Official recognition, not persecution, threatens a totalitarian movement’s inner cohesion.

Evidence

The totalitarian movements, apparently persecuted by the police, very sparingly use methods of conspiracy for the overthrow of the government in their struggle for power, whereas totalitarianism in power, after it has been recognized by all governments and seemingly outgrown its revolutionary stage, develops a true secret police as the nucleus of its government and power. It seems that official recognition is felt to be a greater menace to the conspiracy content of the totalitarian movement, a menace of interior disintegration, than the half-hearted police measures of nontotalitarian regimes. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 973

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the paradox that legitimation, not opposition, is what destabilizes radical movements internally — applicable to organizational theory broadly.