Totalitarianism transforms classes into masses and creates entirely new political institutions

Evidence

IN THE PRECEDING chapers we emphasized repeatedly that the means of total domination are not only more drastic but that totalitarianism differs essentially from other forms of political oppression known to us such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship. Wherever it rose to power, it developed entirely new political institutions and destroyed all social, legal and political traditions of the country. No matter what the specifically national tradition or the particular spiritual source of its ideology, totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships, but by a mass movement, shifted the center of power from the army to the police, and established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1035

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt’s defining moves distinguishing totalitarianism from despotism, tyranny, and dictatorship: masses not classes, mass movement not party system, police not army, world domination as foreign policy.
• XREF: connects to: Monopoly capitalism replaces liberal-legal institutions with irrational totalitarian authority — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 402