The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1951

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Key Figures

Eric Hoffer (The Author)

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) published twelve books between 1951 and 1983. The True Believer was the first and most celebrated of these books. President Dwight Eisenhower cited The True Believer during a press conference and recommended it to friends. The True Believer received favorable reviews from such intellectual luminaries as American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and British philosopher Bertrand Russell. In short, The True Believer catapulted Hoffer to international prominence as an author. In February 1983, only three months before Hoffer’s death, President Ronald Reagan conferred on Hoffer the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Hoffer’s literary accomplishments must be understood in the context of his unique background. Beginning in the 1940s, Hoffer worked as a longshoreman on the San Francisco docks. He devoted his spare time to writing. By then, he was in his forties. There is no evidence that he acquired a formal education, let alone academic credentials. Hoffer claimed that he was born in the Bronx and that his parents died when he was very young, but no one has ever uncovered a record of Hoffer or his parents in the United States prior to 1940. Hoffer is said to have spoken not with a Bronx accent but with a Bavarian one. Since the Nazi Party originated in the German state of Bavaria, this leads to speculation that Hoffer might have been an immigrant who had a personal familiarity with—and intense distaste for—the rise of Nazism. Speculations about Hoffer’s background, however, must remain in the realm of biographical curiosities, for they cannot reveal anything definitive about why he wrote The True Believer.

What can be said with certainty is that Hoffer’s voice comes through in every line of his first book. It is a philosophical treatise, so there are no major figures besides Hoffer and his characteristic true believer. Every assertion is Hoffer’s, as is every choice. Hoffer chooses, for instance, to describe Nazism, Communism, and many modern nationalist movements in the same context as early religious mass movements such as Christianity and Islam. Hoffer also chooses to categorize the Puritan (English Civil War) and French Revolutions as mass movements that resulted in a society characterized by more freedom, despite the fact that the Puritan and French Revolutions gave way almost immediately to military dictatorships and then to monarchical restorations. The Puritan and French Revolutions, however—along with the American Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, and many modern nationalist revolutions—had short active phases as mass movements. Explaining this single phenomenon—a mass movement’s active phase—constitutes Hoffer’s primary objective in The True Believer.

The True Believer

As a key figure in the book, the nameless and faceless true believer amounts to a composite of every person who has ever joined a mass movement. Hoffer argues that a mass movement’s specific doctrine has no relevance, for mass movements “all appeal to the same types of mind” (xi). By this reckoning, ardent early Nazis, ardent early Communists, ardent early Christians, ardent early Muslims, and the ardent members of every nationalist movement during its active phase all represent the same basic type of person.

Above all, the true believer joins a mass movement to escape intense personal frustration. This individual feels frustration as neither mild nor transient. It is a permanent anguish that produces estrangement from the self. The frustrated person morphs into a fanatical true believer because he or she longs to escape the meaninglessness of an individual existence. Immersion into a collective whole allows the true believer to shed all individual distinctiveness, as well as all personal responsibility. Having abandoned the tainted self, the true believer becomes fanatical about selflessness, though he or she is neither loving nor humble.

Prior to joining a mass movement, the true believer experiences frustration but not necessarily material deprivation. Poverty drives the individual to mass movements only if the experience of deprivation is relatively new, or if the individual has had a taste of something better. The destitute who think only of survival, the creative poor who enjoy an outlet for their creativity, and those who belong to a stable corporate structure, such as a close family or tribe, will not feel the intense frustration that drives other poor people to mass movements. In short, the true believer need not be poor, but the true believer must regard the world as spoiled and the present irredeemable. The true believer also cannot be entirely devoid of hope or a sense of power. Otherwise, a mass movement can have no appeal. More than anything, the true believer must crave a new kind of existence that allows for united action and self-sacrifice.

United action and self-sacrifice give the true believer the sense of purpose missing from individual existence. Collective action allows the true believer to behave in the world without the burden of personal responsibility. Willingness to die for a cause—any cause—enhances the true believer’s faith in selflessness as a transcendent virtue. Having embraced united action and self-sacrifice, the true believer ceases to be the purposeless, meandering, frustrated individual and becomes instead the fanatical devotee of a mass movement.