From everything is permitted to everything is possible: why totalitarianism is unique

The transcendence of the principle of “everything is permitted” into the realm where “everything is possible” is the hallmark of totalitarianism – so understood Hannah Arendt (1962) in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Indeed, until that moment in human history, there were no parallels between life in the German and Russian concentration camps of totalitarian power. […]