How can it be explained that neoliberalism is also supported by classes and groups that it weakens and impoverishes with its anti-social policies? How does a backlash conservatism manage to tap into the resentments of the subaltern against "those above" while simultaneously mobilizing them against the left, trade unions, and marginalized groups? The concept of ideology theory represents a reestablishment of historically materialist ideology research, which distinguishes itself from both the reduction of ideologies to the economic and from mere ideology critique of a "false consciousness." Ideology theory inquires into the societal conditions of constitution and the often unconscious functions and effects of the ideological, which it examines in its "materiality" as an ensemble of apparatuses, intellectuals, rituals, and forms of practice. Jan Rehmann reconstructs.