Objective enemies are defined by state policy, not by their own actions

Evidence

The chief difference between the despotic and the totalitarian secret police lies in the difference between the “suspect” and the “objective enemy.” The latter is defined by the policy of the government and not by his own desire to overthrow it. He is never an individual whose dangerous thoughts must be provoked or whose past justifies suspicion, but a “carrier of tendencies” like the carrier of a disease. Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go and kill him in self-defense. This certainly is a little crude, but it works—as everybody will know who ever watched how certain successful careerists eliminate competitors. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 950

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core vocabulary: ‘suspect’ vs. ‘objective enemy,’ and ‘carrier of tendencies’ — the medicalizing metaphor for ideological guilt that could travel directly into Islamophobia analysis.
• XREF: The ‘carrier of tendencies’ metaphor parallels the biological/medical framing of threat that recurs in colonial and racial discourse; connects to Foucault’s biopolitics reading ahead. — connects to: Terror’s content is hunting objective enemies once real ones are exterminated; The objective-enemy category permanently renews terror as targets shift across categories; Totalitarian rule shifts from persecuting an objective enemy to randomly selected undesirables (+4 more)
• SEED: The provocation-gambit described — manufacturing the appearance of an enemy to justify killing — is a mechanism that could anchor an essay on how states produce the threats they claim to merely respond to.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 950

Broader Connections

• US imperial interests, not Islamist actions, determine Islamist ally or enemy status #exemplifies (0.92) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 278
• Totalitarian rule shifts from persecuting an objective enemy to randomly selected undesirables #qualifies (0.82)
• Totalitarian policing targets objective dangerousness rather than culpable actions #expands (0.78)
• Colonialism operates through objective role, not personal intention #corroborates (0.75) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 125