Totalitarian indifference to mass interest shattered utilitarian assumptions in politics.

Evidence

It is precisely because the utilitarian core of ideologies was taken for granted that the anti-utilitarian behavior of totalitarian governments, their complete indifference to mass interest, has been such a shock. This introduced into contemporary politics an element of unheard-of unpredictability. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 815

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Reverses the interest-driven models found in Milgrom’s law-merchant and the diamond-trade readings — institutions built on self-interest versus a politics explicitly freed from it.

Related

• Totalitarian power operates independently of material interest and profit motives (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarian solutions survive regime falls as standing temptations (similarity 0.81)
• Highly educated individuals are especially drawn to mass movements, not merely the backward (similarity 0.81)
• Nonutilitarian structure makes totalitarian politics unpredictable to outsiders (similarity 0.80)
• Totalitarian themes were pre-prepared by imperialism and the mob’s entry into politics. (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarianism replaces all independent talent with loyal mediocrity to ensure predictability (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian claims to totality merely reversed the bourgeoisie’s own political philosophy (similarity 0.79)
• Social democracy’s contradictions, not capital alone, opened the terrain for Thatcherism (similarity 0.79)
• Liberal common-good theory rationalizes reckless private interest (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian politics outmatched imperial adventurism because it lacked ulterior motives (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarianism transforms classes into masses and creates entirely new political institutions (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian government rests on a human experience never before used to found a polity (similarity 0.78)
• Totalitarian movements organize masses by sheer numbers rather than classes or citizen-opinion. (similarity 0.78)
• Mass atomization makes interest-based appeal impossible and enables self-sacrifice. (similarity 0.78)
• Totalitarian ideology becomes as untouchable as arithmetic to members. (similarity 0.78)