Totalitarian power requires remaking individuals from inside outward with terror.

Evidence

Totalitarian power cannot succeed by remote control. Mere conformity is insufficient. Each individual inner life must be claimed and transformed by the perpetual threat of punishment without crime. Mass murder warrants economies of scale—the camps, massacres, and gulags—but for the rest it would be a handmade terror that aims to remake every aspect of the individual from the inside out: heart, mind, sexuality, personality, and spirit. This craftwork requires the detailed orchestration of isolation, anxiety, fear, persuasion, fantasy, longing, inspiration, torture, dread, and surveillance. Arendt describes the relentless process of “atomization” and fusion in which terror destroys the ordinary human bonds of law, norms, trust, and affection, “which provide the living space for the freedom of the individual.” The “iron band” of terror “mercilessly presses men… against each other so that the very space of free action… disappears.” Terror “fabricates the oneness of all men.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1140

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Totalitarian terror requires propaganda to coerce from within; Total-institution socialization via isolation and occupancy transforms civilians into terrorists. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2127; Totalitarian domination requires reducing humans to interchangeable uniform reactions — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 980 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person #corroborates (0.90)
• Totalitarian domination requires reducing humans to interchangeable uniform reactions #expands (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 980
• Totalitarian terror requires propaganda to coerce from within #expands (0.75)
• Total-institution socialization via isolation and occupancy transforms civilians into terrorists. #corroborates (0.70) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2127