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

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The Appeal of United Action and Self-Sacrifice

The appeal of united action and self-sacrifice is the book’s major theme. It is also the subject of Part 3, by far the lengthiest of the book’s four parts. The true believer’s desire for united action and self-sacrifice defines a mass movement and serves as its main draw for adherents.

Eric Hoffer establishes this major theme from the beginning. In the book’s second paragraph, he explains that “[a]ll mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action” (xi, emphasis added). The important point is that those who become true believers already want these things. They find their individual lives unbearable. They “crave to be rid of an unwanted self” and thus feel an intense “passion for self-renunciation” (12). In fact, united action and self-sacrifice are so central to a mass movement that the moment it starts to appeal to career-minded people is the moment it ceases to be an active movement.

For the true believer, joining a mass movement conjures powerful emotions, some of which can be akin to a religious experience. The relinquishing of one’s self often constitutes “an act of atonement,” which requires “a poignant sense of sin” (54). The irredeemable self must be absorbed into a collective whole, a congregation of true believers. This religious aspect is unlikely to diminish during a movement’s active phase. In fact, when “unity and self-sacrifice are indispensable for the normal functioning of a society, everyday life is likely to be either religiofied (common tasks turned into holy causes) or militarized” (157).

Other passions unleashed by mass movements, whether religious or otherwise, bear the mark of fanaticism. Mass movements inculcate “readiness to fight and to die” by “separating the individual from his flesh-and-blood self” (61). Although fanatics often seem like automatons following orders according to programming, the conversion process rarely takes place in a cold and mechanistic setting. The molding of a true believer “almost always proceeds in an atmosphere of intense passion” (84).

A mass movement cultivates the most destructive of all human passions. The desire for unified action and self-sacrifice compels true believers to undertake an endless search for comrades in their holy struggle against a hated enemy. In one of his more paradoxical insights, Hoffer explains that people who believe in the truth of their benevolent doctrine are unlikely to force it upon others, but intense hatred drives the true believer to proselytize: “We do not usually look for allies when we love,” Hoffer writes, “[b]ut we always look for allies when we hate” (93).

Finally, the hate-filled true believer cannot act on a grand scale worthy of self-sacrifice without provoking conflict. The desire to fight and the commitment to one’s mass movement thus become mutually reinforcing. Indeed, “[i]t is probably as true that violence breeds fanaticism as that fanaticism begets violence” (107). Every act of violence terrorizes the supposed enemy while deepening the perpetrator’s fanaticism. Hoffer cites an example from the first half of the 20th century: “Every lynching in our South not only intimidates the Negro but also invigorates the fanatical conviction of white supremacy” (107).

In short, the prospect for united action and self-sacrifice first attracts the would-be fanatic to a mass movement. Then, the movement uses united action and self-sacrifice to shape the true believer into a hate-filled agent of terror.

The Role of Frustration

While the call to united action and self-sacrifice constitutes the mass movement’s initial attraction as well as its most formidable tool, frustration is the precondition for any true believer. Frustration thus plays an important role in luring people into mass movements and binding them to the cause.

Hoffer paints a complex psychological portrait of the type of frustrated person most susceptible to mass movements. He begins with the individual’s life circumstances. Here it is crucial to understand that poverty and other personal misfortunes do not necessarily predict an individual’s receptiveness to mass movements, “nor is the intensity of discontent directly proportionate to the degree of misery” (28). The destitute have no time to brood because they are too busy trying to survive. The hopeless—for instance, the permanently enslaved—might feel pervasive unhappiness, but this is not the same thing as frustration. Furthermore, solid corporate structures such as strong families help alleviate frustration even for those who suffer terrible personal misfortunes.

The would-be fanatic feels frustrated with the world not because it affords too few opportunities but because it affords too many. Frustration manifests when the individual fails in spite of apparent possibilities for success. Freedom thus “aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration” (31). Above all, the frustrated individual craves freedom from the self, from responsibility for actions and consequences. Mass movements offer true believers freedom from restraint as well as freedom from responsibility, but Hoffer insists that the true believer is drawn to mass movements not primarily for the chance to wreak havoc but because the true believer is “basically an obedient and submissive person” (117).

Once fanaticized, however, true believers become agents of destruction. Mass movements make war on the present. In their mythologies and doctrines, they glorify both past and future. This allows true believers to feel “part of something that stretches endlessly backward and forward—something eternal” (72). It also authorizes true believers both to escape the hated present and to make it as miserable as possible for others.

Frustration with the self, coupled with hatred of the present, leads true believers to search for something forward-looking in which to lose themselves. They regard their commitment to a mass movement as a selfless act, and they become fanatical about their own selflessness. The true believer, however, is basically a selfish person, and selfish people “are particularly susceptible to frustration,” which means that true believers “are likely to be the most persuasive champions of selflessness,” but it also means that the selfless true believer “can be neither loving nor humble” (48). Furthermore, there is a direct correlation between fanatical selflessness and violent hatred. Indeed, the “hatred and cruelty” that spring from selfishness are but “ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness” (100).

Mass movements offer refuge and purpose to the frustrated. Once converted, the true believer no longer feels frustrated but also no longer possesses an autonomous existence. The act of conversion, therefore, while alleviating frustration, leaves the true believer with no choice but to cling to the movement.

The Irrelevance of Doctrine

Every true believer must believe in something. Hoffer argues, however, that the specific content of a mass movement’s doctrine or program means little compared to the methods it uses, which are similar across nearly all mass movements.

A doctrine matters not for the loftiness of its ideals, nor for the veracity of its assertions, but for practical purposes only. Above all, a doctrine must insulate the true believer. It does this by providing a “fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world” (79). Fanatics already discard reason when they surrender individuality. A doctrine that claims to hold absolute truth allows fanatics to reflexively censor all contrary evidence. An effective doctrine conveys “certitude” (80), but it also should be “unintelligible,” “vague,” or “unverifiable” (81). A comprehensible or provable doctrine loses the power to awe.

Aside from its practical uses, a doctrine’s specific content has no bearing on a mass movement’s shape or strength. Hoffer regards it as “futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises” (41). On a linear graph representing political ideologies, for instance, Nazis and Communists would find themselves at opposite poles. In reality, however, both groups consist of fanatics, and “[t]hough they seem to be at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end” (86). This means that no matter how “different the holy causes people die for [are], they perhaps die basically for the same thing” (xii).

Having diminished the importance of a doctrine’s specific content, Hoffer goes one step further. He argues that in fact all mass movements are both “competitive” and “interchangeable” (17). The early Nazis, who after all called themselves “National Socialists,” attracted converts from the Communist ranks, and vice versa. Nazis and Communists appealed not to the serene minds of people who already felt strong family or corporate connections and could calmly evaluate competing doctrines. Instead, Nazis and Communists appealed to frustrated and isolated misfits who had no desire to think for themselves.

Furthermore, the power of words as persuasive instruments is limited to the early phase of a mass movement, when disgruntled intellectuals undermine an existing regime and prepare the way for the movement’s fanatic-led active phase. These intellectuals, however, whom Hoffer calls “men of words,” are often too vain, too easily flattered by those in high positions, and too comfortable with life’s complexities to ever pour their hearts into a fanatical mass movement (130). Likewise, once the movement’s active phase is underway, and especially once it has achieved power, words matter far less than actions. Propaganda alone “succeeds mainly with the frustrated” (105).

Mass movements depend on enticing the frustrated with the promise of united action and self-sacrifice. In dealing with the recalcitrant, mass movements rely on coercion. At no point do the leaders of mass movements stake their hopes on the persuasiveness of their doctrine.