The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics)

Much like the book by the unmentionable author who figures on the cover of my paperback edition of “The True Believer,” and for all the endnotes and references, this is but a list of largely unsubstantiated assertions and aphorisms. Eric Hoffer admits as much on page 60: “This is not an authoritative textbook. It is a book of thoughts, and it does not shy away from half-truths, so long as they seem to hint at a new approach and help formulate new questions.” With that caveat out of the way, it has to be said that this is a tremendous exploration of the motivations of mass movements and the fanatic in particular. The thoughts described in this book clearly derive from the experiences leading up to the horrors of the first and second world war, as well the wars themselves. They pertain to the conditions that lead to the creation of populist mass movements, the leaders these movements require and the state of mind of the fanatic. I guess that’s why I picked it up in 2017. It’s been in print for a good 60 years, but had not seemed relevant for some time… Fanaticism is built on humiliation. It is himself (most often his humiliated, debased, self, relative to some yardstick set by his own recent or ancient history or the rest of society) that the fanatic is escaping. Indeed, he is renouncing his current self and the present world and is dedicating his existence (including the possibility that it may come to an end) to a cause that will help create a better, utopian, future. Reason and observation do not come into it; the fanatic is a man of faith in the cause to which he has dedicated himself. Faith replaces reason, to the point of overruling empirical observation. The cause becomes the center of the fanatic’s existence. He willingly, gleefully, hands over his free will and (crucially) his responsibility and becomes an instrument of the cause. He experiences relief in doing so and, once inducted in one faith, finds it very difficult to get back his free will. Should his faith disappoint him, he’d sooner join another faith! The hatred that the fanatic sometimes harbors is a hatred of himself. Others having a just grievance against a fanatic therefore fills him with more hate and their elimination actually helps assuage this self-hatred: “The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination.” (p. 95) The leader is a more complex person than the fanatic. At the first stage of the movement he needs to be a man of ideas. The Rousseau or the Voltaire or the Karl Marx. In the revolutionary stage he needs to be true believer himself, a fanatic. The lucky fanatic who happens to be in charge of the movement when the moment is ripe. The Robespierre, the Lenin or the Mussolini. Finally, when the movement wins out something funky happens: the mass movement becomes the status quo, the “today” that all misfits and downtrodden will hate from now onward and the leader needs to become a consolidator, a “practical man of action,” who will carry on with ritual “permanent revolution,” whose actual cause will be to maintain the status quo. Stalin and Mao spring to mind here, but not Trotsky, for example. Another important point made in the book is that if the source of fanaticism is humiliation, the raw material for the creation of populist mass movements can be channeled in a number of ways, but it will be channeled: “When we debunk a fanatical faith or prejudice, we do not strike at the root of fanaticism. We merely prevent its leaking out at a certain point, with the likely result that it will leak out at some other point.” (p. 139) That really floored me. Moving on to our current times, when, mid-financial crisis, the dispossessed and foreclosed-on American people voted in a President of African descent called Barack Hussain Obama, a man casting himself as an outsider, with a mandate to bring about change, very little was achieved when he turned out to be a level-headed member of the establishment. In due course, the humiliation of the dispossessed would merely be channeled into somebody else. Erm, worth the price of purchase, then. In some respects, however, the book is starting to show its years. Sixty years is a long time and I, for one, am observing around me a different world from the one in evidence in 1951: The author claims that the people never clamors for its freedom, that the masses never rebel against authority to reclaim their freedom of conscience and free choice: “They sweep away the old order not to create a society of free and independent men, but to establish uniformity. It is not the wickedness of the old regime they rise against, but its weakness; not its oppression, but its failure to hammer them together into one solid, mighty whole. The persuasiveness of the intellectual demagogue consists not so much in convincing the people of the vileness of the established order as in demonstrating its helpless incompetence. The immediate result of mass movement usually corresponds to what people want. They are not cheated in the process.” This, while perhaps accurate in 1951, is exactly half-right in year 2017. When in 1930 a demagogue would be promising a new world order to the dispossessed, today the demagogue’s audience is very much the bourgeoisie. The depression era utopias were not materialistic. They were idealistic and were offered to the dispossessed: communism, nationalism etc. The utopia our politicians peddle today is that we can maintain in permanence the once-in-many centuries post-WWII growth that the West has recently stopped enjoying. The final salary schemes, healthcare benefits and rising stock markets that came together with a demographic phenomenon called the baby boom, which we know for certain cannot be repeated for a good 25 years, even if we start multiplying like bunnies tonight. When three governments in a row have been elected in Greece with a mandate to fight back the “austerity” allegedly imposed by foreigners, when Monti was shoved out of running Italy within months of announcing entirely sensible measures, when Donald Trump promises to bring back jobs that have either gone to robots or to the cloud and gets elected, you know we’re not in 1951 anymore. The fanatic is no longer the villain in our world. The mass movement that all demagogues have in their sights is that of the entitled. Their promised land is not a utopia that lies in the future. It is a circumstantially contrived abundance that occurred in the past and is not coming back. The redemption the entitled seek is not ideological. It is material. I guess that is a vast improvement. But it means the book, while fun to read, is only relevant from a historical perspective.

A very engaging and insightful work is this, well researched and academic, to the point where it would be dry were it not for the subject matter and Hoffer’s engaging turn of phrase, which gives not only a theoretical view of the world of the fanatic, but a deep analysis of how the fanatic and his world came about. Hoffer is very even-handed in his discussion, drawing examples from the Nazi party, the French Revolution, postwar Palestine, Stalinist Russia, the Crusades and Imperial Japan. No period or aspect of life is left unexamined as he walks through the rise of the mass movement, who is motivated to join them and why, and how each religious, political and revolutionary current transitions through various stages, changing its rhetoric, members and even its aims in the pursuit of-what? Something which they all have in common but claim is unique only to their own race of believers. You could page through it and find multiple parallels with his time and our own, from Nazi Germany to North Korea, and radical Islam to the radical right. Like any good work of history, this shows the reader how parts of the modern world came about and persist today, and how we might be ( or how we have been) led to follow a strange banner and become a True Believer ourselves.

Not an easy book to read. The thesis - that all mass movements- are essentially the same in origin and progress is quite difficult to absorb. But worthwhile and enlightening. Reccomended as a read by Martin Wolfe-the F T columnist.A good reccomendation.

What an amazing book.I found it from a bibliography of a book I had recently read. It is surprising that it was written over 60 years ago. It is relevant today and very perceptive. The writing style is clear, the structure of the book leads the reader on to its conclusions with many sentences that have become regularly quoted. It is not surprising that it has become a classic and I could not put it down.

This should be on everyone's reading list. For Hoffer, there are two kinds of people - those who stand on their own two feet and those who want to distance themselves from themselves and their feeling of inadequacy or lack of meaning and attach themselves to movements - religion, ideology, or any group where they can derive meaning.

The author minces no words in this highly perceptive and insightful book. Learn well from his words and allow them to penetrate, for they are just as relevant today as they were when they were written.

Very well researched and presented look at Mass Movements from a non bias point of view. Especially with what is going on in the world today!

Fascinating

Absolutely fascinating and true, Hoffer explains humanity, psychology, and sociology with deft phrases and punchy conclusions. It did nothing short of changing how I view movements and social change

Eric Hoffer was a once-of-a-kind, yet very insightful political thinker only the United States could have made possible. Like the legendary Horatio Alger, Hoffer started as farm laborer. Later he became longshoreman. But, perhaps not untypical for the time, he became an autodidact. He made learning, reading and thinking his life's passion. "The True Believer" describes his analysis of how people decide to throw their individual freedom and ability to think for themselves away to become willing instruments of autocratic, dictatorial systems of values. This applies equally to religions, political systems and nationalism. Hoffer's writing style is easy to understand. In an interview he once described how much care he put into finding the best way toget his ideas across to the readers. That shows. The True Believer is very enjoyable yet disturbing reading. You want to understand why people became willing, yes, enthusiastic Nazi, Soviet, Maoist mass murderers? You can't imagine why a highly intelligent honors graduate in electronic engineering prepared for months so he could fly an airplane into the World Trade Center and kill thousands of innocent men, women and children? You wonder about ISIS? Eric Hoffer has the answers. While he passed away many years ago, his analysis is more timely today than it ever was.

All the books met my expectations in terms of content

Excellent book! Should be required reading for all. Quick delivery.

Revolutions and other mass movements all have commonalities, chief among them are the people who start and promulgate them. This short, concise book breaks down and organizes the characteristics of these people: The True Believers - and the movements they promote. This is a book of genius, comparable to ‘The Prince’ or ‘Rules for Radicals,’ in its simplicity and insights into human nature and organized political action. Hoffer wrote this book after the Second World War while the memories and realities of Fascism and Communism were very present. If you’ve ever been part of a mass movement, or ever contemplated participating in one, this book will open your eyes to what you can expect as a mass movement gets underway and develops through its active phase. It’ll provide you with an understanding of the motivations and designs of the movement’s leaders, and insight into your own and your fellow believers’ psychology. If you have the ambition to be the next Christ or Hitler to lead a mass movement, this is your blueprint. In summary: I. THE APPEAL OF MASS MOVEMENTS The desire for change starts and lives in the hearts of frustrated people. Attached to this frustration these individuals possess a sense of power to accomplish great change. Faith in the future and the ability to project hope makes for receptivity to change. High hopes and dark endings incongruently go together. Belonging to a mass movement substitutes for deficiencies in the individual. Mass Movements compete with one another, and often are interchangeable. No movement is whole of a singular nature. II. THE POTENTIAL CONVERTS The best and worst of society often determine the course of history - over the heads of the great middle. A society without the dregs may be peaceful and complacent, but lacking in the seeds for change. Here are the ranks of mass movement fodder: New Poor: Memory of better times puts fire in their bellies. Abject Poor: Too occupied with survival to organize. Discontent is high, however, when misery is still bearable. Free Poor: Freedom creates and alleviates frustration. Fanatics fear freedom more than persecution. Equality and fraternity are preferred over freedom. Creative Poor: The ability to create mitigates frustration; however, those whose creativity is fading, or those who didn’t quite achieve creative satisfaction, may seek escape in mass movements. Unified Poor: Compact or tribal groups are relatively free of frustration. Mass movements often try to break down family units to feed the movement. Compact structures, like families in decline are, however, fertile ground for mass movements. Temporary Misfits: Adolescents, unemployed, veterans, and new immigrants are unreliable supporters of mass movements; their frustrations abate once circumstances improve. Permanent Misfits: The incurably frustrated can never have enough of what they really do not want anyway. They are likely to become the most violent true believers. Inordinately Selfish: Those who have lost faith in themselves, look to attach to a holy cause; In compensation, they become champions of selflessness. Ambitious with Unlimited Opportunity: Current actions are never enough; they possess excessive readiness for self-sacrifice. Minorities Intent On Preserving Their Identity: These persons act as tribal groups and lack frustration. Minorities Bent On Assimilation: These frustrated cannot get in the door of the established order. Bored: These people are required in quantity for a successful mass movement; they’re looking for fulfillment in a meaningless existence. Sinners: For the irredeemable, salvation can be found in losing oneself in a holy cause; they are willing to go to extremes. Mass movements attract and hold followers by offering refuge from anxiety. Mass movements aim to infect people with a malady, then offer a cure. Hope comes in two forms: one immediate and one distant. III. UNITED ACTION AND SELF-SACRIFICE The chief preoccupation of mass movements is to foster united action and self-sacrifice. For the individual to commit to self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity, and by ritual be associated with the movement. To engage in dying or killing, the individual must suffer under the illusion of being a participant in a grand undertaking, or a solemn performance. Glory is theatrical. The present must be deprecated, pushed off the stage, depicted as mean and miserable and held in utter contempt. In replacement, hope is assured for a better future. The frustrated individual is ready to die for what he wishes to have and wishes to be. Mass movements strive to interpose a fact-proof screen between the movement’s faithful and the realities of the world, in a word: doctrine. The effectiveness of a doctrine is judged not on its validity or profundity, but on how well it insulates the individual from his self and the world. The individual’s estrangement proceeds with intense passion and fanaticism. Mass movements prevent the achievement of internal balance for the fanatic individual, but perpetuate insecurity and incompleteness. Unified individuals in a compact collective of a mass movement body are no longer frustrated. Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. Mass movements can rise without a belief in God, but never without a belief in evil. Unreasonable hatreds emerge as an expression of the frustrated individual’s effort to suppress his own shortcomings and self-contempt. Self hate emanates from feelings of helplessness, inadequacy, and cowardice, rather than justified grievances. The object of hate is often those other than the ones who committed the perceived wrongs. Committing grave injustices upon the object of hate re-enforces and fuels hate. A guilty conscience lies behind such acts, which demands even greater effort to demonize the hated to suppress this guilty conscience. Estrangement of the self is required for selflessness and assimilation into the whole of a compact group. The True Believer sees himself as one of ‘the chosen.’ Self-denial and group membership confers the right on them to be harsh upon others, and by which to be rid of personal responsibility. Violence is not the product of leadership, but of a unification of the whole. Propaganda succeeds not with unwilling minds, but with frustrated individuals. Propaganda operates most effectively in conjunction with coercion. The mass movement requires the ability to make people believe, and by force as a last resort. Leadership cannot create a mass movement out of thin air. There has to be grievances with intense dissatisfactions and an eagerness of the True Believers to follow and obey. Once the stage is set, however, an outstanding leader is indispensable. The leader personifies the certitude of the movement, as well as defiance and power. He must be able to steer the faithful and maintain its cohesion. To a large degree, charlatanism is required for effective leadership. Action is a unifier of mass movements. Marching, for instance, kills thought and hastens the end of individuality. An inability to act breeds frustration with the movement, while successful action drains energy and commitment from the movement. The mass movement must perpetuate the individual’s incompleteness and insecurity. IV. BEGINNING AND END Men of Words: Mass movements usually rise when a prevailing order has been discredited. This is the work of men of words with a grievance. They set the groundwork for the movement by undermining existing institutions, promoting the idea of change, and creating a new faith. Men of words may champion the downtrodden, but the grievance that animates them is personal. Their vanity is greater than their ambitions; recognition and the appearance of power is preferred over power itself. Often it’s the men of words who are the tragic figures of the mass movement, as at a certain point, the movement is hijacked by a power hungry clique which usually cheats the masses of the freedoms they seek. Fanatics: A genuine mass movement is hatched by the fanatic. Men of words shrink before the outbreak of anarchy, they forget the troubled masses they set out to help, and run to the protection of strong ‘men of action.’ For the fanatic, chaos is his element. Fanatics come from the ranks of the non-creative men of words; unfulfilled, they can never be reconciled with their self, and they desire not a finality or a fixed order of things. Hatred becomes a habit, and when the outsiders are vanquished, the fanatics then turn on themselves and threaten to destroy what they have achieved. Man of Action: The movement begins with men of words, materializes by fanatics, and consolidated by men of action. With a balanced faith in humanity, men of action save the movement from the fanatics, marking the end of the dynamic phase of the movement. Men of action fix and perpetuate the movement’s unity and readiness for self-sacrifice. The new order is founded on the ‘necks of the people, rather than in their hearts.’ The man of action is a man of the law. The movement now becomes a means of self-realization for the ambitious. Concern for the frustrated is still there, not to harness their discontent, but to reconcile them with it; to turn them meek and patient with visions of distance hopes and dreams. Good and Bad Mass Movements: No matter what good intentions a mass movement starts off with, or what benefit may result, it is hard not to see the active phase as unpleasant, if not outright evil. On the other hand, mass movements are a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead. Recommended complementary reading: ‘The Anatomy of Revolution’ by Crane Brinton; compares the four greatest revolutions, providing much historical background that Hoffer refers to in ‘The True Believer.’