Total domination of the globe, total destructiveness of human individuality

Indeed, it is to science fiction, rather than to the more humane Utopias of the past, that we must look for the extremities of the totalitarian’s belief that, while nothing may be in itself meaningful, everything may be possible. Hannah Arendt’s extraordinarily penetrating book makes plain that totalitarianism, whether Nazi or Stalinist, cannot be understood so long as we continue to use the traditional categories of common sense: it cannot be explained by the mere desire for power, for national expansion, for class revenge—for any motives that are simply human, though evil. Totalitarians are “inhuman” in that they are motivated toward total domination of the globe, toward total destructiveness of human individuality everywhere. Their goals are based neither on specific, narrow interests nor even on the utopianism of earlier ideologies, religious or socialist, which sought to extend in the future the sway of certain already given values.

—David Riesman, (1951, April). Review of The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt. Commentary.