The term "ideology" can cover almost any set of ideas, but its power to bewitch political activists results from its strange logic: that the modern Western world is actually the most oppressive system of despotism the world has ever seen. This work takes this complex construction apart, analyzing its logical, rhetorical, and psychological devices.

Marx said it was the bourgeoisie, but others found the oppressor to be males, governments, imperialists, the white race, or the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Ideological excitement created turmoil in the twentieth century, but the defeat of the more violent and vicious ideologies - Nazism after 1945 and Communism after 1989 - left the passion for social perfection as vibrant as ever. Activist intellectuals still seek to "see through" the life we lead. The positive goals of utopia may for the moment have faded, but the ideological hatred of modernity has remained, and much of our intellectual life has degenerated into a muddled and dogmatic skepticism. For Minogue, the complex task of "demystifying" the "demystifiers" requires that we should discover how ideology works. It must join together each of its complex strands of thought in order to understand the remarkable power of the whole.