The other meme is that of the dehumanization of humanity itself - the reduction of humankind to things, animals or machines. Look to Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, B.F. Skinner, Dr. Peter Singer and the current crop of so-called ‘bio-ethicists’ for that particular chain of thought. You can hardly ask for something more insidiously evil than that.
Converged and combined, these two streams of thought have served those who have committed the most monstrous crimes in history – These are the killers without conscience.
The book that I am presently writing suggests that the emergence of the will to power as the driving force behind those who have committed those crimes – the slaughter, enslavement, torture and impoverishment of hundreds of millions. As I see it, ideology matters little to those whose desire to control Mankind – it’s merely the horse they’re riding on the eway to dominus terra firma.
We have not seen the end of these monsters, nor will we. The desire to control others – and to harm others – without consequence appears to be ‘black code’ that’s written into our DNA. Modern ideology, that is, all of the modern totalitarian ‘isms’ – communism, socialism, and so on – provide the perfect environment for that ‘black code’ of the will to power to prosper and flourish. This is one of our great human failings, an aspect of our tragic nature that must always be recognized, fought and destroyed, if only for a little while. But for that, we’d be out among the stars by now.
I highly recommend two recent works by Chantal Delsol: Icarus Fallen – the Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World and The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century – an Essay on Late Modernity. The insights she presents are compelling and fairly leap off the page. The points of disagreement that I have with this author’s works are honest and thoughtful ones. Her European perspective often misses what makes America so unique among the world's civilizations, but is does provide valuable insights as to just why the lights are going out all over Europe. Even so, those points in no way invalidate the main themes of her works.
I've heard of DelSol's Icarus but will have to dig into it a bit more deeply based on your recommendation; it sounds like something I'd find interesting.
You have Freud and Nietzche wrong. There work is a lot more complex than “reduction of humankind to things”. At core Nietzche was a defender of Classical Western Culture.