Totalitarian rule replaces real enmity with a pervasive conspiracy mentality.

Evidence

Once the movements have come to power, they proceed to change reality in accordance with their ideological claims. The concept of enmity is replaced by that of conspiracy, and this produces a mentality in which reality—real enmity or real friendship—is no longer experienced and understood in its own terms but is automatically assumed to signify something else. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1067

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanism that connects to later Islamophobia readings on how ideological constructions override empirical encounter with the Other.
• SEED: The enmity-to-conspiracy shift is an angle for analyzing how political rhetoric moves from identifiable enemies to diffuse suspicion.