The Leader’s infallibility structures the movement, not the truth of his words

Evidence

Closely connected with this transformation of the suspect into the objective enemy is the change of position of the secret police in the totalitarian state. The secret services have rightly been called a state within the state, and this not only in despotisms but also under constitutional or semiconstitutional governments. The mere possession of secret information has always given this branch a decisive superiority over all other branches of the civil services and constituted an open threat to members of the government. The totalitarian police, on the contrary, is totally subject to the will of the Leader, who alone can decide who the next potential enemy will be and who, as Stalin did, can also single out cadres of the secret police for liquidation. Since the police are no longer permitted to use provocation, they have been deprived of the only available means of perpetuating themselves independently of the government and have become entirely dependent on the higher authorities for the safeguarding of their jobs. Like the army in a nontotalitarian state, the police in totalitarian countries merely execute political policy and have lost all the prerogatives which they held under despotic bureaucracies. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 952 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Leader’s rightness is unfalsifiable because its test lies beyond contemporaries’ reach; The Leader’s power becomes structural necessity rather than personal superiority; A leader’s self-awareness about his historical role shapes political outcomes (+5 more)

Related

• Totalitarian secret police lose autonomy and become wholly dependent on the Leader (similarity 0.89)
• The fiction of totalitarian reality collapses if leaders are presumed fallible (similarity 0.84)
• Totalitarian leaders absorb total responsibility for all subordinates’ acts (similarity 0.82)
• The secret police is the totalitarian regime’s true executive branch. (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarian leaders rise through intrigue and personnel control, not violence or bureaucracy (similarity 0.82)
• The Leader’s rightness is beyond factual disproof because its test lies centuries away (similarity 0.81)
• Appointment from above matters more than unlimited authority for totalitarian stability (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian loyalty rests on organizational infallibility, not the Leader’s (similarity 0.80)
• Leader-centered movements become vulnerable to ad hominem attacks on the whole (similarity 0.80)
• The leader principle is totalitarian only through its organizational function. (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian elites treat ideology as content-free organizational function (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The Leader’s power becomes structural necessity rather than personal superiority #corroborates (0.88)
• Totalitarian secret police lose autonomy and become wholly dependent on the Leader #exemplifies (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 952
• Totalitarian movements are propelled by direction rather than structure #expands (0.82)
• A leader’s self-awareness about his historical role shapes political outcomes #qualifies (0.75)