Totalitarian movements rise above both state and people for ideology

Evidence

While the imperialist leagues set themselves above parties for the sake of identification with the nation-state, the pan-movements attacked these same parties as part and parcel of a general system which included the nation-state; they were not so much “above parties” as “above the state” for the sake of a direct identification with the people. The totalitarian movements eventually were led to discard the people also, whom, however, following closely in the footsteps of the pan-movements they used for propaganda purposes. The “totalitarian state” is a state in appearance only, and the movement no longer truly identifies itself even with the needs of the people. The Movement by now is above state and people, ready to sacrifice both for the sake of its ideology: “The Movement …is State as well as People, and neither the present state …nor the present German people can even be conceived without the Movement.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 665

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt’s key distinction: pan-movements were above parties but identified with the people, while totalitarian movements discard even the people — the movement itself becomes the sovereign referent.
• XREF: Crucial building block for the scaffolding toolkit: the movement supplanting both state and people is the template for how exclusionary ideologies claim sovereignty over both.
• ADDENDUM: The movement above state and people, sacrificing both to ideology, parallels the necropolitical analysis in the sacrifice readings: ideology demands human material as expendable.
• DEEPTHINKING: The displacement chain — leagues above parties, pan-movements above state, totalitarian movement above people — is a dense, precise mechanism for how mass movements hollow out both representative institutions and the populace itself.