What would Moses, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther, Osama bin Laden, and Josef Stalin have in common?
They were all leaders of mass movements comprised of The True Believer, as described in Eric Hoffer’s 1951 provocative classic.
Impossible, you say? Insane, you say? Not if taken merely in the psychosocial terms that Hoffer lays out in his book. He sets forth his working hypothesis and presuppositions in the preface (you should always read the preface!): “All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them…breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance. …There is a certain uniformity in all types of dedication, of faith, of pursuit of power, of unity and of self-sacrifice. There are vast differences in the contents of holy causes and doctrines, but a certain uniformity in the factors which make them effective. …However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.”
Quick critique: One of Hoffer’s basic presuppositions is the moral equivalency of all mass movements. Again, from the preface (you should always read the preface!): “The book passes no judgments, and expresses no preferences. It merely tries to explain…” Of course, this is self-referentially absurd: not judging is itself a judgment, and not preferring is itself a preference. Complete objectivity and absolute neutrality are myths. Leveling all mass movements is a reductive fallacy of the first order (I call it “nothing buttery’): reducing Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Communism, and National Socialism all to “nothing but” fanaticism may account for some of their similarity, but it fails to take into account not only the obvious differences in their doctrines, but also the stark differences in their outcomes.
However, on a strictly human level (akin to Solomon’s view of life “under the sun” in Ecclesiastes), Hoffer’s analysis is fascinating. As I read, I found myself applying his characteristics of the true believer to various political, cultural, and religious leaders in the news today. See if this reminds you of anything in our recent experience: “…extravagant hope, even when not backed by actual power, is likely to generate a most reckless daring. For the hopeful can draw strength from the most ridiculous sources of power – a slogan, a word, a button. …As for the hopeful…they all proceed recklessly with the present, wreck it if necessary, and create a new world. …When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”
How and why do people become fanatical? Said another way: what kind of person is susceptible to fanaticism? This is what Hoffer is trying to explain most of all. Basically, his answer is: those who are unhappy with their lives as they are and have no hope of changing their situation. “The ideal potential convert is the individual who stands alone, who has no collective body he can blend with and lose himself in and so mask the pettiness, meaninglessness and shabbiness of his individual existence.” The two greatest needs of the human psyche – a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose – are unfulfilled in this person, until the mass movement offers them both to him. Part Two of the book devotes a chapter to each type of potential convert: the poor, misfits (including youth, unemployed college graduates, and immigrants), the inordinately selfish, the ambitious, minorities, the bored, and sinners (more on that last one later). Do we know any of these in America today?
What kind of society is a breeding ground for a fanatical movement? “The milieu most favorable for the rise and propagation of mass movements is one in which a once compact corporate structure is…in a state of disintegration. …Where the corporate pattern is strong, it is difficult for a mass movement to find a footing.” So where families, churches, communities, and nations are strong and vibrant, people are satisfied with life, and they are resistant to being radicalized, but where these institutions and cultural bonds are in decay, mass movements may be fomented. Do we know anything like this in America today?
Hoffer maintains that the two outstanding marks of a mass movement are “united action” and “self-sacrifice.” He deals with these two dynamics in detail in Part Three. Techniques and tools used by movement leaders to unify their followers include: hatred, imitation, persuasion and coercion, action, and suspicion. Factors promoting self-sacrifice include: identification with the group, make-believe (rituals, symbols, etc.), a coherent system of doctrine (plausible worldview), deprecation of the present in favor of a better future. On the latter: “Possessed of a vivid vision of past and future, the true believer sees himself part of something that stretches endlessly backward and forward – something eternal.” Of the fanatical self-discipline and self-sacrifice that these movements demand (and get!), Hoffer, consistent with his premises, gives a psychological explanation: “The self-mastery needed in overcoming the appetites gives [the true believers] an illusion of strength. They feel that in mastering themselves they have mastered the world. …It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings.”
There are several types of leaders who generate, expand, and sustain mass movements. One type is “the man of words.” Observes Hoffer: “It is easy to see how the faultfinding man of words, by persistent ridicule and denunciation, shakes prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and familiarizes the masses with the idea of change. …For it is a remarkable fact that the militant man of words…often prepares the ground not for a society of freethinking individuals but for a corporate society that cherishes utmost unity and blind faith.” Does this sound familiar?
Here are a few more random but quality soundbites. Think about our current religious/political/social milieu and you will find these immensely and intensely relevant.
- “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”
- “We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it.”
- “Every mass movement is in a sense a migration – a movement toward a promised land…”
- “The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.”
- “Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual?”
- “There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement that the prevalence of unrelieved boredom.”
- “Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience…”
- “When there is no hope, people…allow themselves to be killed without a fight. …How else explain the fact that millions of Europeans allowed themselves to be led into annihilation camps and gas chambers, knowing beyond doubt that they were being led to death? It was not the least of Hitler’s formidable powers that he knew how to drain his opponents…of all hope.”
- “It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.”
- “It is the true believer’s ability to ‘shut his eyes and stop his ears’ to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy.”
- “There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hairsplitting, and scholastic tortuousness.”
- “They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion. …They are easily persuaded and led.”
- “The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion.”
- “It is doubtful whether the fanatic who deserts his holy cause or is suddenly left without one can ever adjust himself to an autonomous individual existence. He remains a homeless hitchhiker on the highways of the world thumbing a ride on any eternal cause that rolls by.”
- “The fanatical soldier is usually a fanatic turned soldier rather than the other way around.”
- “Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents.”
- “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”
- “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.”
- “When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom – freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.”
- “It is probably as true that violence breeds fanaticism as that fanaticism begets violence. It is often impossible to tell which came first. …The practice of terror serves that true believer not only to cow and crush his opponents but also to invigorate and intensify his own faith.”
- “The leader…articulates and justifies the resentment dammed up in the souls of the frustrated.”
- “Not all the qualities enumerated above are equally essential. The most decisive for the effectiveness of a mass movement leader seem to be audacity…”
- “The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.”
- “The true believer is eternally incomplete, eternally insecure.”
- “A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action.”
- “The blindness of the fanatic is a source of strength…but it is the cause of intellectual sterility and emotional monotony.”
- “The fanatic is also mentally cocky… At the root of his cockiness is the conviction that life and the universe conform to a simple formula – his formula.”
Due to his methodological atheism, Hoffer gets a lot wrong – e.g., he asserts that fanaticism actually originated with Judaism and Christianity, he claims that Christianity was originally radically anti-family, he considers all religions to be irrational at their core, etc. – but he gets enough right that 60-year-old classic is worth a read, for as he says in the preface (and you should always read the preface!), “It is necessary for most of us these days to have some insight into the motives and responses of the true believer. For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.”