Totalitarian rule requires destroying all autonomous activity, not merely equalizing conditions

Evidence

What makes conviction and opinion of any sort so ridiculous and dangerous under totalitarian conditions is that totalitarian regimes take the greatest pride in having no need of them, or of any human help of any kind. Men insofar as they are more than animal reaction and fulfillment of functions are entirely superfluous to totalitarian regimes. Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous. Total power can be achieved and safeguarded only in a world of conditioned reflexes, of marionettes without the slightest trace of spontaneity. Precisely because man’s resources are so great, he can be fully dominated only when he becomes a specimen of the animal-species man. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1025 (#expands, via linked claim)

Total domination, which strives to organize the infinite plurality and differentiation of human beings as if all of humanity were just one individual, is possible only if each and every person can be reduced to a never-changing identity of reactions, so that each of these bundles of reactions can be exchanged at random for any other. The problem is to fabricate something that does not exist, namely, a kind of human species resembling other animal species whose only “freedom” would consist in “preserving the species.” Totalitarian domination attempts to achieve this goal both through ideological indoctrination of the elite formations and through absolute terror in the camps; and the atrocities for which the elite formations are ruthlessly used become, as it were, the practical application of the ideological indoctrination—the testing ground in which the latter must prove itself—while the appalling spectacle of the camps themselves is supposed to furnish the “theoretical” verification of the ideology. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 980 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Totalitarian power aims to render human beings superfluous, not merely to rule them — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1025; Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person; Totalitarian domination requires reducing humans to interchangeable uniform reactions — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 980 (+2 more)

Related

• Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person (similarity 0.94)
• Total domination consumes population so heavily it needs excess human material (similarity 0.92)
• Totalitarian domination requires reducing humans to interchangeable uniform reactions (similarity 0.91)
• Totalitarian power aims to render human beings superfluous, not merely to rule them (similarity 0.91)
• Totalitarian rule requires large populations to feed total domination (similarity 0.89)
• Totalitarian domination aims to make all people equally superfluous (similarity 0.88)
• Totalitarian power requires remaking individuals from inside outward with terror. (similarity 0.85)
• Totalitarian regimes require global rule to fully dominate even one individual. (similarity 0.84)
• Totalitarian domination targets spontaneity itself, not mere opposition. (similarity 0.84)
• Radical evil arises where all people become equally superfluous (similarity 0.83)
• Totalitarianism replaces all independent talent with loyal mediocrity to ensure predictability (similarity 0.83)
• Totalitarian domination exceeds utilitarian rule into the realm where everything is possible (similarity 0.83)
• Totalitarian rule obeys suprapositive laws of Nature or History while defying all positive laws. (similarity 0.83)
• Totalitarian rule requires an atomized and individualized mass, not mere social structurelessness (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarianism aims to transform human nature itself, using camps as laboratories (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian power aims to render human beings superfluous, not merely to rule them #expands (0.82) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1025
• Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person #expands (0.80)
• Totalitarian domination requires reducing humans to interchangeable uniform reactions #expands (0.78) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 980