Loneliness, rooted in uprootedness and superfluousness, grounds both totalitarian terror and ideology

Evidence

Loneliness, the common ground for terror, the essence of totalitarian government, and for ideology or logicality, the preparation of its executioners and victims, is closely connected with uprootedness and superfluousness which have been the curse of modern masses since the beginning of the industrial revolution and have become acute with the rise of imperialism at the end of the last century and the break-down of political institutions and social traditions in our own time. To be uprooted means to have no place in the world, recognized and guaranteed by others; to be superfluous means not to belong to the world at all. Uprootedness can be the preliminary condition for superfluousness, just as isolation can (but must not) be the preliminary condition for loneliness. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1079

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt defines the conceptual triad — uprootedness (no guaranteed place), superfluousness (not belonging at all), loneliness — that underwrites totalitarianism. Core toolkit vocabulary.
• XREF: connects to: Fragmented modern lives make people vulnerable to totalitarian demagoguery. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 261; Totalitarian ideology takes hold where individuals feel isolated, expendable, and lonely. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1641