Totalitarian propaganda threatens through indirect hints rather than only direct menaces

Evidence

More specific in totalitarian propaganda, however, than direct threats and crimes against individuals is the use of indirect, veiled, and menacing hints against all who will not heed its teachings and, later, mass murder perpetrated on “guilty” and “innocent” alike. People are threatened by Communist propaganda with missing the train of history, with remaining hopelessly behind their time, with spending their lives uselessly, just as they were threatened by the Nazis with living against the eternal laws of nature and life, with an irreparable and mysterious deterioration of their blood. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 811

Categorization

• XREF: This veiled-threat mechanism resonates with the concept of totalitarian ‘terror as ideology’ that the later Islamophobia readings will build on—the idea of threats that operate through suggestion rather than direct command. — connects to: Genocidal preparation hides intent behind euphemisms and manufactures fear of victims — Gregory H. Stanton, Ten Stages of Genocide, 5