Totalitarian rulers denigrate precisely what the ruled secretly long for.

Evidence

No matter what the Jews as such may be like, their image, as that of the defeated people, has the features to which totalitarian domination must be completely hostile: happiness without power, wages without work, a home without frontiers, religion without myth. These characteristics are hated by the rulers because the ruled secretly long to possess them. The rulers are only safe as long as the people they rule turn their longed-for goals into hated forms of evil. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 159

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism is startling: the oppressed’s own desires are redirected into hatred of the group that symbolizes their fulfillment. Dense, paradoxical, and central to the whole critical-theory project.
• DEFINE: This is the ‘pathological projection’ mechanism in its essential form — the rulers survive by turning subjects’ longed-for goals into hated evils.
• XREF: connects to: Illegitimate government corrodes trust between ruler and ruled — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1174

Broader Connections

• Illegitimate government corrodes trust between ruler and ruled #complicates (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1174