Totalitarian elites are trained to dissolve facts entirely into declarations of purpose

Evidence

The elite is not composed of ideologists; its members’ whole education is aimed at abolishing their capacity for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, between reality and fiction. Their superiority consists in their ability immediately to dissolve every statement of fact into a declaration of purpose. In distinction to the mass membership which, for instance, needs some demonstration of the inferiority of the Jewish race before it can safely be asked to kill Jews, the elite formations understand that the statement, all Jews are inferior, means, all Jews should be killed; they know that when they are told that only Moscow has a subway, the real meaning of the statement is that all subways should be destroyed, and are not unduly surprised when they discover the subway in Paris. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 886

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the elite formation’s distinctive training: not ideologists who need proof, but members whose capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood has been abolished.