Explanatory ideologies that deduce everything from a single premise are a recent historical phenomenon.

Evidence

Ideologies—isms which to the satisfaction of their adherents can explain everything and every occurence by deducing it from a single premise—are a very recent phenomenon and, for many decades, played a negligible role in political life. Only with the wisdom of hindsight can we discover in them certain elements which have made them so disturbingly useful for totalitarian rule. Not before Hitler and Stalin were the great political potentialities of the ideologies discovered. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1059

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the core definition of ideology as single-premise deduction — the definitional building block for the whole chapter.