Totalitarian propaganda wins support by openly boasting past crimes

Evidence

Nor can their popularity be attributed to the victory of masterful and lying propaganda over ignorance and stupidity. For the propaganda of totalitarian movements which precede and accompany totalitarian regimes is invariably as frank as it is mendacious, and would-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones. The Nazis “were convinced that evil-doing in our time has a morbid force of attraction,” Bolshevik assurances inside and outside Russia that they do not recognize ordinary moral standards have become a mainstay of Communist propaganda, and experience has proved time and again that the propaganda value of evil deeds and general contempt for moral standards is independent of mere self-interest, supposedly the most powerful psychological factor in politics. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 742

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the distinctive mechanism of totalitarian propaganda: frankness about evil deeds itself functions as recruitment, not deception.
• STORYSTEM: The image of a ruler gaining followers precisely by confessing planned atrocities is a strong narrative engine for a villain or cult-leader character.