Under totalitarianism the capacity to think itself makes every person a suspect

Evidence

The category of the suspect thus embraces under totalitarian conditions the total population; every thought that deviates from the officially prescribed and permanently changing line is already suspect, no matter in which field of human activity it occurs. Simply because of their capacity to think, human beings are suspects by definition, and this suspicion cannot be diverted by exemplary behavior, for the human capacity to think is also a capacity to change one’s mind. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 960

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to later Islamophobia readings on suspicion and securitization of Muslim populations — the category of the suspect that targets an entire religious group echoes totalitarian suspicion of all thinkers.