Rule over laborers produces totalitarian loneliness rather than mere isolation

Evidence

Total domination, which strives to organize the infinite plurality and differentiation of human beings as if all of humanity were just one individual, is possible only if each and every person can be reduced to a never-changing identity of reactions, so that each of these bundles of reactions can be exchanged at random for any other. The problem is to fabricate something that does not exist, namely, a kind of human species resembling other animal species whose only “freedom” would consist in “preserving the species.” Totalitarian domination attempts to achieve this goal both through ideological indoctrination of the elite formations and through absolute terror in the camps; and the atrocities for which the elite formations are ruthlessly used become, as it were, the practical application of the ideological indoctrination—the testing ground in which the latter must prove itself—while the appalling spectacle of the camps themselves is supposed to furnish the “theoretical” verification of the ideology. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 980 (#expands, via linked claim)

That totalitarian movements depended less on the structurelessness of a mass society than on the specific conditions of an atomized and individualized mass, can best be seen in a comparison of Nazism and Bolshevism which began in their respective countries under very different circumstances. To change Lenin’s revolutionary dictatorship into full totalitarian rule, Stalin had first to create artificially that atomized society which had been prepared for the Nazis in Germany by historical circumstances. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 761 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Political isolation differs from personal loneliness in kind and cause; Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person; Feudalism’s narrow circles suppressed both collective spirit and individual freedom — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 647 (+8 more)

Related

• Totalitarian rule requires destroying all autonomous activity, not merely equalizing conditions (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian rule requires an atomized and individualized mass, not mere social structurelessness (similarity 0.80)
• Totalitarian rule dispenses with the consensus iuris that constitutes a people. (similarity 0.80)
• Totalitarian power requires remaking individuals from inside outward with terror. (similarity 0.79)
• Total domination consumes population so heavily it needs excess human material (similarity 0.79)
• Mass man’s defining trait is isolation, not brutality or backwardness (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person #expands (0.85)
• Totalitarian domination requires reducing humans to interchangeable uniform reactions #expands (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 980
• Totalitarian rule requires an atomized and individualized mass, not mere social structurelessness #expands (0.82) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 761
• Imperial racism and bureaucracy supply the elements of totalitarian rule #expands (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 567
• Totalitarian power aims to render human beings superfluous, not merely to rule them #expands (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1025
• Divided labor disperses responsibility so nobody feels like a killer #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 697
• Totalitarian rule operates as perpetual movement, not as settled government #expands (0.78)
• Feudalism’s narrow circles suppressed both collective spirit and individual freedom #complicates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 647
• Totalitarian regimes legitimize eliminating opposition as unnecessary and weak #expands (0.75)
• Totalitarian party rule works through exclusion, not mass membership #complicates (0.72)