Ideology is made from pre-existing ideological cultural resources, not freely invented.

Evidence

Hence, ideology is not simply “false consciousness,” nor is it merely a “top-down” imposition. Rather, it is a field of contestations and activities, an evolving and emerging set of meanings and explanations created by people as they make sense of their world. But, importantly, it is not a totally free or unmediated process: to build ideology, we draw on those cultural and social resources at our disposal (from fiction to films, from metaphors to measurements) that are, themselves, ideological. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 59

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The constrained-creativity model of ideology — active construction from already-ideological materials — is the book’s core explanatory engine and resists a one-line summary.
• XREF: Echoes how culture reproduces existing power structures, bridging directly to deWaard’s cultural-mediations claim about financialization. — connects to: Resources only become cheap when ideological and legal frameworks rationalize their appropriation. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 285; Ideology is actively made from cultural resources, not passively received from above — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 59