Modern totalitarian terror governs the obedient by striking objectively innocent victims

Evidence

What makes conviction and opinion of any sort so ridiculous and dangerous under totalitarian conditions is that totalitarian regimes take the greatest pride in having no need of them, or of any human help of any kind. Men insofar as they are more than animal reaction and fulfillment of functions are entirely superfluous to totalitarian regimes. Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous. Total power can be achieved and safeguarded only in a world of conditioned reflexes, of marionettes without the slightest trace of spontaneity. Precisely because man’s resources are so great, he can be fully dominated only when he becomes a specimen of the animal-species man. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1025 (#expands, via linked claim)

This astonishing effect of successfully extending the rules of bureaucratic conduct, complete with the delegitimation of alternative loyalties and moral motives in general to encompass the intended victims of bureaucracy, and thereby deploying their skills and labour in the implementation of the task of their destruction, was achieved (much as in the mundane activity of every other, sinister or benign, bureacracy) in a twofold way. First, the external setting of the ghetto life was so designed that all actions of its leaders and inhabitants could not but remain objectively ‘functional’ to German purposes. ‘Everything that was designed to maintain its [ghetto] viability was simultaneously promoting a German goal … Jewish efficiency in allocating space or in distributing rations was an extension of German effectiveness. Jewish rigour in taxation or labour utilization was a reinforcement of German stringency, even Jewish incorruptability could be a tool of German administration.’ Second, particular care was taken that at every stage of the road the victims should be put in a situation of choice, to which criteria or rational action apply, and in which the rational decision invariably agrees with the ‘managerial design’. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 95 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Terror is the essence of totalitarian government, not a means to an end — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 808; Totalitarian terror extends to the victims’ families by forbidding grief and remembrance; Totalitarian rulers treat foreign victims as internal traitors and govern them with police (+4 more)

Related

• Victims’ rational conduct was engineered to serve their own destruction (similarity 0.86)
• Terror is the essence of totalitarian government, not a means to an end (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian terror targets objective enemies rather than actual opponents (similarity 0.80)
• Specialized monopoly bureaucracy seals off victims and enlists their rational motives (similarity 0.79)
• Soviet terror’s arbitrariness exceeded Nazi terror by dropping all victim criteria. (similarity 0.78)
• Older Nazi officials retained moral qualms the genocidal machine overrode (similarity 0.78)
• Exploiting victim rationality was cheaper than controlling them through fear (similarity 0.78)
• Extreme evil can stem from meticulous order rather than its breakdown (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian policing targets objective dangerousness rather than culpable actions #expands (0.90)
• Totalitarian power aims to render human beings superfluous, not merely to rule them #expands (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1025
• Victims’ rational conduct was engineered to serve their own destruction #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 95
• Nazi power operated by crafting a rational make-believe world for victims #expands (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 580