A movement’s founding ideology can become a trap that ensures its defeat

Evidence

The Fatimids did not abandon their distinctive doctrines, but on the contrary gave them a central importance in their whole political system. Isma ili theology provided the basis on which the Fatimids rested their claim to the Caliphate and denied that of the Abbasids. As long as the Abbasids survived, the Fatimids were engaged in a religious—i.e., an ideological conflict, in which doctrine was one of their most powerful weapons. In a sense, they were caught in a vicious circle. Because of their initial failure to win over all Islam, they were obliged to maintain their ideological challenge; yet, by so doing, they isolated themselves from the central consensus of Islam, and thus ensured their own ultimate defeat and disappearance. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 392

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The vicious-circle mechanism — ideological distinctiveness forced by early failure, which then cuts off mainstream acceptance and guarantees collapse — is a genuinely paradigm-level insight about how a minority regime’s founding creed both motivates and dooms it.
• XREF: Parallels modern political movements trapped by their founding ideologies, and Weber’s observation that revolutionary charisma must routinize to survive. — connects to: The left’s defeat may have been a slow disintegration rather than a battle — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 276; Liberation movements inherit the deformity of what they oppose — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 196; Reregulation is a rhetorical trap that the left should abandon — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 47 (+5 more)