Fear of self-contradiction is the coercive engine that compels ideological conformity
Evidence
Indeed, it occasionally happens that it becomes fashionable in whole bodies of a large class to depart altogether from the standards set by fashion. This constitutes a most curious social-psychological complication, in which the tendency towards individual conspicuousness primarily rests content with a mere inversion of the social imitation and secondly draws in strength from approximation to a similarly characterized narrower circle. If the club-haters organized themselves into a club, it would not be logically more impossible and psychologically more possible than the above case. Similarly atheism has been made into a religion, embodying the same fanaticism, the same intolerance, the same satisfying of the needs of the soul that are embraced in religion proper. Freedom, likewise, after having put a stop to tyranny, frequently becomes no less tyrannical and arbitrary. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 728 (
#qualifies, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Totalitarian movements’ rank-and-file dissolved class divisions via shared fear; Ideologies become dangerous only when their claim to total validity is taken literally; Ideological thinking derives everything from an axiomatic premise and becomes immune to experience (+6 more)
Related
- Anti-conformity movements reproduce the conformity they reject (similarity 0.83)
- Illegitimate encounters proceed anyway when desire and fit outweigh convention (similarity 0.80)
- Totalitarian ideology coerces through the fear of abandoning a first premise (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Totalitarian ideology coerces through the fear of abandoning a first premise
#corroborates(0.85) - Anti-conformity movements reproduce the conformity they reject
#qualifies(0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 728