Totalitarian terrorism served as self-expression rather than calculated policy

Evidence

The pronounced activism of the totalitarian movements, their preference for terrorism over all other forms of political activity, attracted the intellectual elite and the mob alike, precisely because this terrorism was so utterly different from that of the earlier revolutionary societies. It was no longer a matter of calculated policy which saw in terrorist acts the only means to eliminate certain outstanding personalities who, because of their policies or position, had become the symbol of oppression. What proved so attractive was that terrorism had become a kind of philosophy through which to express frustration, resentment, and blind hatred, a kind of political expressionism which used bombs to express oneself, which watched delightedly the publicity given to resounding deeds and was absolutely willing to pay the price of life for having succeeded in forcing the recognition of one’s existence on the normal strata of society. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 788

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what distinguishes totalitarian terror from earlier revolutionary terrorism — a shift from means to expressive philosophy.
• XREF: Connects to the toolkit’s treatment of totalitarian violence as performative, which will resurface in analyses of how ideology legitimizes exclusion. — connects to: Under total mobilization even genocidal calculus becomes rational self-justification — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 237; High-capacity governments hold near-monopolies of terror but use it sparingly — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 892; Counterterrorism policy derives from Cold War totalitarianism theory linking ideology to violence — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 566 (+1 more)