Totalitarian hell proves human power greater than imagined

Evidence

If the propaganda of truth fails to convince the average person because it is too monstrous, it is positively dangerous to those who know from their own imaginings what they themselves are capable of doing and who are therefore perfectly willing to believe in the reality of what they have seen. Suddenly it becomes evident that things which for thousands of years the human imagination had banished to a realm beyond human competence can be manufactured right here on earth, that Hell and Purgatory, and even a shadow of their perpetual duration, can be established by the most modern methods of destruction and therapy. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1000

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: The manufactured-hell thesis ties to the field’s treatment of modern bureaucratic rationality as enabling mass exclusion.