. We had a very low rate of violent and sexual crimes, and little drug use. Anti-social behavior was almost non-existent. The biggest problem was bribery, often wealthy people bribing officials to get around things like pollution laws.

If it was a political crime they were given the opportunity to prove that they didn't do it, but if they were found guilty then the punishments were harsh and the gloves came off regarding things like beatings and starvation.

If you kept your nose clean, it wasn't a problem.

Not all police states are Stalin's Russia or Hitler's Germany. In fact we often looked at the US and its punitive laws and thought that Americans has less freedom than us. For example, towns with curfews, people going to jail because a passenger was drunk. Jay walking always made us laugh. The current situation in the UK with non-crime hate incidents would have seen us burning ballot papers in protest against the very idea of demoncracy.

It prevents crime!

I wonder if this might be better posed on worldbuilding.SE, but the obvious answer is that people who have been the victims of crime - especially violent crime - might be happier in a police state. Especially if they have been victims multiple times.

They genuinely believe that without (what they see as) a strong police force to protect the innocent, the place would descend into anarchy with crime gangs running wild and nobody would be safe in their own homes, or the warlords / mobsters would take over, and that would be far worse!

Now, of course, in reality, they might be just as likely to be victims of the police as they were of the criminals, or as many innocent people get locked up as guilty people, but if this hasn't happened to them specifically or someone they know / love, then they might not know about it or believe it. They may also simply see themselves as "law abiding citizens" but in fact be adherents to goodthink.

Here are some attitudes I have heard from real people:

• "Well they must have done something" (aka "There's no smoke without fire") - referring to someone whose own guilt was in doubt but was known to associate with criminals.

• "They don't even deserve a trial!" - referring to someone who was arrested for a particularly violent or heinous crime.

• "If torturing someone helps them get information that prevents a terrorist from killing lots of people, it will have been worth it."

While none of the people who said these things would actually support a police state, it does give a peek into the mind of someone who might. It's likely they just don't call it a "police state".

Frame challenge: Police state is originally a reference to Austrian empire.

Looking back, Austrian empire does not look that bad compared to things like perennial ethnic cleansings between Serbo-Croat ethnic groups or Nazi Germany. One may argue these things will not arise if Austrian empire would continue to function as their police state instead of falling apart. It gave way to worse regimes, even if these had less policing.

A thing may be perceived as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you compare it to.

The thing you compare the police state may be either real (unfortunately, pretty bad real-world examples of failed states do exist), or imaginary, created by the propaganda (the limit is someone's imagination).

For your particular purpose, imagine that you are robbed twice a month.

I will suggest the book LTI.

Just like 1984 have newspeak where the goal is to have people that don't think critically then Nazi-germany had LTI where the successfully convinced the people that they had enemies (Slavs, Jews etc.)

The big majority of a police state are victims to whatever propaganda the society have. These states always have some kind of ministry of truth.

My advice is you don't read anything from those that support a police state.

A bit surprised the only mention of Covid is in the comments.

The Covid pandemic gives a great example of when police states can be a good thing. If every country in the world could outright order people into their homes instead of do things like attend BLM protests, then there might never have been a pandemic. Even after the pandemic had become a pandemic, if governments could order people to get vaccinated, there might have been a lot less death.

Of course just because the police state can do these things doesn't mean that they will; that still depends on the leader(s) of the police state.

Your fundamental flaw in that, is that you think of morality, of "good" and "evil" as objective universal properties. However if you tried that and would apply the more sophisticated version of the golden rule, i.e. the Kantian Categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Then a police state simply isn't good. If you thought about it from the perspective of the innocent imprisoned and the people being punished more or less for the conditions in which they reside and which are outside of their control, then this isn't a just system. It isn't compassionate and it couldn't get much worse either. If moral laws are those that you would WANT to be universal (so everyone, everywhere at all moments) would WANT these laws to exist, then you're not really striking for a system that employs oppression or if you do, then you're either dishonest or delusional when you state that your goal is "moral" or "good" in anything like the sense mentioned above.

So if you genuinely support that, you need a different conception of what "good" is. The usual suspects of equality, harm reduction, freedom, compassion, mutual aid and growth, cooperation, love, justice, etc... won't do, because you'd violate all of them.

Like idk how Nietzsche went away from the division of "good and evil" and argued that a master morality would need to move towards "good and bad". Where good is what is conductive to the ability of a master to be a master and bad is what is hindering it.

Which you can read as affirming life and freedom of the individual against external moral constraints. But which you could (and yeah the Nazis did...) read as being an asshole...

However what the Nazis either didn't quite get or blissfully ignored is that this is an individualistic morality, as what is "good" and "bad" relates to 1(!) subject. There is no "master race", no "chosen people" or whatnot. There is only ever one master who is the agent and the rest are tools of that agency or threats of taking it away.

So there is an inherent contradiction in the ranks of a police state. On the one hand the absolute monarch/tyrant or whatever you want to call it. Pulls the strings and everyone else is either following their plan or ending up on the list of criminals.

On the other hand he actually relies on people obeying his commands, so actually he's rather powerless without the consent of the people who enforce his rule and ultimately also without the people subject to this rule.

So the goal of the leader is to dethrone the base and to dominate his followers more thoroughly, being less reliant on their good will. While his base also tries to individually empower and enrich themselves, which would be at the expense of the master (as a self-reliant base can do without accepting domination).

So his base needs to cooperatively work together and display an amount of strength, capable of subjugating anyone, at the same time that very strength and unity is an inherent threat to the very system that wields it.

So despite pretending "stability" to the inside and outside, those systems are usually quite volatile examples of cut throat politics, with tons of intrigues and power struggles between the upper and the lower party, where the "stability" of the ruler does not entail stability of government, as the ruler is often barely more than being a figurehead. So either the current ruling faction keeps the leader in power as symbol or the other way around the ruler rules by letting factions compete for his support.

Also as you quote 1984, Orwell was rather blunt how and why that works:

'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he (Winston, outer party/resistance) said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore --'

He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.

'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he (O'Brien, inner party) said. 'You should know better than to say a thing like that.'

[...] we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'

Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.

'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.

I mean Orwell told his subjects as much in order to break them down so much that they willingly contribute after having seen that they have no chance at all. While real world counterparts usually make their base believe almost the opposite of their policies seek to actually accomplish.

Like how "national socialism" is a complete oxymoron or how "MAGA" is meaningless without specifying what "Great" or "Again" refers to. But it allows the base to imagine something that the head isn't actually moving towards and keeps them complicit until they are co-conspirators in the crime and can't go back and until they are disempowered and subjugated to the point where their support no longer matters.

So TL;DR you'd need to specify where in that food chain your character is located as there is no coherent universal ideology of fascism and no end game to it. A police state usually doesn't serve a purpose, it serves itself.