Both Nazi and Bolshevik propaganda instruments ultimately serve consistency

Evidence

To be sure, this extreme of an artificially fabricated insanity can be achieved only in a totalitarian world. Then, however, it is part of the propaganda apparatus of the totalitarian regimes to which confessions are not indispensable for punishment. “Confessions” are as much a specialty of Bolshevik propaganda as the curious pedantry of legalizing crimes by retrospective and retroactive legislation was a specialty of Nazi propaganda. The aim in both cases is consistency. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 827

Categorization

• SEED: The parallel — confession (Bolshevik) and retroactive law (Nazi) — as twin routes to ideological consistency could anchor an essay on how regimes manufacture the jurisprudential truth they need.
• XREF: Retroactive legislation and confession-as-propaganda both strain ordinary legal-moral categories; connects to how totalitarian/exclusionary regimes weaponize law’s form. — connects to: The Third Reich remains unmatched in broadcast reach and coercion power — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 384