Totalitarian propaganda replaces appeals to tradition with scientific prophecy to escape present scrutiny.

Evidence

The scientificality of totalitarian propaganda is characterized by its almost exclusive insistence on scientific prophecy as distinguished from the more old-fashioned appeal to the past. Nowhere does the ideological origin, of socialism in one instance and racism in the other, show more clearly than when their spokesmen pretend that they have discovered the hidden forces that will bring them good fortune in the chain of fatality. … Totalitarian propaganda raised ideological scientificality and its technique of making statements in the form of predictions to a height of efficiency of method and absurdity of content because, demagogically speaking, there is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future can reveal its merits. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 812

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines totalitarian ‘scientificality’ as prophecy-forwarding that evades present-tense discussion — a key mechanism for the scaffold.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does scientific prophecy compare with the ‘imagined community’ or biopolitical futurity that later Islamophobia readings deploy?
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s discourse/power and to the way modern bureaucracies legitimate exclusion through ostensibly neutral expert prediction.