ABSTRACT
Kenneth Minogue's Alien Powers provides a primer for anyone interested in a mindset that is still powerful and persistent among Western academics and journalists. Minogue is also on target in bringing up the claims to "revelation" that pervade ideological visions. The idea that historical knowledge is a "potent secret" open to the clever few fits in with ideologically derived elitism. Minogue is correct to observe: "The great discovery of ideology has been that modern European civilization, beneath its cleverly contrived appearances, is the most systematically oppressive despotism the world has ever known. Although Minogue, like Robert Nisbet, has noticed that the left exploits the loss of community to win support for its projects, it is also important to ask whether an increasingly atomized, consumerist society can resist ideology. The broad argument presented here is that ideology is an essential feature of the left, one that may be inseparable from its origin and development.
