Every ideology holds flaws but also strengths. What an ideology is is the lens an individual has over their eyes which taint their world view based upon pre-established assertions and interpretations of the working of humans and the world. This is what makes an ideology powerful, it can radicalise an individual to the point that it becomes impossible for them to take this lens off. Everything that confirms the narrative of this person’s chosen ideology must be demonstrably true and anything that goes against it is just slander trying to prevent the perfect utopia that ideology has set out.
As Marx said that religion was the opium of the masses, an ideology is their caffeine making them more addicted, focused and irrational the more they get into it.
Every ideology has what I will call base evil. Base evil is the way an ideology forces an individual to think a certain way, interpret things a certain way, in short, it removes their mental agency and objectivity. As implied above, they create this in-group, out-group mentality where the person who disagrees with them knows they’re wrong but are just denying it as it is inconceivable to an ideology that their perfect idea could have flaws. Some ideologies are more guilty than other like generally, liberals don’t radicalise hatred for outsiders that much but others, like feminism and socialism, are entirely reliant on this to keep it members in check.
An ideology will want to stifle criticism and art that goes against their narrative no matter how ligament it is. This becomes most scary when an ideology has large amounts of backing, and therefore power. If they have this large following then they can call on their mob claiming that their victim is slandering the movement.
An ideologue will never see that they are an ideologue. Ideologue implies they don’t have the truth, that they, to themselves, clearly have.
In Part 2 I will discuss Nationalism. Feel free to criticise what I’ve said here, in fact, I implore you to do so as I want to get the kinks out of this.