The True Believer is instantly a contender for one of the best books I've read all year. It is short but very profound. It provoked deep thinking like few books can and I see why it is a classic. I had it on my kindle for a while but just happened to pick it up now and the time must have been right because I had to stop myself from reading it too fast I was so engaged. I took a lot more notes than usual (per x number of pages). And I was really intrigued by the life story of Hoffer himself, which seems completely unverifiable and at least partially untrue as he told it (look it up). It is all very tragic involving the death of his parents, childhood blindness, and lots of hard labor, but none of it is verifiable before he reaches the age of 40. He wrote this book while working as a longshoreman in San Francisco.
Hoffer divides his book in four parts: (1) The Appeal of Mass Movements, talking about why people are attracted to mass movements, (2) The Potential Converts, covering who is likely to join a mass movement (3) United Action and Self-Sacrifice, which make movements successful, and (4) Beginning and End, in which he discusses the major characters who develop mass movements. To sum them up, the appeal of mass movements is a desire for change. It is of secondary or tertiary importance what kind of change. A mass movement just needs to support change. The potential converts are "frustrated" people, undesirables, the new poor, the misfits, the inordinately selfish, the ambitious, the minorities, the bored, and the sinners. They join a mass movement promising change because the status quo doesn't serve them. United Action and self-sacrifice are what make a mass movement successful. The individual joiners of the movement must lose their sense of selves, which is easier for those who were unsuccessful in the old system. Without a sense of self, they find self-sacrifice easier, since there is less self to sacrifice. Hoffer discusses identification with a collective will, make-believe, deprecation of the present, and fanaticism as factors that promote self-sacrifice. He discusses hatred, imitation, persuasion and coercion, leadership, action, and suspicion as factors that unite mass movements. Finally, he identifies the men of words, who create the ideas that inspire a mass movement, the fanatics, who bring the movement about with revolutionary zeal, often ignoring the words from the men of words, and then finally the men of action, who unite and sustain the movement as it moves towards a solidified phase in which administration is more important than revolution. Mass movements are not necessarily good or bad, but they are vulnerable to devolving into violence and chaos.
I. The Appeal of Mass Movements
What are the mass movements? Today, they are revolutionary and nationalist, but in the past they were religious, such as the Crusades and the Reformation. Nationalism was "the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm" when Hoffer wrote and probably still is today. He even argues that any drastic changes or revolutionary enthusiasms must tap into nationalist fervor to be successful.
But these drastic changes may be unpopular with those succeeding in the status quo system. Hoffer posits that the strongest and the weakest ends of society are likely to be supporters of mass movements; the weak out of dissatisfaction with their lot, and the strong out of faith in the future. Of these two groups, Hoffer writes,
Where power is not joined with faith in the future, it is used mainly to ward off the new and preserve the status quo. On the other hand, extravagant hope, even when not backed by actual power, is likely to generate a most reckless dating. For the hopeful can draw strength from the most ridiculous sources of power--a slogan, a word, a button. No faith is potent unless it also has faith in the future; unless it has a millennial component. So, too, an effective doctrine: as well as being a source of power, it must also claim to be a key to the book of the future.
And so, to get people to dive into vast change, they must be "intensely discontented but not destitute," and they need to feel like all they are missing is some doctrine, leader, or technique that will give them access to a source of irresistible power. Without this feeling, they will have no courage to actually make the leap, since they need to feel that they are already close to achieving that thing. Second, they need to believe that the future they have within reach is something extremely valuable and worthwhile, utopian, even. And third, they must totally underestimate the difficulties involved in the struggle.
It is important that in its early days, a mass movement attracts not those who want self-advancement, but those who passionately desire self-renunciation. These are people who see their lives as irredeemably spoiled, and are totally dissatisfied with the way of the world. And instead of reforming themselves, they seek to reform society. But as a mass movement leaves the "vigorous stage" or the "active stage," it will attract those seeking self-advancement--those who are not interested in molding a new world, but are interested in "possessing and preserving the present." This is when the movement becomes an enterprise.
But in the earlier stage, a mass movement attracts its followers not just among those who want change, but among those who want substitutes. Faith in a mass movement can replace faith in religion. A claim of excellence for his nation, religion, race, or class can replace a man's claim of excellence for himself when he has none.
Mass movements are also interchangeable. They all draw from the same type of disaffected people, making them competitive with each other in a zero-sum game, and one movement is readily transformed into another. Recruiters for mass movements can only recruit those on the fringes of society, such that the opposite of a Nazi is not a Communist, but rather the opposite of a Nazi and a Communist is a centrist. This provokes one of the main ways of stopping a mass movement--using another one to blunt its strength. And so a national movement can stop a religious movement, or a class movement can stop a race movement. Emigration can also reduce the strength of a mass movement by sending the base from which it would recruit overseas. Hoffer even goes so far to say that if the United States and the British Empire had welcomed mass migration from Europe after WWI that there might not have been a Fascist or Nazi revolution. Moreover, he argues that free and easy migration west across the United States provided a release valve that stabilized the lands from which the emigrants came.
II. The Potential Converts
In discussing the who of mass movements, Hoffer identifies the poor, misfits, outcasts, minorities, adolescent youth, the ambitious, those in the grip of vice or obsession, the impotent, the inordinately selfish, the bored, and the sinners. Of the poor, it is a specific type of poverty that breeds sympathy with a mass movement--too poor and they won't have hope of things getting better. But distant hope is different than immediate hope. If they have distant hope, they will be patient, but if they have immediate hope they are likely to join the movement. If they are so oppressed that they cannot even imagine hope at all, they will not join a mass movement, and that is why it was generally a generation or more after freedom that the peasants of Europe were willing to join revolutions. The unified poor also do not join revolutions, as they are tied into conservatism by their families and social frameworks. But mass social disruptions like wars and plagues can of course turn them into disunified poor, who are more revolutionary. This made me think on the effects of modern living on the "unification" of people today. I think Hoffer is talking about alienation, which to me seems more common than ever thanks to social media and modern living in which people no longer live with their family and friend groups (as much as they used to). It also made me think on Evicted and The Pruitt-Igoe Myth about welfare requirements breaking families apart by paying more to single parents or not paying as much welfare if two recipients live in the same home.
In discussing the misfits, Hoffer specifically identifies the revolutionary capacity of veterans, very evident in the inter-war period. He argues, however, that it is not the taste of violence or the nihilism of returning from war that makes veterans likely to join mass movements, but the break in their civilian routine. Returning soldiers struggle to get back in the rhythm of civilian life and become temporary misfits. And so the passage from war to peace is actually more important for an established order than going from peace to war.
Minorities are also fertile ground for converts to mass movements. But not all minorities. Minorities who are solidly a member of their group and have no interest in assimilation are usually conservative. But minorities who want to assimilate don't find the same community in their minority group as the others, and also cannot find it in the group they try to assimilate into. And so, "orthodox Jews are less frustrated than emancipated Jew[s]," and "The segregated Negro in the South is less frustrated than the nonsegregated Negro in the North."
Hoffer also discusses Jews, Zionism, and the Holocaust frequently throughout the book. He identifies Zionism as a powerful mass movement, which transforms "shopkeepers and brain workers into farmers, laborers and soldiers." He also claims that ghettos protected the Jews of Europe, as they were unified poor in the ghettos, but then totally alone once the ghetto walls came down. They lost the collective bodies they were a part of, but were unable to completely integrate with broader society. This led to Jews becoming the most frustrated individuals in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which led Jews to be easy converts for mass movements in that time. I'm not sure if this is true, but Hoffer says that the most defenseless against Nazi concentration camps were Western European Jews, who faced their tormentors alone, without vital ties to the Jewish community. But those who were tied to a church, a compact political party, or a close knit national group were able to withstand more. "Individualists, whatever their nationality, caved in." This is what makes the Jewish ghetto, in Hoffer's eyes, "more of a fortress than a prison." It created a sense of unity that enabled survival. Yet, the opposite occurred for the Jews when the British thought that they could handle the Jews in Palestine. While the Jew in Europe faced his enemies alone, writes Hoffer, the Jew in Palestine was "not a human atom, but a member of an eternal race, with an immemorable past behind it and a breathtaking future ahead."
III. United Action and Self-Sacrifice
A mass movements will be more successful the more it encourages identification with a collective whole. They have an anti-individualist bias, and their members have more ability to withstand coercion and pressure because of their identification with something larger.
A mass movement also focuses on the future over the present. "It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial or even discreditable, and represents the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral. It reminds me of this tweet I saw: Mis Leading on X: "I broke down today. I can’t understand how people I know can be going to movies, concerts, and conventions whilst a genocide is going on like things are normal, my partner held me as I cried: I understand the woman who lit herself on fire more than I do some of my best friends." / X (twitter.com) That is someone who is in very, very deep. It's just like Hoffer says, "To enjoy oneself is to have truck with the enemy--the present."
The doctrine is also key to promote self-sacrifice. It needs to be vague and unverifiable, and any part of it that is simple needs to be made complicated and obscure by its followers. Everything needs to seem like symbols in a secret message. The mundane becomes imbued with mysticism. The belief in the doctrine is in the heart, not the head, like belief in a plan. It creates a certainty about the future that allows recklessness in the present, and permits the followers of the movement to use any means necessary. Hoffer quotes the official history of the Communist Party: "The power of Marxist-Leninist theory lies in the fact that it enables the Party to find the right orientation in any situation, to understand the inner connection of current events, to foresee their course..."
Fanaticism also promotes self-sacrifice. The fanatic fears compromise, but sees no problem in swinging from one holy cause to another. "His passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached." It is easier for fanatics to be converted to Communism, Fascism, or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal, says Hoffer.
The most potent unifying agent for a mass movement is hatred. Hatred springs more from self-contempt or guilt than any real grievance. This is why, for example, white racists in America hate blacks- because they feel that they have done a grave injustice to black people, and seek to explain it by the innate horribleness of their victim rather than accept their own guilt. In America, we tend to hate each other more than foreigners, which is more common abroad. "The Americans," Hoffer writes," are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners... Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life." The mass movement grants its members a new freedom to hate, lie, bully ,torture, murder, and betray without remorse--it is the freedom from personal responsibility. The member of the mass movement ceases to be an individual and becomes part of a whole, which can justify all sorts of conduct.
Hoffer also discusses persuasion and coercion as tools used for and against mass movements. He says that a mass movement needs both, but that coercion is the more important of the two. A mass movement can be stopped by force, but the force needs to be "ruthless and persistent." And that requires really another mass movement to be using the force, since no one will use ruthless and persistent force without fanatical conviction.
A mass movement also needs a leader to be unified. The leader does not need to be of great intellect, noble character, or particularly original. Instead, the most important qualities are audacity, fanatical faith, awareness of the importance of a close-knit collectivity, and above all the ability to evoke fervent devotion in a group of able lieutenants. Some other things that help are faith in destiny or luck, capacity for passionate hatred, cunning estimate of human nature, delight in symbols, an iron will, and a joy in defiance.
IV. Beginning and End
Mass movements do not arise until the prevailing order has been discredited. Those who discredit that old order are men of words. They usher in the fanatics, who bring the movement to a violent fever-pitch, and use the words only as a fig leaf to cover their coercion. After them come the men of action to consolidate and administer whatever is left. These are generals, industrialists, landowners, and businessmen, and they are latecomers to the movement. "The most strenuous effort of the early phase of every nationalist movement consists in convincing and winning over these future pillars of patriotism." To sum up: "A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics, and consolidated by men of action."
Men of words can not only discredit the old order, but give legitimacy to the new order. A movement survives by either eliminating the intelligentsia or coopting them completely. "Where all learned men are clergymen, the church is unassailable. Where all learned men are bureaucrats or where education gives a man an acknowledged superior status, the prevailing order is likely to be free from movements of protest." This agrees with the common idea that the most dangerous thing for a regime is a glut of under-employed, over-educated people, dissatisfied with their lot. Men of words are the ones most disappointed by a revolution, since the fanatics usually depart from their words. It sort of reminded me of the quote from Rep. Thomas Massie: "All this time, I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas—they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race." It sort of sums up the classic phenomenon of a revolution or mass movement based on ideology; the original proponents of the ideology eventually have to reckon with the fact that most people just don't care about ideologies at all, let alone their specific one. They just support a crazy guy so they can see shit burn. Hoffer puts it better:
It is not the wickedness of the old regime they rise against but its weakness; not its oppression, but its failure to hammer them together into one solid, mighty whole. The persuasiveneness of the demagogue lies not so much in convincing people of the vileness of the established order as in demonstrating its helpless incompetence.
The fanatics come from the ranks of the noncreative men of words. They cannot find fulfillment in their creative work like the man of words can. The man of words does not take action because he is fulfilled in the present by his words. The fanatic can find no fulfillment, and seeks to make things happen. The fanatics include men like Marat, Robespierre, Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler. Men with literary and artistic ambitions that they could not realize seem particularly dangerous. These are the guys who take a movement and bring it to its maximum and most intense.
The fanatics are followed by men of power. They are the ones who take over an "arrived" movement, seeking to sustain its unity.
Conclusion
This is a great book. A must-read. I wish I had read it sooner.
Miscellaneous:
- These movements would have been the Sons of Liberty in the American Revolution, the Nazis, or the MAGA movement today, and so on. They are not good or bad, just revolutionary.
- At one point, Hoffer says that the masses in China are unrebellious, which I don't understand since he was published right after the Chinese Communist Revolution.
- I also think he is dead wrong about "millions of Europeans allowed themselves to be led into annihilation camps and gas chambers, knowing beyond doubt that they were being led to death," since it is known that most people didn't know they were being led to death, and most people weren't killed in gas chambers. But I don't know how you would even get good information on this in 1951, so I will give Hoffer a pass.
- Hoffer says that part of the reason immigrants assimilated so well in America's past is because they were the lowest and the poorest from the countries they emigrated from, and if they had been superior, the USA would have ended up "a mosaic of lingual and cultural groups."
- Hoffer identifies an "active" stage of a mass movement, in which there is very little intellectual production. France in the Napoleonic Era, Nazi Germany, etc. But he says this is usually bounded by an era of great intellectual production before and after. After, analyzing what happened and breaking from the spell of the movement, and before, when the old order was weak and spawning thought about what would replace it. But this was not the most clear to me. He says there is a burst of creativity after either the failure or success of the movement because of "the abrupt relaxation of collective discipline and the liberation of the individual from the stifling atmosphere of blind faith and the disdain of his self and the present." The fervor of the active phase drains those in it of creative energy and subordinates their energies to the advancement of the movement.
- The thing in my mind throughout the book was the TeaParty/MAGA movement, of which I imagine men of words being various people from 2009-2016, Trump being the foremost among the fanatics, and now potentially transitioning leadership to men of action.
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