From the New Transmitters..

The other approach to thinking about ‘ideology’ is of course to work from examples of patently ideological speech - eg the ‘old/ new Europe’ distinction as used by Donald Rumsfeld - ‘New Europe’ is to be celebrated; ‘Old Europe’ is jeered, reproached. What is ideological here? There are a number of things to consider:

The obvious point here being that ‘new’ and ‘old’ are used simply as boo/ hoorah words without any real meaning. The old/ new Europe distinction had in fact precious little to do with chronology or history at all. The 'Old' simply designated those who, listening to their domestic population, had been somewhat reserved in embracing US policy; ‘New’ was a code word for those who simply toed the line (or, if you prefer, heroically defied their native population). Berlusconi, with his tedious old corporate capitalism, who paid no attention to domestic opposition to the war, was New. Spain was New. France and Germany were ‘Old’. Language is rendered meaningless when used in this way. What's ideological is not just this 'boo/hoorah' usage, but its role in selling state power to the weakminded.

Beyond Rumsfeld, the distinction rests on a (familiar) reflex valorisation of the New and denigration of the Old. New = positive, forward-looking; Old = redundant. But, and as the slowest mind can grasp, something is no more good because it is New than good because it is Near - New is an empty formal category and cannot automatically be tagged with value. But this is a fairly ingrained cultural assumption, not just a category error. Walter Benjamin and others wrote about the monotonous celebration of Newness and the concentration of collective attention on the New which was integral to modern capitalism. The New typically meant simply ‘the latest’ – the latest step of a Progress apparently pre-determined. It was used to consolidate a version of Progress in which a particular line of capitalism’s development was seen as an inevitable, natural progression. The New saluted this progression; the old ignored it and so ensured its own obsolescence. Needless to say, this conception of history, as inevitably moving in a certain direction that we have to salute or ignore was, Benjamin suggested, itself archaic, ie mythic. In any case, the New is never simply new – ‘from the New transmitters came the old stupidities’. Culture's consist of old and new elements. Any binary Old/ New distinction is probably going to conceal more than it illuminates. This is almost too elementary to point out.

Back to ideology, then. We are talking about false distinctions and category errors that function to legitimise a certain culture, in general, and certain policies in particular. The old(-)/new(+) distinction is a culturally ingrained one, assumed rather than invented by Rumsfeld. We then have Rumsfeld’s use of this ideological (pre-existing) distinction to cement one of his own. The first layer helps legitimise a whole culture, the second expedites the policies of a particular State.
Needless to say, the Old/ New Europe distinction wants to pass itself off as an ‘idea’, a thought, and there are plenty of scribblers and commenters eagerly waiting to analyse it in those terms, and thereby to reproduce the mirage of intellectual content necessary for the ideology to do its work.

For more of the endless reserves of meaning to be extracted from Donald Rumsfeld's words, see here.

ps.

Always sad when some unpaid sap leaps in to defend demonstrably nonsensical state propaganda. This person, for example, hasn't even understood the original post, hence his oddly confused comment about Poland as 'empty formal category'. He then stupidly conflates Poland with its government and overlooks the facts of Polish popular opinion, as befits his polemical purposes. The same blogger elsewhere takes an obviously mannered, tongue in cheek piece of prose and earnestly complains about its syntax. Tone-deaf, politically short-sighted, clueless.