Mass murder was not the only physical threat used by Napoleon. At one point in the novel, hens did not wish to give up their eggs to Napoleon, so he cut off their food supply. Napoleon starved the hens because they opposed him, just like the pigs. Orwell tries to show us that once a dictator gains power, he will not accept any criticism or opposition and will simply murder whoever questions his leadership. For example, a Chilean dictator called Augusto Pinochet murdered over forty thousand people during his first month of power simply because they questioned his decisions. .

             But, Napoleon could not always go to extreme measures such as executing the opposition so he employed Squealor to persuade animals through rhetoric. For example, Squealer, Napoleon's right hand, made up a statistic that animals had more oats, more hay and more turnips than they had had in Jones's day. They also worked shorter hours, had better quality drinking water, lived longer, saw an increased number of their young ones survive infancy, had more straw in their stalls and suffered less from fleas". In combination with complete isolation from other farms, other animals could not prove Squealer wrong so they believed that they actually had a much better life than other farms. In reality, the animals had even lower food rations than those living on other farms. Napoleon also encourages other animals to use Boxer's slogans such as "Napoleon is Always Right" and "I Will Work Harder"". Boxer is very loyal to Napoleon due to his low intelligence but he is respected by other animals because of his strength and stubbornness. Napoleon knows that animals will listen to Boxer and try to work as hard as Boxer. In this case, Orwell tries to show that dictators carefully control the flow of information and simply block anything that could potentially harm them (a contemporary example is the Chinese government blocking web-sites such as YouTube because they sometimes contain information that the government deems to be inappropriate).