The True Believer

Intro

A book on mass movements by Eric Hoffer, winner of Presidential Gold Medal

Quotes

• 'There is thus a conservatism of the destitute as profound as the

conservatism of the privileged, and the former is as much a factor in the perpetuation of a social order as the latter.' -p3

• Since all mass movements draw their adherents from the same types of humanity and appeal to the same types of mind, it follows:

(a) all mass movements are competitive, and the gain of one in adherents is the loss of all the others; (b) all mass movements are interchangeable. One mass movement readily transforms itself into another. A religious movement may develop into a social revolution or a nationalist movement; a social revolution, into militant nationalism or a religious movement; a nationalist movement into a social revolution or a religious movemen

• The intensity of discontent seems to be in inverse proportion to

the distance from the object fervently desired.

• Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and

fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others.12 No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.

• The attitude of rising mass movements toward the family is of

considerable interest. Almost all our contemporary movements showed in their early stages a hostile attitude toward the family, and did all they could to discredit and disrupt it. They did it by undermining the authority of the parents; by facilitating divorce; by taking over the responsibility for feeding, educating and entertaining the children; and by encouraging illegitimacy.Crowded housing, exile, concentration camps and terror also helped to weaken and break up the family. Still, not one of our contemporary movements was so outspoken in its antagonism toward the family as was earlyChristianity. Jesus minced no words: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.”

• It is obvious, therefore, that, in order to succeed, a mass movement must develop at the earliest moment a compact

corporate organization and a capacity to absorb and integrate all comers. It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated. Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins. Of all the cults and philosophies which competed in the Graeco-Roman world, Christianity alone developed from its inception a compact organization. “No one of its rivals possessed so powerful and coherent a structure as did the church. No other gave its adherents quite the same feeling of coming into a closely knit community.” 22 The Bolshevik movement outdistanced all other Marxist movements in the race for power because of its tight collective organization.

The National Socialist movement, too, won out over all the other

folkish movements which pullulated in the 1920's, because of Hitler’s early recognition that a rising mass movement can never go too far in advocating and promoting collective cohesion. He knew that the chief passion of the frustrated is “to belong,” and that there cannot be too much cementing and binding to satisfy this passion