The "Ideologies."

Modern ideologies, born after the world wars, have become the new secular religion. They promote confrontation and tribal hatred, utilizing psychological mechanisms similar to those of religions to manipulate the masses and maintain political power.

## The Power of New Political Religions

After the fall of European monarchies and the waning influence of the Catholic Church in Europe after the Second World War, political power found new fertile ground. Ideologies emerged as substitutes for faith, channeling the devotion of the masses toward slogans and dogmas.
This shift represented the definitive transfer of power from the Church to the political sphere, under the guise of a "representative democracy." Ideologies, with their capacity to create substitute representations of reality, condition individuals. Those who fall under their influence cease thinking and reasoning, limiting themselves to trinc directives. They use the same psychological mechanisms as religions: dogmas, sacraments, and rites—but applied to politics.

## Division as a Control Strategy

Initially, ideologies targeted specific groups: entrepreneurs and workers, landowners and tenants. However, to facilitate the homogenization and control of Western masses, these differences blurred. Ideologies had to seek deeper, more entrenched points of friction.
Issues such as sens and gender, the relationship between man and woman, the interpretation of time and climate, race and culture, feelings about reality, money and wealth, or law and liberty, became battlegrounds. These issues are skillfully manipulated to exacerbate the most basic instincts of the human condition, dividing society and pushing it toward irreconcilable extremes.

## Tribal Hatred as an Engine

Contemporary ideologies are characterized by two fundamental elements: confrontation and hatred. Different ideologies, with their nuances and interpretations, find themselves as opposed to each other as religious groups were in antiquity. The ideologized person does not hate those who think differently because, in reality, they have stopped thinking for themselves. The hatred professed is tribal: it is directed against the "other," whoever they may be."
This "other" is, to the ideology, what the heretic was to religion. Thus, ideology presents itself as the religion of those who consider themselves atheists—a belief system that demands devotion and condemns those who do not conform to its dogmas.