In "The Totalitarian Movement," Hannah Arendt attempts to explain what makes totalitarianism different. Briefly discuss 4 points made in her essay...

Arendt contends that when totalitarianism takes over a country, it uses indoctrination and terror rather than propaganda to maintain control. Propaganda is then aimed at foreign governments and populations or at internal elite groups that have not yet been "reliably dominated." Propaganda is thus mainly a way totalitarian regimes deal with the non-totalitarian world. Arendt notes that rather than use propaganda, totalitarian regimes rely on terror over their own subdued masses. She writes this was particularly and strikingly standard in the Nazi concentration camps, where there was no "education" (propagandizing) of inmates, only "discipline" (terror).

Totalitarian governments, she says, differ sharply from other governments in being anti-utilitarian. For example, Hitler began murdering the mentally ill at the beginning of World War II not because of any necessity to do so, but as part of his long range vision of a purified Germany that would emerge in the distant future. Totalitarian governments are more concerned with realizing their own fictions of how the world should be than living in a practical, realistic universe, as other governments  do. 

According the Arendt, totalitarian leaders must be seen as infallible, even if this quest leads to strange distortions of truth, such as Stalin denying Trotsky's existence. 

Further, totalitarian regimes find consistency more important than visible experience.  Arendt calls totalitarian organization "completely new" because its aim is to turn the previous propaganda lies and fictions the party developed while seeking power into a "functioning reality" when it gains power. Totalitarians believe they can mold reality rather than be molded by it. They believe that if they have enough power they can turn their fictions into reality.