Consistent fabricated confessions overwhelm isolated individuals into accepting guilt

Evidence

While it has been the specialty of Nazi propaganda to profit from the longing of the masses for consistency, Bolshevik methods have demonstrated, as though in a laboratory, its impact on the isolated mass man. The Soviet secret police, so eager to convince its victims of their guilt for crimes they never committed, and in many instances were in no position to commit, completely isolates and eliminates all real factors, so that the very logic, the very consistency of “the story” contained in the prepared confession becomes overwhelming. In a situation where the dividing line between fiction and reality is blurred by the monstrosity and the inner consistency of the accusation, not only the strength of character to resist constant threats but great confidence in the existence of fellow human beings—relatives or friends or neighbors—who will never believe “the story” are required to resist the temptation to yield to the mere abstract possibility of guilt. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 826

Categorization

• XREF: The isolation-breaking-power-of-other-believers mechanism echoes Arendt’s account of totalitarian atomization and prefigures how rumor and conspiracy function today. — connects to: Isolation and procedural stacking pressured Hashmi into a guilty plea — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 583