Modern totalitarian terror rules the obedient rather than punishing rebels.

Evidence

A fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all other tyrannies of the past is that terror is no longer used as a means to exterminate and frighten opponents, but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient. Terror as we know it today strikes without any preliminary provocation, its victims are innocent even from the point of view of the persecutor. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 70

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt distinguishes modern terror from classical tyranny: it targets perfectly obedient masses, not opponents — a foundational distinction for the totalitarianism toolkit.
• XREF: Connects to necropolitics (Mbembe) and biopolitics readings that build on Arendt’s account of how power over life operates in modern states. — connects to: Modern repression operates from strength through efficiency, not through terror — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 84