Ideology as Disease

Certain ideologies operate very similarly to a host-killing virus. In this analogy, it is a culture that is the host, and the individuals are analogous, here, to individual cells of the host.

In a viral infection, the virus will pierce the cell, and begin to take over its reproductive functions, copying itself endlessly until the cell bursts, releasing the many copies of the virus, which then go on to attach to other cells.

In a similar manner, an ideology can sometimes be thought of as a quasi-living thing which is injected into the human mind - typically by an authority figure or, more frequently, someone placed into an official position of instruction over the subject. It then impresses itself upon the mind quite compellingly in that it utilizes the emotional manifold to override the rational faculty. In this way, it is able to brute force logical inconsistencies onto the human mind by provoking an emotional response to any rational objection.

By causing the subject to habitually fall back on emotional responses to rational objections, it eventually damages the subject's ability to interact with reality in a constructive, rational way altogether. This is roughly analogous to the end stage of the infected cell's life cycle. At this point, the subject spirals out of control, all the while blaming some exterior villain conveniently provided by the ideology, and embraces the status of the victim. 

To the impressionable and credulous observer, there is an appearance of actual victimhood taking place, whereas, in reality, the plight of the subject is due to the damage done to them by their own ideology over time. These impressionable minds are then capable of being infected themselves, as they witness the metaphorical "death" (financial failure, lack of success in life, social inadaptability, or other objective malady) of the original subject, and in this way, the viral ideology continues to propogate.