Nearly every intellectual who turned to this project in the period immediately following the war cites the feeling of astonishment at the suddenness with which, as Harvard political scientist Carl Friedrich put it, totalitarianism had “burst upon mankind… unexpected and unannounced.” Its manifestations were so novel and unanticipated, so shocking, rapid, and unparalleled, that all of it eluded language, challenging every tradition, norm, value, and legitimate form of action. The systematic accretion of violence and complicity that engulfed whole populations at extreme velocity invoked a kind of bewilderment that ended in paralysis, even for many of the greatest minds of the twentieth century.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1134