Total control requires isolating individuals from one another, since horizontal loyalties are the main obstacle to it.
Arendt's 1951 argument. Its predictive form is that a regime seeking total control attacks associations, unions, churches and families before it attacks individuals, since those are the coordination points.
In practice
- A regime that bans a chess club, a burial society and a choir has not misjudged their politics; it has identified where people meet.
- An organisation that discourages informal cross-team channels has removed the coordination that would let objections combine.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works