A defect in being ruled

Totalitarianism is best understood more as a pathology of the civil society than as a pathology of the ruling elites. 

Tyranny, despotism, dictatorship – all these are defects in rule; totalitarianism, on the other hand, is a defect in being ruled. It is not the Leader but the movement that takes over the nation. The movement replaces the institutional and spiritual and sociological basis of the civil society and transforms the ordinary life-style of the people into an ideological juggernaut bent on cleansing the spiritual core of the nation and on then preparing the nation for world dominion. 

Totalitarianism replaces the ordinary understandings of civil society with the imperatives of its ideology, be it Nature (race), History (class), Individual Choice (markets) or Divine will (religion). 

In every case, the totalitarian regime fails to appreciate the essential character of divine and mundane beneficence, of God and ordinary people providing for each other out of mutual caring. Scripture's story that starts with Israel's foreparents building their families in their new land metaphorically situates Israelite society in the caring and mutual aid and mutual rivalry of family relations. Scripture establishes legitimacy along family lines rather than along some overarching ideological theory. Then, with the Paschal lamb, the legitimacy based on family is altered slightly to define legitimacy in terms of the family coupled with the neighbor within a consecrated space. Only later does authority kick in with the covenantal relationship enacted first demographically at Mount Sinai and then geographically through Brit Moav.