Who is drawn to mass movements?
Book review of The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer.
Over the last few years, I have been compelled to curiosity about the nature of mass hysteria. I previously reviewed Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay.
The True Believer focuses on who gets involved in movements before they become established institutions – Bolsheviks in 1920, Nazis in 1925, Christians before Constantine and so on.
That’s a motley collection of mass movements, so I must add that Eric claims he does not see mass movements as necessarily bad. This book is mostly read as a warning about how extremist movements get started but it could equally be read as a how-to guide for getting a noble cause off the ground. Keep that in mind as we continue.
Eric’s main assertion is that true believers are, for the most part, unsuccessful and unhappy people:
. . . people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.
Discontent is not enough. There must also be a sense of power to change things. An extremely poor peasant with no rights is unlikely to join a mass movement unless something convinces him it may succeed, perhaps a charismatic leader who seems infallible or firm belief in a doctrine.
The true believer seeks to join a movement primarily as a way of escaping himself.
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