Propaganda slogans embedded in organization become un-questionable reality

Evidence

Once these propaganda slogans are integrated into a “living organization,” they cannot be safely eliminated without wrecking the whole structure. The assumption of a Jewish world conspiracy was transformed by totalitarian propaganda from an objective, arguable matter into the chief element of the Nazi reality; the point was that the Nazis acted as though the world were dominated by the Jews and needed a counterconspiracy to defend itself. Racism for them was no longer a debatable theory of dubious scientific value, but was being realized every day in the functioning hierarchy of a political organization in whose framework it would have been very “unrealistic” to question it. Similarly, Bolshevism no longer needs to win an argument about class struggle, internationalism, and unconditional dependence of the welfare of the proletariat on the welfare of the Soviet Union; the functioning organization of the Comintern is more convincing than any argument or mere ideology can ever be. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 846

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the mechanism by which an ideological fiction ceases to be arguable and becomes lived reality: once embedded in a functioning organization, questioning it becomes ‘unrealistic’ within that frame.
• XREF: Parallels the ‘common sense’ concept in the reader’s toolkit — the process by which a constructed worldview hardens into taken-for-granted, un-questionable reality rather than debatable theory. — connects to: Repeated slogans sever language from lived experience, linking advertising with totalitarian control. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 121; Hitler held that effective propaganda requires repetition of few simple slogans — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 391