When the Chicago Black Lives Matter account (@BLMChi) shared a post on X celebrating the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, many on the Left reacted in shock. What did protesting police violence against Black Americans have to do with cheering on the gruesome massacre of Israeli men, women, elders, and children? The connection that some progressives made between these events was that both were forms of “decolonization.” The plight of Black Americans, they claimed, was historically similar to that of Palestinians. Others countered that decolonization reduces complex histories to an overly simplistic narrative that runs about as follows: around the world, since the sixteenth century, European settler-colonialists have been oppressing indigenous peoples, who (as @BLMChi later posted) “will do what they must to live free.” Clearly, it is a powerful narrative, as it led its supporters to overlook the murder of over a thousand Israelis and to cheer on the “colonized” liberators instead.

Another word that has featured prominently in these discussions is “ideology.” Some sixty years ago, the sociologist Daniel Bell published a book called The End of Ideology (1960), where he argued that there was no serious debate left to be had about political ideologies. Totalitarian visions, on both the left and right, had lost their appeal among reasonable people. Today, by contrast, ideologies are roaring back to life. Their return frightens those who know how this story played out in the twentieth century. If we hope to limit the appeal of ideologies, we urgently need to understand how they work.

Drawing on the rich scholarly literature on the subject, we may define ideology as a pathological, modern, and revolutionary narrative. It is “pathological,” both in the usual sense of abnormal or unhealthy and in the literal sense that it is a discourse (logos) that triggers powerful emotions (pathos). As a pathological narrative, ideology is resistant to many rational objections. The specific points that ideologies draw on are often true. Israel has indeed used settlers to colonize parts of the West Bank (though it dismantled Jewish settlements in Gaza in 2005). Right-wing populism similarly exploits genuine economic or political grievances. The persuasiveness of ideologies, however, lies not in their arrangement of facts but in their mobilization of feelings. In this respect, we might even consider ideology as a literary genre, namely a form of melodrama rather than a philosophical discourse. 

Unlike religious dogma, political propaganda, or conspiracy theories, ideologies are inherently modern. They reject the classical vision of history as repetitive or serial and insist instead on the necessity of progress. In ideological narratives, a morally compromised past must give way to a regenerated future. Where millenarian or apocalyptic narratives involve divine intervention, this change is wholly secular. Ideology provides a revolutionary script for human action. Viewed from this angle, ideologies may have more in common with other modern ways of thinking than we realize (or are comfortable with). Rooting out ideology means recognizing that we all carry its seeds. 

The word “ideology” was coined during the French Revolution by intellectuals trying to make sense of and avoid what they saw as the horrific excesses of the Terror. Ideology, as they understood it, was a science that should lead us to the truth in moral and political matters. It should prevent the errors that drove the French revolutionaries to fratricidal violence. The Idéologues’s project was inspired by the doctrine of historical progress, which had recently emerged from the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns (an academic dispute that surged between 1680 and 1720 in France and England). For the Moderns, what made their age greater than Antiquity was the gradual advancement of society toward reason and justice. This Modern vision received its canonical expression in the Marquis de Condorcet’s Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1794). 

In describing the gradual advance of reason towards a more just society, the modern doctrine of progress assumes that there is one final destination. In Hegel’s phrase, there is an end of History. More importantly, there can only be a single end. The triumph of reason results in homogeneity. Once we have prevailed over error and superstition, we should all see rationally and reach straightforward agreements about how society should be organized and administered. The modern theory of progress, in this sense, is at odds with a pluralist conception of society. 

One might fairly ask whether pluralism was a value in historical or political thought until very recently. Should we criticize modern progressives for their “monism,” if no one had previously defended a pluralistic outlook? In fact, the classical vision of history already promoted a de facto pluralism. For the Ancients, history had no telos, no goal; the future was simply more of the past. This meant that the social and political conflicts that characterized the present would never disappear. The wealthy and the poor will not agree about what is just, Aristotle concluded in Politics. A balanced constitution was the only viable political solution, as it provided a compromise between feuding classes. This same logic persuaded the American founders to create one political body (the Senate) that could express the opinions of the wealthy few and another (the House of Representatives) that defended the interests of the many poor. Never did they imagine that these different outlooks would be reconciled. “In all civilized countries, the interest of a community will be divided,” James Madison argued during the Federal Convention in 1787. “There will be debtors and creditors, and an unequal possession of property, and hence arises different views and different objects in government.” Madison even turned this conflict of viewpoints into an epistemological virtue: “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed,” he affirmed in Federalist Paper No. 10. For classical thinkers, pluralism may not always have been a good in and of itself, but it was inevitable. 

The modern theory of progress rejects this classical acceptance of irreconcilable political differences. In its place, it envisages the eventual convergence of opinions around a single rational viewpoint. The greatest challenge to this assumption comes from the reality check that people tend not to agree on important things. This realization abruptly dawned on progressive thinkers in the early years of the French Revolution. Even among its supporters, profound differences of opinion prevailed about how to organize the new government and distribute its powers. Each side was persuaded that its opponents were not only misguided but irrational. From accusing rivals of erroneous thinking to branding them as counter-revolutionaries, there was but one small step. The modern theory of progress, which the Idéologues had hoped would put an end to revolutionary violence once and for all, had, in fact, fueled its advance.

The most contentious debates in society often concern subjects such as history, where logical analysis alone is insufficient. Who did what to whom, who is on “the right side of history,” and who is not? These are questions that can only be answered through narratives. Narratives are not antithetical to reason per se, but they operate on other levels, as well.

In a famous study, the theorist Hayden White argued that many historical narratives mirror literary genres. Tocqueville’s history of the French Revolution has a tragic dimension; Burckhardt’s history of the Renaissance is more satirical. We might add that progressive narratives, such as Condorcet’s universal history, are melodramatic. Condorcet observed that if reason only advances gradually and it takes extended periods of time for societies to improve, that is because there are obstacles to progress. Error and superstition are among the chief hurdles to overcome. But these are not simply problems that each and every one of us must surmount individually. They have their own backers and institutions, such as despotic kings or a regressive Church. Conversely, reason and justice have their own valiant defenders, most recently (and conveniently, for Condorcet) the philosophes themselves.

Melodrama is perhaps the modern genre par excellence. It appeared on stage in the aftermath of the French Revolution. This was no coincidence, the literary scholar Peter Brooks claimed: both featured “incessant struggle against enemies, without and within.” This generic constraint also defined Condorcet’s narrative of villainous zealots oppressing passive victims and thwarting the progress of truth-seeking heroes. Each actor’s position was rigidly defined. No matter what they did, victims could never turn into villains. Conversely, no matter what was done to the villains, they could never be victimized. 

One of the effects of literary genres is to excite and direct our feelings toward characters and situations. Tragedies, Aristotle taught in Poetics, elicit feelings of pity and fear; comedies make us laugh with their happy resolution. Melodramas take maximum advantage of this process. We are meant to feel anger and revulsion toward the villains, pity for the victims, and joy when the hero ultimately triumphs. 

But the feeling that melodrama produces most effectively and provides its generic specificity is righteousness. The satisfaction we experience in the end stems from the fact that the villains get what they deserve. We cheer for the heroes because they are on the side of justice. As Brooks put it, in melodramas, the law is “sacralized.” It becomes an object of awe and veneration, two powerful feelings. 

Where fictional melodramas can appear excessively sentimental, historical melodramas are potent emotional stimulants. The Idéologues themselves mostly focused on philosophy. But the name they coined aptly describes the kind of historical narrative that triggers overwhelming feelings of righteousness and divvies up the world into heroes, victims, and villains. Hoping to devise a science (logos) based entirely on reason, the Idéologues gave their name to a style of argument that overwhelms the mind with pathos. 

Ideological narratives are not simply a form of passive entertainment. Their ultimate objective is action. They start in medias res: now is the time to act. Now is the time to bring about or block a future condition. Now is the time when the historical melodrama is reaching its climax. Ideologies do not simply illuminate the present. They issue a call to arms (often literally). 

It is no coincidence, then, that ideology emerged in the context of the first modern revolution, the French. The Americans had still regarded “revolution” as something to be avoided: witness their terror at Shays’s rebellion. They did not describe their own struggle for independence as a revolution until quite late, and only then, it was thanks to the parallel with the British Glorious Revolution of 1688. Their hesitation reflected the classical phobia of revolutions, immortalized by Thucydides’s account of the stasis in Corcyra. If history is not headed toward a final destination, then revolutions are merely destructive events. “The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind remains the same,” concluded Thucydides. 

But in 1789, there was a new idea of revolution in the air. It had been fashioned by the French philosophes and grew out of the modern doctrine of progress. Social improvement was not linear, they noted. A jolt was needed to level up on the historical ladder. Revolution now appeared as the handmaiden of progress. Where classical thinkers had lamented revolution as the source of all social problems, modern thinkers celebrated it as their solution. 

Ideology crystallizes this modern idea of revolution. Since the awaited future must be reasonable and just, there can only be one correct path forward. Ideology narrates this path, from the unjust past through the revolutionary present to the perfect future. Modern revolutionaries require an ideology, and ideologies are always revolutionary. They are also exclusive: “There can be no solution of the social problem but mine,” proclaimed the ideologue in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s satire of revolutionary politics, The Possessed (1871–72). “Nothing can take the place of the system set forth in my book, and there is no other way out of it; no one can invent anything else.” The anti-pluralism of modern progressives leads them to reduce all social and political issues to a single factor. When Marx and Engels asserted, at the start of the Communist Manifesto, that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” they captured the essence of ideology. There is one core problem that has plagued us in the past and whose present resolution will lead us to a happy future. This is the template of all ideologies: simply replace “class struggles” with “Jews,” “colonizers,” “elites,” “capitalism,” “immigrants,” or any other perceived villain, and the pathology spreads in new directions. 

The only ideologies that aren’t revolutionary are those that are counter-revolutionary. In this model, the values assigned to all elements in the narrative are flipped. Heroes become villains and villains, heroes, while the vanishing past becomes a victim to be saved from an awful future. Counter-revolutionary ideologies may be more likely to weave in religious motifs, but this does not make them traditional. They are just as modern as their revolutionary twin. 

As ideologies come roaring back to life, it is no surprise that “revolution” is also experiencing a resurgence. As last century’s revolutions fade from our cultural memory, the modern faith in revolutionary change has been recharged. This time around, revolution is proving as attractive to the political far-right as to the far-left. Right-wing activists no longer gather under the banner of counter-revolution but now openly promote their own revolutionary causes.

What is perhaps most instructive about recognizing the basic template and generic quality of ideologies is that it forces us to acknowledge how easy it is for anyone to succumb to such narratives. Ideologies are not conspiracy theories spun from the cloth of total fabrications. Class struggles did play a major role in Western history: Aristotle observed as much more than two thousand years ago. The difference lies in attributing all explanatory power to a single cause. That is the true pathology at the heart of ideology. It is unsurprising, in this regard, that some of the worst ideological offenders are academics. This may be an occupational hazard: in general, a good scholarly argument cuts through the noise and smoke to identify the root causes of a problem. Academics are also attracted to feelings of righteousness, which convey a strong sense of purpose. “Marxism is the opium of intellectuals,” Raymond Aron once quipped. This attraction is not limited to the left: the high ranks of the Nazi party bristled with PhDs. 

Nor is ideological thinking limited to explicitly political issues. Promoters of technological solutionism reject political action but are no less ideological in their belief that “to save everything,” we need only “click here” (to quote the title of Evgeny Morozov’s incisive book). Environmental groups veer into ideology when they throw paint on classical artwork as a form of protest. 

Ideology is an appealing temptation, and none of us are immune to its allure. But this does not mean that everything is ideology, as the philosopher Slavoj Žižek has suggested. We can have strong political convictions and opinions without being ideological. The challenge is not to force all events into a single narrative pushed forward by a single cause. One can decry Hamas’s murder of Israelis while also being appalled by the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. There are few total villains or total victims in the world. 

To prevent ideological thinking, we need to recognize that our preferred opinions are not the only acceptable ones. A formal antidote to ideology can be found in liberalism, understood in its philosophical sense. As the philosopher Will Kymlicka noted, liberalism “allows people to choose a conception of the good life, and then allows them to reconsider that decision, and adopt a new and hopefully better plan of life.” It is, by definition, pluralistic. 

The most important work we can do to prevent the development and spread of ideologies is to cultivate a pluralistic mindset. We can engage in this work individually, but it is also a task that schools and universities must take on themselves. To cultivate a pluralistic mindset, we could do worse than to take Madison’s observation to heart. Reason is fallible; different opinions do exist, and no single narrative has a monopoly on the truth.

This essay is adapted from the author’s forthcoming book, The Revolution Next Time (Princeton University Press).

Dan Edelstein is William H. Bonsall Professor of French ar Stanford University.

Image: Shutterstock.com.