Knowing and rejecting the Ideological Lie: An interview with Daniel J. Mahoney

Daniel J. Mahoney is a professor emeritus at Assumption University, where he taught from 1986 until 2021. He received his B.A. from the College of Holy Cross and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Catholic University of America. His doctoral thesis was titled “The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron”, and in 1999, he was the recipient of the prestigious Prix Raymond Aron.

A senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and a senior writer at Law and Liberty, he has written extensively on statesmanship, French political thought, the art and political thought of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, conservatism, religion and politics, and various themes in political philosophy. His books include The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order (2011), The Other Solzhenitsyn (2014, reissued in 2020), and The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity (Encounter Books, 2018).

His new book The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now (Encounter Books, April 15, 2025) is an incisive examination of various ideological distortions and political temptations of our time. We corresponded recently about the totalitarianism, woke despotism”, varieties of democracy, true moderation, and practical ways to navigate today’s toxic, ugly political landscape.

CWR: Let’s begin with the title: What is the Ideological Lie?

Daniel J. Mahoney: Early on in the book, I describe the ideological project as a concerted effort “to replace the only human condition we know with a utopian ‘Second Reality’ oblivious to—indeed at war with—the deepest wellsprings of human nature and God’s creation.”

This conceit is mendacious through and through and, when unchallenged, inevitably leads to coercion and violence on a massive scale. The Ideological Lie, as I call it following Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Václav Havel, ignores the deep-seated imperfection inherent in the human soul (what the theological tradition calls “original sin”), replaces the age-old distinction between Good and Evil with the spurious and ill-founded distinction between “progress” and “reaction” and promotes an ideological Manichaeism that locates evil in suspects groups, classes, and races (and unjust social “systems”) rather than in the flaws of the human heart itself.

The proponents of the Ideological Lie, from the Jacobins and Marxists of old to the various woke, “liberationist,” and “racialist” activists of our time, lack introspection and self-knowledge, fail “to turn the sword inward,” and are much too convinced that they know exactly who the “victims” in each and every society are, and who are the oppressors and exploiters.

They very quickly become secular inquisitors. In their playbook, “victims” lack moral and civic agency, and repentance and forgiveness are eschewed. Too many “progressivist” Christians have succumbed to this mixture of angry moralism, ideological fanaticism, and unthinking activism. They act as if they can “change the world” without changing themselves, and all this without help from the goodness and grace of God.

CWR: In the Introduction, you write that the “totalitarian impulse” has “survived the ‘official’ collapse of the classic totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and has come out strengthened, and less ‘incomplete,’ in decisive respect.” What are some examples of this? And how did this “Third Rider” become even stronger and more complete?

Daniel J. Mahoney: As I argue at some length in the book, the collapse of the classic totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century (especially during the annus mirabilis of 1989) was largely interpreted in the West in shallow and superficial ways. Few saw it as the collapse of an inhuman political order that was profoundly contra naturam. Politicians, scholars, and journalists typically spoke of the victory of market economics over the planned economy and of democracy over dictatorship.

There was some truth in these judgments and formulations, but they failed to go to the heart of the matter. Other commentators, most famously Francis Fukuyama, resorted to quasi-Marxist arguments about “the end of History,” thus appealing to historical inevitability rather than to a victory for moral sanity and “the truth about man.” As Pope John Paul II feared, freedom increasingly came to be identified with moral relativism, subjectivism, and individual and collective self-assertion (the much-vaunted human “autonomy”). Democracy became more and more estranged from its classic moral foundations. Within a decade or two, the moral prestige of Communism shockingly made a comeback among academics, activists, and many of the young (who suffered from “invincible ignorance” on the subject), and new forms of politically correct Manichaeism became the order of the day.

As the Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko demonstrated in his indispensable 2016 book, The Demon In Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in a Free Society, corrupted forms of “liberal democracy” began to mirror Communism in its fanciful progressivism, dismissal of the wisdom of the past, and the jettisoning of the venerable standards of judgment provided by truth, beauty, and goodness. And when “progressive democracy,” as Aurel Kolnai already called it in 1949, began to repudiate large parts of our Western civilizational inheritance, the totalitarianism latent in it became more open, censorious, and destructive.

Of course, its victory is in no way inevitable since we are free to resist this subversion of democracy. But first we must understand the strange and disturbing revival of the “totalitarian impulse” as I call it, if we are to oppose it intelligently, deftly, and courageously. We must understand precisely how we arrived at this moment of political, spiritual, and cultural crisis.

CWR: One of your goals, you explain, is to defend “decent, moderate, nonutopian, and nonideological politics…” How will your book help achieve this goal? And, pushing back against cynicism, is it possible? How so?

Daniel J. Mahoney: I hope to do so by exposing the Ideological Lie for what it is and by recovering a deeper appreciation of the intellectual and moral virtues that properly undergird a free and decent society.

Without a recovery and renewal of classical and Christian wisdom, especially the cardinal virtues of old, decayed democracy will drift further away from the enduring verities that can still give it strength and substance.

As for cynicism, it is a form of defeatism that confuses itself with “realism.” My book is a call for people of goodwill to use the arts of intelligence to repudiate repudiation, whether in its listless, passive, or cynical forms, or in its fanatically ideological manifestations. This is not the time to run for the hills.

CWR: The political landscape in the U.S. has changed radically since 2000, going down the “path toward woke despotism,” to borrow from the title of Chapter One. In broad strokes, what happened? What are the roots, and how can they be destroyed?

Daniel J. Mahoney: I have largely sketched this “path to woke despotism” in my answer to your second question. But let me add that “anti-racism” in the United States became more fanatical and Manichean, seeing racism and “white privilege” everywhere.

Martin Luther King’s famous call for all of us to judge others by “the content of their character” and not the color of their skin was dismissed by white progressives and black radicals as a hopeless and even racist “dream.” Education at every level began to encourage self-loathing rather than a salutary mix of humane patriotism and measured self-criticism. The great and the good—Washington, Lincoln, even Frederick Douglass—began to be torn down, literally and figuratively. By the summer of 2020, the new nihilism met little resistance.

Thankfully, half the country is now fighting back. As I argue in the book, we must resolutely resist new forms of the Lie without emulating its methods and tone. That is easier said than done. Counter-revolution is a tricky business fraught with temptations of its own. At the same time, a “pox on both your houses” approach will hardly do.

CWR: Why is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn so important today? How would you respond to those who might say, “Communism is gone; Solzhenitsyn has nothing to say to us now?”

Daniel J. Mahoney: Solzhenitsyn was a powerful critic of Communist totalitarianism, but much more than that.

As a gifted writer and courageous moral witness, he recovered the drama of good and evil in the human soul like few before and after him. He remains the greatest critic of the Ideological Lie in all its manifestations, especially of the Manichean temptation of which I have spoken. The following words from his 1983 Templeton Lecture repeat a deep and enduring “anthropological” truth: “{T}he primary key to our being or nonbeing resides in each individual human heart, in the heart’s preference for specific Good or Evil.”

And Solzhenitsyn compellingly adds, “To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can counterpoise only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we’ve so carelessly and arrogantly spurned.”

CWR: We are told constantly (across the spectrum, but especially by the Left in recent months) that “democracy” is under attack, being destroyed, and must be saved. What do you make of this sort of repetitive rhetoric? And what is, in your estimation, the actual state of democracy today in the West?

Daniel J. Mahoney: The Left, and not just in the United States (witness recent developments in Romania, France, and Germany, respectively), no longer identifies democracy with the self-government of a free people. Instead, democracy means being on the side of “progress,” cultural emancipation, gender ideology, and dogmatic secularism (or even open contempt for and derision of the Christian religion).

Such “progressive democracy” has little or no room for the mix of self-government, patriotism, and common sense that defined the Western democracies until not so long ago. When self-proclaimed defenders of democracy begin cancelling elections because they do not like the results, or forbidding “populist” candidates or parties from competing because they might win, we have left the world of representative democracy behind.

Those who speak incessantly about “saving democracy” are, in fact, those committed to burying it.

CWR: At the core, your book is a call to realism, virtue, and moderation, recognizing (as Solzhenitsyn emphasized) that “the line separating good and evil passes … through all human hearts.” How to convey and live this when the growing temptation is to blame class, race, or parties for the ills in the world?

Daniel J. Mahoney: I believe that “the truth about man” is inherently compelling if it is made available to those who have only been offered the typical serving of stale and mendacious ideological clichés.

When I teach Solzhenitsyn, or lecture about him on these themes, thoughtful and spiritually hungry young people often ask, “Why haven’t I been introduced to this before?” A very good question, indeed. The great political philosopher Eric Voegelin used to say, “No man is obliged to be complicit in the ideological deformations of the age.” Today, those words are the beginning of wisdom in approaching a world infused with the Ideological Lie.

CWR: In your chapter on moral inversion, you argue that “ideological fanaticism is the inevitable consequence of a nihilistic denial of an order of things…” How deeply has this fanaticism infected our public and academic institutions, as well as our public square and discourse? What practical things can ordinary citizens do to restore order and decency?

Daniel J. Mahoney: Very deeply. We need to recover the common sense rooted in “right reason and the natural law,” an idiom that even the Church of Rome has largely forgotten.

We need to recover the language of good and evil, virtue and vice, the moral law, and non-subjectivist conscience, and to apply them prudently to the time of troubles we inhabit. The Church could play a major role in that recovery if it had confidence in its own wisdom, stopped “kneeling before the world,” and began to see once again the “humanitarian” and totalitarian temptations for exactly what they are.

Ordinary citizens can refuse to repeat lies about human nature (the language of “gender” and the “right to choose”), they can resist ideological mendacity when it is imposed on their children, and they can see past the “false compassion” that leads to that strange mixture of moral relativism and ideological fanaticism that deforms the contemporary world. They can also follow Solzhenitsyn’s advice to follow the noble path of “non-participation in Lies!” even when it inconveniences them.

Who knows? A little courage multiplied might even save our republic.

CWR: In the book’s Conclusion, you strongly denounce a “faux moderation.” What are some qualities or failings of such “moderation”? And what temptations should conservatives especially avoid in today’s toxic, ugly political landscape?

Daniel J. Mahoney: I am a partisan of moderation, rightly understood. But mine is the moderation of a Burke or Tocqueville who fought nihilism (and tyranny) with every bone in their bodies, and not the “false, reptile courage” that Burke fiercely denounced. Not-so-slow-motion accommodation to the Zeitgeist is hardly moderation. Such “geographical moderation” often provides a convenient cover for moral and civic abdication. Conservatives, especially the young, need to resist the temptation of neo-paganism or Nietzschean vitalism, a false choice for the “hard” against the “soft.” And the rejection of “faux moderation” should never lead to a rejection of moderation per se. Populists need to learn a certain respect for tried-and true forms and must avoid the temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Not everyone in the establishment is a fool or a fraud. With experience can come a certain valuable wisdom. Prudence remains a supreme (conservative) virtue.

CWR: Any final thoughts?

Daniel J. Mahoney: Let me repeat once again Voegelin’s words of wisdom: None of us is obliged to accommodate ourselves to the ideological deformations of the age. If each of us chooses to follow the paths of self-respect and moral decency, if we refuse to despair or accommodate ourselves to the Lie, we will surely have played a role in recovering Reality in its extraordinary splendor and amplitude.

• Related at CWR: “Recognizing and rejecting ‘The Idol of Our Age’” (March 27, 2019), an interview with Daniel J. Mahoney, by Carl E. Olson.