Ideological politics destroys the very constituency the ideology claims to serve

Evidence

In the process of realization, the original substance upon which the ideologies based themselves as long as they had to appeal to the masses—the exploitation of the workers or the national aspirations of Germany—is gradually lost, devoured as it were by the process itself: in perfect accordance with “ice cold reasoning” and the “irresistible force of logic,” the workers lost under Bolshevik rule even those rights they had been granted under Tsarist oppression and the German people suffered a kind of warfare which did not pay the slightest regard to the minimum requirements for survival of the German nation. It is in the nature of ideological politics—and is not simply a betrayal committed for the sake of self-interest or lust for power—that the real content of the ideology (the working class or the Germanic peoples), which originally had brought about the “idea” (the struggle of classes as the law of history or the struggle of races as the law of nature), is devoured by the logic with which the “idea” is carried out. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1070

Categorization

• DEFINE: A central mechanism: the deductive process of an ideology consumes its own founding content, even its own nominal beneficiaries — essential for understanding how exclusionary systems outlive any stated purpose.
• XREF: Directly feeds the Islamophobia toolkit: an exclusionary ideology can systematically harm those it purports to protect or represent, as its logic becomes self-propelling. — connects to: Ideological allies can split bitterly over control of their own institutions — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 347; Member-heavy parties get locked into orthodox stances that alienate the broader electorate — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 687; Blairism destroyed Labour’s grassroots along with its ideology. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1775 (+2 more)