Overlapping, competing offices make totalitarian opposition nearly impossible to organize

Evidence

If we consider the totalitarian state solely as an instrument of power and leave aside questions of administrative efficiency, industrial capacity, and economic productivity, then its shapelessness turns out to be an ideally suited instrument for the realization of the so-called Leader principle. A continuous competition between offices, whose functions not only overlap but which are charged with identical tasks, gives opposition or sabotage almost no chance to become effective; a swift change of emphasis which relegates one office to the shadow and elevates another to authority can solve all problems without anybody’s becoming aware of the change or of the fact that opposition had existed, the additional advantage of the system being that the opposing office is likely never to learn of its defeat, since it is either not abolished at all (as in the case of the Nazi regime) or it is liquidated much later and without any apparent connection with the specific matter. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 916

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the mechanism by which the Leader principle works through deliberate institutional shapelessness and competition.
• XREF: Mechanistically parallels the fragmented police-maze pattern noted in the previous paragraph; also connects to later readings on how bureaucratic rationality enables exclusion.