Terror intensified as internal political opposition disappeared

Evidence

What they had looked forward to was the establishment of new institutions and the creation of a new code of law which, no matter how revolutionary in content, would lead to a stabilization of conditions and thus check the momentum of the totalitarian movements at least in the countries where they had seized power. What happened instead was that terror increased both in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in inverse ratio to the existence of internal political opposition, so that it looked as though political opposition had not been the pretext of terror (as liberal accusers of the regime were wont to assert) but the last impediment to its full fury. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 901

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the necropolitics/biopolitics toolkit the reader is building for the Islamophobia field — the idea that elimination operates on a logic beyond securing power against opposition. — connects to: Total terror emerges only after opposition is already defeated; Totalitarian terror peaks when resistance has already vanished; Terror is defined by independence from opposition, not suppression
• ADDENDUM: Supports the sacrifice/elimination strand: the move from ‘pretext’ to fully-open terror parallels how ritualized sacrifice escalates once the sacrificial object’s defense is gone.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 901

Broader Connections

• Total terror emerges only after opposition is already defeated #corroborates (1.00)
• Totalitarian terror peaks when resistance has already vanished #corroborates (0.95)
• Terror is defined by independence from opposition, not suppression #expands (0.80)