This article argues that the ideologeme, a recurrent, evaluatively charged discursive unit, is the irreducible atomic structure from which all propaganda and disinformation are constituted. Every propaganda narrative can be decomposed into ideologemes; no political manipulation exists that is not ultimately composed of them. The article advances this claim through three moves: an ontological argument showing that the minimal conditions of propaganda are fulfilled precisely by the ideologeme’s defining properties; a formal seven-criterion operational definition that distinguishes the ideologeme from adjacent concepts; and balanced comparative discourse analysis across Democratic and Republican media and rhetoric in the United States. The analysis introduces two conceptual extensions debated in the current literature: the “isotope” problem (identical words bearing opposite charges in different ideological camps) and the question of visual ideologemes (non-verbal symbols that perform identical functions without any linguistic unit). The article concludes with an inference about the underlying goals of each party as revealed by their characteristic ideologeme portfolios. Cases examined include “Fox News” and “MSNBC” prime-time programming, presidential and candidate rhetoric from Trump, Obama, Biden, and Clinton, and social media amplification patterns.
