Nah - sorry. I’m not buying it.

Granted that most of those at tte top are not dumb and are instead evil, greedy, power-hungry and entirely self-serving, most of the rank and file have to be dumb.

Either they’re so dumb that they think that the lies they’re told are true, or they know that they’re not true but go along with them anyway because they think that the face-eating weasels aren’t going to eat their faces, which is just a somewhat different sort of dumb.