A pseudo-ideology is designed by the people in power to keep them in power.

From The World Before the Thaw by Martin Gurri.  The subheading is Welcome to the era of pseudo-ideology.  

He starts:

The fundamental difference between 20th-century dictatorships and our own today is ideology. Back then, aspiring despots could camouflage their thirst for power with ideals—nationalism, racialism, communism—that plausibly addressed the chief anxieties of the age. Ideology was a lever that moved millions and overawed the opposition. Under the “leadership” and “vanguard” principles, rulers personified the ideology and stood on a plane of absolute moral supremacy: They had authority to murder entire populations and wage savage wars. Most were true believers. Stalin and Hitler, Mao and Castro, lived and died without a twinge of regret.

History has buried these old ideologies. They were defeated in war and outcompeted on every front, and now, in William James’ phrase, they have become “dead options.” Nobody today believes in revolution. Nobody thinks society can be radically transformed unto perfection according to some ideological scheme. We are, no doubt, somewhat sadder but infinitely safer for the loss.

The 21st century has inaugurated the era of pseudo-ideology. Marxism-Leninism in rigor mortis, for example, is called the “great rejuvenation” in China, “Juche” in North Korea, “anti-imperialism” in Cuba, “Bolivarianism” in Venezuela. These constructs are “pseudo” not merely because they are incoherent patchworks of slogans and exhortations, explaining nothing and persuasive to no one. The reason for the epithet is functional.

The grand ideologies of the last century arose after World War I and the Great Depression had discredited the liberal order. They grew into mass movements that aimed to overthrow that order and impose utopia by brute strength. In their doctrines and their consequences, they were moral monstrosities, every one of them, but they represented organic attempts to grapple with the big questions of a particular moment in history.

A pseudo-ideology is designed by the people in power to keep them in power. It is blatantly self-serving and artificial. Far from grappling with big questions, pseudo-ideology rests on a foundation of avoidance. Far from seeking to overthrow the establishment, it demands its perpetuation unto eternity. A world justified by pseudo-ideologies must lapse into the political equivalent of suspended animation. That is our world. All around us, decrepit regimes cling to power by default. Dead ideologies are digitally exhumed and cannibalized. Absent the ferment of new ideas, the flow of history has frozen solid.

This describes the democracies as well as authoritarian nations. Everywhere, a mutinous public struggles in vain against a glacier of mendacity. In the twisted echo chambers of the web, the public can only rage impotently against the ice age while waiting for a thaw.

And gathers steam from there.