The True Believer

Intro

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

Quotes

• However much the protesting man of words sees himself as the

champion of the downtrodden and injured, the grievance which animates him is, with very few exceptions, private and personal. His pity is usually hatched out of his hatred for the powers that be.4 “It is only a few rare and exceptional men who have that kind of love toward mankind at large that makes them unable to endure patiently the general mass of evil and su*ering, regardless of any relation it may have to their own lives.”

• '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 movement

• 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

• The permanent mis�ts are those who because of a lack of talent or

some irreparable defect in body or mind cannot do the one thing for which their whole being craves. No achievement, however spectacular, in other �elds can give them a sense of ful�llment. Whatever they undertake becomes a passionate pursuit; but they never arrive, never pause.

• The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of dying

and killing is particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, Eags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his Eesh-and- blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death. We speak of the theater of war and of battle scenes. In their battle orders army leaders invariably remind their soldiers that the eyes of the world are on them, that their ancestors are watching them and that posterity shall hear of them. The great general knows how to conjure an audience out of the sands of the desert and the waves of the ocean

• The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist

but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion

• The uncanny powers of a leader manifest

themselves not so much in the hold he has on the masses as in his ability to dominate and almost bewitch a small group of able men. These men must be fearless, proud, intelligent and capable of organizing and running large-scale undertakings, and yet they must submit wholly to the will of the leader, draw their inspiration and driving force from him, and glory in this submission.