Paper Four
“To be superfluous means not to belong to the world at all” – (pp 475)
Arendt views large, superfluous masses of people as a necessary precursor for the transition from a totalitarian movement to a totalitarian rule. These masses, formed from the atomization of the class system in a society, serve several purposes which allow for successful totalitarian rule: they help to act as the popular lever by which a totalitarian movement may secure power, they carry out the rote functions of the totalitarian rule, and most critically, they are killed or imprisoned in droves as a means of demonstrating and employing the power of the totalitarian system. This final purpose, the continual destruction of random portions of the atomized masses,
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Multiplicity of bureaus became an intentional program of the totalitarian regime, in an attempt to obfuscate and distance the citizen from any understanding of power, as well as to increase the 'stability ' of the totalitarian system. (pp 409, 441-442) The random execution of power and the obfuscation of the bureaucracy serve as the cornerstones of totalitarianism 's assault on the individual. Consider Arendt 's observations of 'rule by decree ' (pp 244), and the deification and worship of unintelligible power. One of the ultimate demonstrations of power is the ability to mete out a lethal punishment to which no infraction is necessary. With sufficient power employed over sufficient layers of bureaucratic obfuscation, what would normally inspire confusion and outrage instead inspires worship and dehumanization . (pp 244-246, esp. footnote 63, pp 44-452)
"Since the people it dominates never really know why something is happening, and a rational interpretation of laws does not exist, there remains only one thing that counts, the brutal naked event