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Why do ordinary people hand over their whole lives to a cause? Eric Hoffer asked that question in 1951, and this lecture from Academy of Ideas walks through his answer. Drawing on The True Believer, it shows that mass movements — whether religious, political, or nationalist — all run on the same fuel: frustration, a lost sense of purpose, and the craving to escape an unwanted self. Hoffer traced how intellectuals tear down old beliefs, how leaders then unite the faithful against a common enemy, and why people rarely die for what they have — only for what they wish to become. It is a chilling and still-timely anatomy of fanaticism.
Full Video Transcript
In 1951, Eric Hoffer, a philosopher from San Francisco, published a book titled The True Believer.
In it, he provided a fascinating analysis of mass movements, which will be the topic of this lecture.
The first half of the 20th century experienced a multitude of major mass movements from Nazism in Germany to the communist movements of China and Russia.
However, recently, the world has not been witness to mass movements of such monumental significance.
The Arab Spring, which began in late 2010, is an example of a recent mass movement, yet its size and significance is dwarfed by the 20th century mass movements in Germany, China, and Russia.
The Occupy Wall Street movement may come to mind as a recent mass movement in the Western world, but although it garnered some attention, it soon flickered into oblivion without achieving any noteworthy change.
change. The late 20th and early 21st centuries, especially in the western world, were largely
immune to mass movements of much significance. That being said, at some point in the future the
world will likely experience another major mass movement which will change the course of history.
Examining the work of Hoffer can thus grant us insight into one of the sculpting factors of
civilization, as well as into the nature of human beings. Mass movements can take many forms. Some
Some are driven by religious ideas, other by political, social or nationalistic ideas.
Hoffer, however, believed that whatever their type, all mass movements share certain common
characteristics.
All mass movements, he wrote, generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity
for united action.
All of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm,
fervent hope, hatred and intolerance.
All of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of
All of them demand blind faith and single-hearted allegiance.
Central to Hoffer’s work is his examination of the type of person most prone to take part in a mass movement,
the person Hoffer labeled the true believer.
The true believer is a person who joins the movement in its early and most active stages.
Hoffer defined the true believer as the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause.
In his analysis of the true believer,
Hoffer repeatedly emphasized that they are individuals characterized by a deep-seated
frustration with life. This frustration arises from a lack of purpose and meaning in life,
as well as feelings of rejection and loneliness. According to Hoffer, such individuals do not
attribute their failures to their own shortcomings, but instead blame all their inadequacies on the
state of society. Under the conviction that their lives would be fulfilled and joyous if only
society were different, the true believer goes to work with impassioned energy and attempts
to transform the society they believe is the source of their misery.
Hoffer noted that this psychological tendency, to view the state of society as responsible
for one’s lot in life, is not confined to the frustrated individual.
Even those who live fulfilling lives will often see their success as contingent on the
current state of society, and not wholly the result of one’s character and willpower.
There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves.
The difference is that those satisfied with their lot in life typically want to preserve
the current state of society, while those disappointed with their life will often favor
the radical change promised by a mass movement.
But not all who are disappointed with their lot in life will be attracted to mass movements.
In addition to disappointment, there must be at least a flicker of hope that things
can be better.
Hoffer suggested that those born into abject poverty
and who struggle each day just to survive
lack the necessary hope of a better existence
and thus do not believe that even a revolutionary mass movement
could change their terrible lot in life.
Instead of coming from the worst off in a society,
true believers usually come from a group Hoffer called the new poor.
It is usually those whose poverty is relatively recent,
the new poor, Hoffer wrote,
who throb with the ferments of frustration.
The memory of better things is as fire in their veins.
Another common characteristic of the true believer is that they are usually people who lack creativity.
Hoffer pointed out that those who spend their days consumed in a state of creative flow,
be they painters, writers, scientists, or artisans, even if they are poor,
are very unlikely to be attracted to a mass movement.
Rather, creativity acts as an antidote to the frustrations that can arise from poverty,
instilling in the creative individual inner joy despite external hardships.
Furthermore, creative activity also staves off boredom, or as Hoffer put it,
There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom.
In their earliest stages, mass movements are more likely to find sympathizers and support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed.
To a deliberate fomentor of mass upheavals, the report that people are bored stiff should be at least as encouraging as that they are suffering from intolerable economic or political abuses.
While the existence of true believers is a necessary requirement for mass movements, Hoffer believed that the intellectuals of a society also have an important role to play in their emergence.
The intellectuals must lay the groundwork of a mass movement, so to speak, and Hoffer identified four ways that they typically do this.
do this. By discrediting prevailing creeds and institutions, and detaching from them
the allegiance of the people. By indirectly creating a hunger for faith in the hearts
of those who cannot live without it, so that when the new faith is preached, it finds an
eager response among the disillusioned masses. By furnishing the doctrine and the slogans
of the new faith, by undermining the convictions of the better people, those who can get along
without faith, so that when the new fanaticism makes its appearance, they are without the
capacity to resist it.
The role of the intellectuals is so important that it is only
after they have done their work that the great leader can enter,
prey on the emotions of the disenchanted, and shape them into the cohesive whole
which is characteristic of all mass movements.
Once the stage is set, wrote Hoffer, the presence of an outstanding leader
is indispensable. Without him there will be no movement.
One of the main reasons why an outstanding leader is indispensable for
a mass movement
is that the leader unifies potential true believers together into a crowd.
Hoffer pointed out that the most utilized and effective way to do this
is to arouse hatred in the crowd by creating a common enemy,
whether real or fictional, who the leader blames for all the failures and
frustrations experienced by true believers.
This hatred pulls the true believers together, as nothing instills the feeling
of brotherly love better than a common enemy.
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents.
It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self,
makes him oblivious of his will and future,
frees him of his jealousies and self-seeking.
He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass.
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god,
but never without belief in the devil.
Interestingly, Hoffer was adamant in his assertion that individuals join mass movements
not for reasons of self-advancement, but for what he called self-renouncement.
A mass movement, particularly in its active revivalist phase,
appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self,
but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.
A mass movement attracts and holds a following,
not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement,
but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.
Those who crave self-renunciation are those who cannot envision
creating a better life for themselves. Hence, what they desire is not freedom, for to be free means
that one is responsible for one’s life. On the contrary, Hoffer asserted that those who join
mass movements desire to escape what they feel as the overwhelming burden of freedom.
They want freedom from the fearful burden of free choice, Hoffer wrote, freedom from the arduous
responsibility of realizing their ineffectual selves and shouldering the blame for the blemished
product. They do not want freedom of conscience but faith, blind authoritarian faith. 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. This desire and willingness to
sacrifice virtually all of one’s freedoms and in many cases even one’s life to a cause provides
the leaders of a mass movement with the capability of instituting significant social change. However,
However, with such change, there are always people who are made significantly worse off
by the mass movement.
The question arises as to why those who are negatively affected by mass movements seldom
fight to protect the state of affairs they favor with the same passion as those who fight
for change, and we will conclude this lecture with Hoffer’s thought-provoking answer.
One of the rules that emerges from a consideration of the factors that promote self-sacrifice
is that we are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have
and to be.
It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have something worth fighting
for, they do not feel like fighting.
People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interests,
nor for their country, nor for a holy cause.
Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
Source: Academy of Ideas