Totalitarian movements deliberately refuse fixed definitions and value-commitments

Evidence

From the point of view of a folk community, every community of values is destructive … Himmler’s vehemently urgent request “not to issue any decree concerning the definition of the term ‘Jew’” is a case in point; for “with all these foolish commitments we will only be tying our hands” (Nuremberg Document No. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2651

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the concept that Nazi political theory rejected value-communities outright, treating fixed commitments as destructive limitations on the leader’s freedom of action.
• XREF: The ‘tying our hands’ logic anticipates the flexibility Arendt later attributes to totalitarian policy-planning and its refusal to be pinned down.