Totalitarianism emerges when a conspiracy sector escapes party control

Evidence

Secret societies in general, and the conspiratory apparatus of revolutionary parties in particular, have always been characterized by absence of factions, suppression of dissident opinions, and absolute centralization of command. All these measures have the obvious utilitarian purpose of protecting the members against persecution and the society against treason; the total obedience asked of each member and the absolute power in the hands of the chief were only inevitable by-products of practical necessities. The trouble, however, is that conspirators have an understandable tendency to think that the most efficient methods in politics in general are those of conspiratory societies and that if one can apply them in broad daylight and support them with a whole nation’s instruments of violence, the possibilities for power accumulation become absolutely limitless. The conspiratory sector of a revolutionary party can, as long as the party itself is still intact, be likened to the role of the army within an intact political body: although its own rules of conduct differ radically from those of the civilian body, it serves, remains subject to, and is controlled by it. Just as the danger of a military dictatorship arises when the army no longer serves but wants to dominate the body politic, so the danger of totalitarianism arises when the conspiratory sector of a revolutionary party emancipates itself from the control of the party and aspires to leadership. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 874

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt’s conceptual mechanism: the conspiratory apparatus of a revolutionary party as a latent totalitarian instrument.
• XREF: Connects to later Islamophobia readings on how movement orgs (like organized anti-Muslim networks) weaponize party/state apparatus, and to Arendt’s war/army-civilian distinction paralleling police-state analysis. — connects to: Totalitarian movements borrow secret-society forms while broadcasting their aims openly — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 872; Duplicated secret services let totalitarian power keep contradictory options open — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 954; Early Bolshevik purges were democratic organs later perverted by totalitarianism (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 874