Totalitarian rule preserves parallel offices to keep power constantly shifting

Evidence

The multiplication of offices was extremely useful for the constant shifting of power; the longer, moreover, a totalitarian regime stays in power, the greater becomes the number of offices and the possibility of jobs exclusively dependent upon the movement, since no office is abolished when its authority is liquidated. The Nazi regime started this multiplication with an initial co-ordination of all existing associations, societies, and institutions. The interesting thing in this nation-wide manipulation was that co-ordination did not signify incorporation into the already existing respective party organizations. The result was that up to the end of the regime, there were not one, but two National Socialist student organizations, two Nazi women’s organizations, two Nazi organizations for university professors, lawyers, physicians, and so forth. It was by no means sure, however, that in all cases the original party organization would be more powerful than its coordinated counterpart. Nor could anybody predict with any assurance which party organ would rise in the ranks of the internal party hierarchy. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 911

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘co-ordination’ mechanism as duplication rather than incorporation, a key concept for understanding totalitarian administration.
• XREF: Connects to Arendt’s broader account of totalitarian ‘planned shapelessness’ and to later Islamophobia readings on how exclusionary regimes fragment administrative responsibility.