Totalitarian propaganda constructs a consistent fictional world that shelters uprooted masses from reality

Evidence

Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations. The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda—before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world—lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 828

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Establishes Arendt’s core mechanism of the ‘lying world of consistency’ as the operative power of totalitarian propaganda before seizure of power.
• XREF: Connects to the scaffolding concept of the construction of the ‘Other’ and imaginary worlds to carry into Islamophobia readings on conspiracy narratives.

Related

• Totalitarian power makes systematic lying possible because everyday reality is already fictitious (similarity 0.89)
• Totalitarian propaganda organizes masses through existing ideas, not new doctrine (similarity 0.88)
• Totalitarian propaganda targets the outside world while indoctrination serves internal control (similarity 0.84)
• Totalitarian rule dissolves factual reality itself (similarity 0.83)
• Totalitarian propaganda wins because ideology becomes lived reality, not opinion. (similarity 0.83)
• A fictitious world conspiracy ideologically suits totalitarian claims to world rule. (similarity 0.83)
• Totalitarian propaganda replaces appeals to tradition with scientific prophecy to escape present scrutiny. (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarian regimes own reality by manufacturing a malignant normality people must inhabit. (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarian belief vanishes with the movement that sustained it. (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarianism introduces unprecedented concepts of power and reality (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian propaganda achieves infallibility only when the movement seizes power. (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian rule deliberately maintains a gap between official words and actual deeds (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian terror requires propaganda to coerce from within (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian propaganda seeks organization, not persuasion or novel doctrine. (similarity 0.81)
• Totalitarian themes were pre-prepared by imperialism and the mob’s entry into politics. (similarity 0.80)