The dominant and victorious ideology is the ideology that can establish itself as the only natural way of thinking and acting in people’s everyday lives, to the point that people can no longer even imagine another form of thought or action.

An effective ideology hides itself completely within people’s everyday beliefs and traditions and becomes invisible. As a result, each citizen becomes a living embodiment of ideology and its natural carrier to future generations.

The failure of an ideology becomes visible when, in order to survive, it is forced to use coercion and violence and is compelled to reveal itself at every level of society through propaganda stripped of subtlety.

In such a society, people will no longer be living embodiments of ideology or its natural carriers to later generations.

If public culture, traditions and people’s minds no longer offer a refuge in which ideology can continue to live, its historical survival becomes impossible to imagine.

— Norman Fairclough —