Legends recruit the best people, ideologies the average, secret-power tales the worst

Evidence

The author of the imperialist legend is Rudyard Kipling, its topic is the British Empire, its result the imperialist character (imperialism was the only school of character in modern politics). And while the legend of the British Empire has little to do with the realities of British imperialism, it forced or deluded into its services the best sons of England. For legends attract the very best in our times, just as ideologies attract the average, and the whispered tales of gruesome secret powers behind the scenes attract the very worst. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 539

Categorization

• XREF: This tripartite typology of recruiter (legend/ideology/secret-cult) feeds the reader’s toolkit for how political worldviews are propagated; echoes the later biopolitics reading’s account of how racialized narratives recruit elites.