Totalitarian rule deliberately multiplies offices and conceals the true seat of power

Evidence

As a matter of fact, duplication of offices, seemingly the result of the party-state problem in all one-party dictatorships, is only the most conspicuous sign of a more complicated phenomenon that is better defined as multiplication of offices than duplication. … The inhabitant of Hitler’s Third Reich lived not only under the simultaneous and often conflicting authorities of competing powers, such as the civil services, the party, the SA, and the SS; he could never be sure and was never explicitly told whose authority he was supposed to place above all others. He had to develop a kind of sixth sense to know at a given moment whom to obey and whom to disregard. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 908

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Arendt defines ‘multiplication of offices’ as opposed to mere ‘duplication’ — a core mechanism for how totalitarian power works.
• XREF: Connects to the Islamophobia field’s concept of decentralized, opaque structures of power; also to Kafkaesque bureaucracies.

Related

• Totalitarian rule preserves parallel offices to keep power constantly shifting (similarity 0.84)
• Totalitarian police multiply and layer competing spy agencies to prevent any stable authority (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarian government is not monolithic but a shapeless dual authority of party and state (similarity 0.80)
• Duplicated secret services let totalitarian power keep contradictory options open (similarity 0.80)
• Totalitarianism feeds on the misconception that it is ordinary despotism (similarity 0.78)
• Confused hierarchies make totalitarian rule shock-proof and command-certain (similarity 0.78)
• Overlapping, competing offices make totalitarian opposition nearly impossible to organize (similarity 0.78)
• Totalitarian rule deliberately maintains a gap between official words and actual deeds (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• In totalitarian states, real power correlates inversely with institutional visibility #corroborates (0.95) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 915