Totalitarian secret police lose autonomy and become wholly dependent on the Leader
Evidence
Closely connected with this transformation of the suspect into the objective enemy is the change of position of the secret police in the totalitarian state. The secret services have rightly been called a state within the state, and this not only in despotisms but also under constitutional or semiconstitutional governments. The mere possession of secret information has always given this branch a decisive superiority over all other branches of the civil services and constituted an open threat to members of the government. The totalitarian police, on the contrary, is totally subject to the will of the Leader, who alone can decide who the next potential enemy will be and who, as Stalin did, can also single out cadres of the secret police for liquidation. Since the police are no longer permitted to use provocation, they have been deprived of the only available means of perpetuating themselves independently of the government and have become entirely dependent on the higher authorities for the safeguarding of their jobs. Like the army in a nontotalitarian state, the police in totalitarian countries merely execute political policy and have lost all the prerogatives which they held under despotic bureaucracies. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 952
Categorization
- DEFINE: Distinguishes the ‘state within a state’ secret police of despotic government from the Leader-subject police of totalitarianism.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 952
- XREF: connects to: The Leader’s infallibility structures the movement, not the truth of his words; Totalitarian leaders absorb total responsibility for all subordinates’ acts; The secret police, not the army, forms the true power core of totalitarian regimes (+3 more)