Totalitarian ideology coerces through the fear of abandoning a first premise

Evidence

It is the inner coercion whose only content is the strict avoidance of contradictions that seems to confirm a man’s identity outside all relationships with others. It fits him into the iron band of terror even when he is alone, and totalitarian domination tries never to leave him alone except in the extreme situation of solitary confinement. By destroying all space between men and pressing men against each other, even the productive potentialities of isolation are annihilated; by teaching and glorifying the logical reasoning of loneliness where man knows that he will be utterly lost if ever he lets go of the first premise from which the whole process is being started, even the slim chances that loneliness may be transformed into solitude and logic into thought are obliterated. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1084

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: The mechanism by which ideological logic becomes an ‘iron band’ — the terror of dropping the original premise keeps the deducer captive. This is the operative mechanism of ideological coercion.

Related

• Ideological logic coerces the mind as violently as outside power does (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person (similarity 0.81)
• Modern thought replaced inclusive liberal logic with a coerced either-or. (similarity 0.80)
• Total terror emerges only after opposition is already defeated (similarity 0.80)
• Totalitarian power requires remaking individuals from inside outward with terror. (similarity 0.80)
• An ideology becomes totalitarian only when its total validity is taken seriously (similarity 0.80)
• Totalitarian extremism is not radicalism but deducing everything to the worst (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarianism replaces all independent talent with loyal mediocrity to ensure predictability (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian rule requires destroying all autonomous activity, not merely equalizing conditions (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian loyalty requires stripping movement ideology of all concrete content (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian rule substitutes insight into the law of movement for principles of action (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian terror weaponizes ideology by enforcing its extreme logical consequences (similarity 0.78)
• The ideology’s logical process devours the very people it was meant to serve (similarity 0.78)
• Totalitarian coercion works through a fear of self-contradiction, not the ideology itself. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian movements rewarded ideological consistency over idealism #complicates (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2547