Arbitrary punishment negates freedom more thoroughly than tyranny did

Evidence

This consistent arbitrariness negates human freedom more efficiently than any tyranny ever could. One had at least to be an enemy of tyranny in order to be punished by it. Freedom of opinion was not abolished for those who were brave enough to risk their necks. Theoretically, the choice of opposition remains in totalitarian regimes too; but such freedom is almost invalidated if committing a voluntary act only assures a “punishment” that everyone else may have to bear anyway. Freedom in this system has not only dwindled down to its last and apparently still indestructible guarantee, the possibility of suicide, but has lost its distinctive mark because the consequences of its exercise are shared with completely innocent people. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 965

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism by which totalitarian arbitrariness extends power beyond what classical tyranny could: freeing the innocent does not free the would-be rebel.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s biopower/normalization — the ‘undesirable’ category and administration of populations — which the reader is building toward in the Foundations module.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that arbitrariness, not violent prohibition, is what actually extinguishes freedom is a dense paradox worth sitting with and cross-checking against later Islamophobia readings.