The True Believer

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The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements ISBN 0-06-050591-5 was Eric Hoffer's first and most successful book, published in 1951. It discusses the psychological causes of fanaticism.

The premise of the book is as follows: Mass movements spread by promising a glorious future, and they need people to be willing to sacrifice all for that future, including themselves and others. To do that, they need to devalue both the past and the present. Therefore, mass movements appeal to the frustrated; people who are dissatisfied with their current state, but are capable of a strong belief in the future and to people who want to escape a flawed self by creating an imaginary self and joining a compact collective whole to escape themselves. Some categories of such people are the poor, the misfits, the creative thwarted in their endeavors, the inordinately selfish, the ambitious facing unlimited opportunities, minorities, the bored, and sinners. The book also explores the behavior of mass movements once they become established (or leave the "active phase").

The True Believer evaluates (and sometimes disparages) Communists, Fascists, Nationalists, and early Christians. Part of Hoffer's thesis is that movements are interchangeable and that fanatics will often flip from one movement to another.

With their collapse of a communal framework people can no longer defeat the feelings of insecurity and uncertainty by belonging to a compact whole. If the isolated individual lacks vast opportunities for personal advancement, development of talents, and action (such as those found on a frontier), he will seek substitutes. These substitutes would be pride instead of self-confidence, memberships in a collective whole like a mass movement, absolute certainty instead of understanding.

Contents 1 Perennial appeal 2 Preface to The True Believer 3 Table of contents 4 External links 5 See also

[edit] Perennial appeal

There have been 23 editions of The True Believer published between 1951 and 2002. A library of 4 million volumes may have 15 copies. It is considered a classic of Social Psychology.

[edit] Preface to The True Believer

This book deals with some peculiarities common to all mass movements, be they religious movements, social revolutions or nationalist movements. It does not maintain that all movements are identical, but that they share certain essential characteristics which give them a family likeness.

All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.

All movements, however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw their early adherents from the same types of humanity; they all appeal to the same types of mind.

Though there are obvious differences between the fanatical Moslem, the fanatical nationalist, the fanatical Communist, and the fanatical Nazi, it is yet true that the fanaticism which animates them may be viewed and treated as one. The same is true of the force which drives them on to expansion and world dominion. There is a certain uniformity in all types of dedication, of faith, of pursuit of power, of unity and of self-sacrifice. There are vast differences in the contents of holy causes and doctrines, but a certain uniformity in factors which make them effective. He who, like Pascal, finds precise reasons for the effectiveness of Christian doctrine has also found the reasons for the effectiveness of Communist, Nazi and nationalist doctrine. However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.

This book concerns itself chiefly with the active, revivalist phase of mass movements. This phase is dominated by the true believer - the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause - and an attempt is made to trace his genesis and outline his nature. As an aid in this effort, use is made of a working hypothesis. Starting out from the fact that the frustrated* predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.

To test the validity of these assumptions, it was necessary to inquire into the ills that afflict the frustrated, how they react against them, the degree to which these reactions correspond to the responses of the true believer, and, finally, the manner in which these reactions can facilitate the rise and spread of a mass movement. It was also necessary to examine the practices of contemporary movements, where successful techniques of conversion had been perfected, and applied, in order to discover whether they corroborate the view that a proselytizing mass movement deliberately fosters in its adherents a frustrated state of mind, and that it automatically advances its interest when it seconds the propensities of the frustrated.

It is necessary for most of us these days to have some insight into the motives and responses of the true believer. For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.

It is perhaps not superfluous to add a word of caution. When we speak of the family likeness of mass movements, we use the word “family” in a taxonomical sense. The tomato and the nightshade are of the same family, the Solanaceae. Though the one is nutritious and the other poisonous, they have many morphological, anatomical and physiological traits in common so that even the non-botanist senses a family likeness. The assumption that mass movements have many traits in common does not imply that all movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. The book passes no judgements, and expresses no preferences. It merely tries to explain; and the explanations - all of them theories - are in the nature of suggestions and arguments even when they are stated in what seems a categorical tone. I can do no better than quote Montaigne: “All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.”

• The Word “frustrated” is not used in this book as a clinical term. It denotes here people who, for one reason or another, feel that their lives are spoiled or wasted.

[edit] Table of contents

As it appears in the Harper and Row edition, Perennial Library imprint (160 pages).

• Preface
• PART ONE. THE APPEAL OF MASS MOVEMENTS
  • 1. The Desire for Change
  • 2. The Desire for Substitutes
  • 3. The Interchangeability of Mass Movements
• PART TWO. THE POTENTIAL CONVERTS
  • 4. The Role of the Undesirables in Human Affairs
  • 5. The Poor
    • The New Poor
    • The Abjectly Poor
    • The Free Poor
    • The Creative Poor
    • The Unified Poor
  • 6. Misfits
  • 7. The Inordinately Selfish
  • 8. The Ambitious Facing Unlimited Opportunities
  • 9. Minorities
  • 10. The Bored
  • 11. The Sinners
• PART THREE. UNITED ACTION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
  • 12. Preface
  • 13. Factors Promoting Self-sacrifice
    • Identification With a Collective Whole
    • Make-believe
    • Deprecation of the Present
    • "Things Which Are Not"
    • Doctrine
    • Fanaticism
    • Mass Movements and Armies
  • 14. Unifying Agents
    • Hatred
    • Imitation
    • Persuasion and Coercion
    • Leadership
    • Action
    • Suspicion
    • The Effects of Unification
• PART FOUR. BEGINNING AND END
  • 15. Men of Words
  • 16. The Fanatic
  • 17. The Practical Men of Action
  • 18. Good and Bad Mass Movements
    • The Unattractiveness and Sterility of the Active Phase
    • Some Factors Which Determine the Length of the Active Phase
    • Useful Mass Movements
• Notes

[edit] External links

• The True Believer Revisited by Tim Madigan from Philosophy Now a magazine of ideas Issue 34.

[edit] See also

• True believer syndrome related but not identical to the subject of the book