Totalitarian secret police expand after all opposition is destroyed

Evidence

The most striking aspect of these statements was that both were made after all political opposition had been extinguished, that the secret services were expanded when actually no opponents were left to be spied upon. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 944

Categorization

• QUESTION: What function does surveillance serve when there are no real opponents left? Arendt is gesturing toward what she’ll name elsewhere as the police’s role in fabricating enemies to sustain the fiction — worth chasing.