Totalitarian movements reject all structure as a handicap to directional propulsion

Evidence

One should not forget that only a building can have a structure, but that a movement—if the word is to be taken as seriously and as literally as the Nazis meant it—can have only a direction, and that any form of legal or governmental structure can be only a handicap to a movement which is being propelled with increasing speed in a certain direction. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 907

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt’s core distinction: a movement has direction, not structure — this is foundational vocabulary for understanding totalitarian governance.
• XREF: Connects to Arendt’s distinction between structure and direction; anticipates how Islamophobia readings describe movements pressing beyond fixed legal categories.
• DEEPTHINKING: The structure-vs-direction distinction is a genuinely paradigm-shifting lens: it reframes totalitarian shambles not as dysfunction but as intentional propulsion.