Azar Nafisi on the corrosive consequences of ideology

As our politics become more and more venomous (Republicans are the enemy, Democrats are the enemy, etc.), and countless Americans turn to social media to demonize anyone who disagrees with them on any issue, I’ve come to see ideology as the ultimate foe. Any ideology. All ideology.

We seem to have reached a point where people of all parties and persuasions elevate strict adherence to dogma above all else. Gone are the days when we placed a premium on the notion of disagreeing without being disagreeable.

So I was struck by the following passage from The Republic of Imagination, by Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. It captured what I’ve been thinking for some time now.

Ideology eliminates paradox and seeks to destroy contradiction and ambiguity. While it is generally ruthless to outsiders, it can be consoling when you are in the group that always wears the white hat no matter what. Hatred and ideology, contrary to all appearances, are comforting and safe for those who practice them. They tend to be accompanied by an odious self-righteousness. You don’t need to think — the party has already thought things out for you. This is true whether the ideology in question is of the right or of the left. It does not matter what your ideology is; what matters is that you are ideological. Fox News is a beautiful manifestation of this, but so are the politically correct who seek to put us all in our stultifying boxes. And even if we dislike the ideology in question, our reaction to it is also sort of comforting, for we already know what they will say and how we will respond. In essence, we need our nemesis — we are codependent.