Totalitarian leaders used confessed, irreversible crimes to bind followers.
Evidence
The way the totalitarian movements have kept the private lives of their leaders (Hitler and Stalin) absolutely secret contrasts with the publicity value which all democracies find in parading the private lives of Presidents, Kings, Prime Ministers, etc., in public. Totalitarian methods do not allow for an identification based on the conviction: Even the highest of us is only human. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2671 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
Perhaps the greatest deliberate experiment in pervasive distrust was that of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union during the purge years of the 1930s. Although the apparatus of those years was not fully dismantled soon thereafter, the war with Germany required enough cohesion to make such deep distrust harmful even to Stalin’s personal rule. Pol Pot’s rule of Cambodia similarly depended on radical use of distrust. In general, pervasive distrust is more quietly used than it was in these two dreadful cases. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 467 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Totalitarian complicity is made total by implicating victims in the crimes — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1015; Totalitarian regimes can sustain themselves by deliberately cultivating pervasive distrust. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 467; Totalitarian leaders maintain total private-life secrecy to prevent humanizing identification. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2671
Related
- Totalitarian leaders maintain total private-life secrecy to prevent humanizing identification. (similarity 0.89)
- Totalitarian perpetrators relied on the public’s incredulity to shield their crimes (similarity 0.88)
- Totalitarian bureaucracy extends control into the private soul that older bureaucracies left intact (similarity 0.83)
- Totalitarian regimes can sustain themselves by deliberately cultivating pervasive distrust. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Totalitarian leaders maintain total private-life secrecy to prevent humanizing identification.
#complicates(0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2671 - Totalitarian regimes can sustain themselves by deliberately cultivating pervasive distrust.
#corroborates(0.70) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 467