Brilliant, but devastating observation.

Sheep are necessarily passive, they just want authorization from above to oppress and control the lives of others.

One of the most interesting articles on the nature of totalitarianism can be found on JSTOR. The articles opens by glossing the belief that most people think totalitarianism means massive centralized state control in all aspect of life public and private.

The thesis of the articles is about the extent to which the Soviet Union outsourced control to ordinary citizens by turning them into informants and enforcers. The regime played on the psychology of giving the ordinary guy power over his neighbor and that this became a convenient and efficient enforcement mechanism.