Terror’s content is hunting objective enemies once real ones are exterminated

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The objective-enemy category permanently renews terror as targets shift across categories; Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting; Extreme asymmetry in vulnerability transforms war into hunting or slaughter — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 332 (+7 more)

Related

• The objective-enemy category permanently renews terror as targets shift across categories (similarity 0.87)
• Global war on terror is better understood as manhunting than combat (similarity 0.83)
• Objective enemies are defined by state policy, not by their own actions (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarian terror targets objective enemies rather than actual opponents (similarity 0.82)
• Militarized manhunting combines warfare and policing into a new state violence (similarity 0.80)
• Treating enemies as vermin to be exterminated actually amplifies the terror it targets (similarity 0.80)
• Terror is the essence of totalitarian government, not a means to an end (similarity 0.79)
• Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting (similarity 0.78)
• Manhunting replaces Clausewitz’s duel with a hunter-prey asymmetry (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The objective-enemy category permanently renews terror as targets shift across categories #expands (0.90)
• Objective enemies are defined by state policy, not by their own actions #expands (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 950
• Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting #corroborates (0.82)
• Extreme asymmetry in vulnerability transforms war into hunting or slaughter #corroborates (0.82) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 332
• Global war on terror is better understood as manhunting than combat #expands (0.80)
• Drone war’s core task shifted from destroying enemies to finding and tracking them #expands (0.80)
• Totalitarian rule shifts from persecuting an objective enemy to randomly selected undesirables #qualifies (0.78)
• Manhunting replaces Clausewitz’s duel with a hunter-prey asymmetry #expands (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 171
• Total terror emerges only after opposition is already defeated #contradicts (0.72)