Totalitarian leaders can project their own crimes onto any subordinate

Evidence

“One of Stalin’s distinctive characteristics …is systematically to throw his own misdeeds and crimes, as well as his political errors …on the shoulders of those whose discredit and ruin he is plotting” (Souvarine, op. cit., p. 655). It is obvious that a totalitarian leader can choose freely whom he wants to impersonate his own errors since all acts committed by subleaders are supposed to be inspired by him, so that anybody can be forced into the role of an impostor. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2676

Categorization

• QUESTION: Merely asserts, doesn’t explain, the structural mechanism that makes any subleader a plausible impostor — worth chasing the fuller logic of totalitarian scapegoating in later chapters.