Totalitarianism’s defining destruction is of the space that makes motion and freedom possible.

Evidence

By pressing men against each other, total terror destroys the space between them; compared to the condition within its iron band, even the desert of tyranny, insofar as it is still some kind of space, appears like a guarantee of freedom. Totalitarian government does not just curtail liberties or abolish essential freedoms; nor does it, at least to our limited knowledge, succeed in eradicating the love for freedom from the hearts of man. It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom which is simply the capacity of motion which cannot exist without space. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1052

Categorization

• DEFINE: Identifies what uniquely distinguishes totalitarian domination: destroying the spatial prerequisite of freedom itself (capacity for motion), rather than merely curtailing liberties — a spatial/mechanistic definition central to Arendt’s theory.