Hoffer, Eric. The
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.
Anyone would expect, a disruption of the family, whatever
its causes, fosters automatically a collective spirit and creates a
responsiveness to the appeal of mass movements.
(36)
It is difficult to see how, even under optimal economic and
political conditions, a continent strewn with the odds and ends of families
could settle into a normal conservative social pattern. (36)
The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing West
offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual
frustration. All the advantages brought
by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing
anonymity of a communal existence. Even
when the Westernized native attains personal success – becomes rich, or masters
a respected profession – he is not happy.
(37)
Experience shows that production is at its best when the
workers feel and shows that production is at its best when the workers feel and
act as members of a team. Any policy
that disturbs and tears apart the team is bound to cause severe trouble. (39)
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by
its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties,
barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by
conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and
abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their
ineffectual selves – and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a
closely knit and exultant corporate whole.
(39)
Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of
frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities. When opportunities are apparently unlimited,
there is an inevitable deprecation of the present. (48)
The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of
dying and killing particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades,
music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier
from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and
death. We speak of the theater of war
and of battle scenes. In their battle
orders army leaders invariably remind their soldiers that the eyes of the world
are on them, that their ancestors are watching them and that posterity shall
hear of them. The great general knows
how to conjure an audience out of the sands of the desert and the waves of the
ocean. (66-67)
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a
vivid awareness of an audience – the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come
to the ears of our contemporaries or “of those who are to be.” We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory
self for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic deeds, in
the opinion and imagination of others.
(67)
Common suffering by itself, when not joined with hope, does
not unite nor does it evoke mutual generosity.
(70)
On the other hand, those who reject the present and fix
their eyes and hearts on things to come have a faculty for detecting the embryo
of future danger or advantage in the ripeness of their times. Hence the frustrated individual and the true
believer make better prognosticators than those who have reasoned to want the
preservation of the status quo. (72)
The conservative doubts that the present can be bettered,
and he tries to shape the future in the image of the present. (72)
To the skeptic the present is the sum of all that has been
and shall be. (72-73)
The liberal sees the present as the legitimate offspring of
the past and as constantly growing and developing toward an improved future: to
damage the present is to main the future.
(73)
The radical and the reactionary loathe the present. The see it as an aberration and a
deformity. Both are ready to proceed
ruthlessly and recklessly with the present, and both are hospitable to the idea
of self-sacrifice. (73)
What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as they
decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing
so. Such delight cannot come from the
mere venting of a grievance. There must
be something more – and there is. By
expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated
soften their feeling of failure and isolation.
(74)
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 “something worth fighting for,” they do not feel like
fighting. People who live full,
worth-while 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. (75)
In all ages men have fought most desperately for beautiful
cities yet to be built and gardens yet to be planted. (76)
The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal
to his reason or moral sense. He fears
compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness
of his holy cause. (84)
Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds
are actually crowded together at tone end.
It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never
meet. The fanatics of various hues eye
each other with suspicion and are ready to fly at each other’s throat. But they are neighbors and almost of one
family. They hate each other with the
hatred of brothers. (84)
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical
atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not. The atheist is a religious person. He belives in atheism as though it were a new
religion. He is an atheist with
devoutness and unction. (85)
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 weal and future,
frees him of jealousies and self-seeking.
He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and
coalesce with his like into one flaming mass.
(89)
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God,
but never without belief in a devil. Usually
the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and
tangibility of its devil. (90)
Common hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements. To share a common hatred, with an enemy even,
is to infect him with a feeling of kinship, and thus sap his powers of
resistance. (90-91)
We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with
us as rivals and trespassers. But we
always look for allies when we hate.
(92)
When come these unreasonable hatreds, and why their unifying
effect? They are an expression of a
desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness,
guilt and other shortcomings of the self.
Self-contempt is here transmuted into hatred of others – and there is a
most determined and persistent effort to mask this switch. Obviously, the most effective way of doing
this is to find others, as many as possible, who hate as we do. Here more than anywhere else we need general
consent, and much of our proselytizing consists perhaps in infecting others not
with out brand of faith but with our particular brand of unreasonable
hatred. (92)
Even in the case of a just grievance, our hatred comes less
from a wrong done to us than from the consciousness of our helplessness,
inadequacy and cowardice – in other words from self-contempt. (92)
That the relation between grievance and hatred is not simple
and direct is also seen from the fact that the released hatred is not always
directed against those who wronged us.
Often, when we are wronged by one person, we turn our hatred on a wholly
unrelated person or group. (93)
That hatred springs more from self-contempt than from a
legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a
guilty conscience. (93)
There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with
virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice. That others have a just grievance against us
is a more potent reason for hating them than that we have a just grievance
against them. We do not make people
humble and meek when we show them their guilt and cause them to be ashamed of
themselves. We are more likely to stir
their arrogance and rouse in them a reckless aggressiveness. Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown
the voice of guilt within us. (93)
There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and
act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness. (93)
To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity
is to blunt our hatred for him. (93)
The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is
to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed
depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can
we be indifferent toward them. We must
hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt. (94)
It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably
shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors. That the evil men do lives after them is
partly due to the fact that those who have reason to hate the evil most shape
themselves after it and thus perpetuate it.
(95)
Thus, though hatred is a convenient instrument for
mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come
cheap. We pay for it by losing all or
many of the values we have set out to defend.
(95)
It seems that when we are oppressed by the knowledge of our
worthlessness we do not see ourselves as lower than some and higher than
others, but as lower than the lowest of mankind. We hate then the whole world, and we would
pour our wrath upon the whole of creation.
(96)
There is a deep reassurance for the frustrated in witnessing
the downfall of the fortunate and the disgrace of the righteous. They see in a general downfall an approach to
the brotherhood of all. Chaos, like the
grave, is a haven of equality. Their
burning conviction that there must be a new life and a new order is fueled by
the realization that the old will have to be razed to the ground before the new
can be built. Their clamor for a
millennium is shot through with a hatred for all that exists, and a craving for
the end of the world. (96)
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty
life. Thus people haunted by the
purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating
themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited
opportunities for both. (96)
There is also this: when we renounce the self and become
part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are also
rid of personal responsibility. There is
no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he
is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency
that go with individual judgment. When
we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we
find a new freedom – freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray
without shame and remorse. Herein
undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movement. (98)
The hatred and cruelty which have their source in
selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness
born of selflessness. (98)
When we see the bloodshed, terror and destruction born of
such generous enthusiasms as the love of God, love of Christ, love of a nation,
compassion for the oppressed and so on, we usually blame this shameful
perversion on a cynical, power-hungry leadership. Actually, it is the unification set in motion
by these enthusiasms, rather than the manipulations of a scheming leadership,
that transmutes noble impulses into a reality of hatred and violence. The deindividualization which is a
prerequisite for thorough integration and selfless dedication is also, to a
considerable extent, a process of dehumanization. The torture chamber is a corporate
institution. (98-99)
The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot
force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly
new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates only into minds already open,
and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already
present in the minds of its recipients.
The gifted propagandist brings to a boil ideas and passions already
simmering in the minds of his hearers.
He echoes their innermost feelings.
Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what
they already “know.” (103)
Propaganda by itself succeeds mainly with the
frustrated. Their throbbing fears, hopes
and passions crowd at the portals of their senses and get between them and the
outside world. They cannot see but what
they have already imagined, and it is the music of their own souls they hear in
the impassioned words of the propagandist.
Indeed, it is easier for the frustrated to detect their own imaginings
and hear the echo of their own musings in impassioned double-talk and sonorous
refrains than in precise words joined together with faultless logic. (103)
Propaganda thus serves more to justify ourselves than to
convince others; and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent
our propaganda. (104)
The practice of terror serves the true believe not only to
cow and crush his opponents but also to invigorate and intensify his own
faith. (105)
Fanatical orthodoxy is in all movements a late
development. It comes when the movement
is in full possession of power and can impose its faith by force as well as by
persuasion. (105)
The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass
movement leadership. What counts is the
arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the
singlehanded defiance of the world.
(114)
The total surrender of a distinct self is a prerequisite for
the attainment of both unity and self-sacrifice; and there is probably no more
direct way of realizing this surrender than by inculcating and extolling the
habit of blind obedience. (114)
The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts,
is basically an obedient and submissive person.
(115)
People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a
greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and
self-confident. To the frustrated,
freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from
restraint. (115)
The true believer who succeeds in all he does gains
self-confidence and becomes reconciled with his self and the present. He no longer sees his only salvation in
losing himself in the oneness of a corporate body and in becoming an anonymous
particle with no will, judgment and responsibility of his own. He seeks and finds his salvation in action,
in proving his worth and in asserting his individual superiority. Action cannot lead him to self-realization,
but he readily finds in it self-justification.
If he still hangs on to his faith, it is but to bolster his confidence
and legitimatize his success. Thus the
taste of continuous successful action is fatal to the spirit of
collectivity. A people steeped in action
is likely to be the least religious, the least revolutionary and the least
chauvinist. (120)
There is of course the constant danger that should the
avenues of action be thoroughly blocked by a severe depression or defeat in war
the resulting frustration is likely to be so intense that any proselytizing
mass movement would find the situation ready-made for its propagation. (121)
The awareness of their individual blemishes and shortcomings
inclines the frustrated to detect ill will and meanness in their fellow
men. Self-contempt, however vague,
sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the
blemishes we hide in ourselves. Thus
when the frustrated congregate in a mass movement, the air is heavy-laden with
suspicion. There is prying and spying,
tense watching and a tense awareness of being watched (121).
The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust
within the ranks leads not to dissension but to strict conformity. Knowing themselves continually watched, the
faithful strive to escape suspicion by adhering zealously to prescribed
behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy
is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith. (121)
Fear of one’s neighbors, one’s friends and even one’s
relatives seems to be the rule within all mass movements. Now and then innocent people are deliberately
accused and sacrificed in order to keep suspicion alive. Suspicion is given a sharp edge by
associating all opposition within the ranks with the enemy threatening the
movement from without. This enemy – the
indispensable devil of every mass movement – is omnipresent. He plots both outside and inside the ranks of
the faithful. It is his voice that
speaks through the mouth of the dissenter, and the deviationists are his
stooges. If anything goes wrong within
the movement, it is his doing. It is the
sacred duty of the true believer to be suspicious. He must be constantly on the lookout for
saboteurs, spies and traitors. (122)
Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of
the faithful for each other. The loyalty
of the true believer is to the whole – the church, party, nation – and not to
his fellow true believer. True loyalty
between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free
society. (122)
It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement
that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the
moral sense which cramps and restrains our nature. (123)
The frustrated individual still has a choice: he can find a new life not only by becoming
part of a corporate body but also by changing his environment or by throwing
himself wholeheartedly into some absorbing undertaking. The unified individual, on the other hand,
has not choice. He must cling to the
collective body or like a fallen leaf wither and fade. (125)
It is of interest to note
the means by which a mass movement accentuates and perpetuates the individual
incompleteness of its adherents. By
elevating dogma above reason, the individual’s intelligence is prevented from
becoming self-reliant. Economic
dependence is maintained by centralizing economic power and by a deliberately
created scarcity of the necessities of life.
Social self-sufficiency is discouraged by crowded housing or communal
quarters, and by enforced daily participation in public functions. Ruthless censorship of literature, art, music
and science prevents even the creative few from living self-sufficient
lives. The inculcated devotions to
church, party, country, leader and creed also perpetuate a state of
incompleteness. For every devotion is a
socket which demands the fitting in of a complementary part from without. (125)
Thus people raised in the atmosphere of a mass movement are
fashioned into incomplete and dependent human beings even when they have within
themselves the making of self-sufficient entities. Though strangers to frustration and without a
grievance, they will yet exhibit the peculiarities of people who crave to lose
themselves and be rid of an existence that is irrevocably spoiled. (125)
Things are different in the case of the typical man of words. The masses listen to him because they know
that his words, however urgent, cannot have immediate results. The authorities either ignore him or use mild
methods to muzzle him. Thus
imperceptibly the man of words undermines established institutions, discredits
those in power, weakens prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and sets the stage
for the rise of a mass movement. (130)
There is apparently an irremediable insecurity at the core
of every intellectual, be he noncreative or creative. Even the most gifted and prolific seem to
live a life of eternal self-doubting and have to prove their worth anew each
day. (131)
It is true that once the man of words formulates a
philosophy and a program, he is likely to stand by them and be immune to
blandishments and enticements. (132)
It is the deep-seated craving of the man of words for an
exalted status which makes him oversensitive to any humiliation imposed on the
class or community (racial, lingual or religious) to which he belongs however
loosely. (137)
The genuine man of words himself can get along without faith
in absolutes. He values the search for
truth as much as truth itself. He
delights in the clash of thought and in the give-and-take of controversy. If he formulates a philosophy and a doctrine,
they are more and exhibition of brilliance and an exercise in dialectics than a
program of action and the tenets of a faith.
His vanity, it is true, often prompts him to defend his speculations
with savagery and even venom; but his appeal is usually to reason and not to
faith. (139)
When the old order begins to fall apart, many of the
vociferous men of words, who prayed so long for the day, are in a funk. The first glimpse of the face of anarchy
frightens them out of their wits. They
forget all they said about the “poor simple folk” and run for help to strong
men of action – princes, generals, administrators, bankers, landowners – who
know how to deal with the rabble and how to stem the tide of chaos. (142)
Not so the fanatic.
Chaos is his element. When the
old order begins to crack, he wades in with all his might and recklessness to
blow the whole hated present to high heaven.
He glories in the sight of a world coming to a sudden end. To hell with reforms! All that already exists is rubbish, and there
is no sense in reforming rubbish. He
justifies his will to anarchy with the plausible assertion that there can be no
new beginning so long as the old clutters the landscape. He shoves aside the frightened men of words,
if they are still around, though he continues to extol their doctrines and
mouth their slogans. He alone knows the
innermost craving of the masses in action:
the craving for communion, for the mustering of the host, for the
dissolution of cursed individuality in the majesty and grandeur of a mighty
whole. Posterity is king; and woe to
those, inside and outside the movement, who hug and hang on to the
present. (143)
The man who wants to write a great book, paint a great
picture, create an architectural masterpiece, become a great scientist, and
knows that never in all eternity will he be able to realize this, his innermost
desire, can find no peace in a stable social order – old or new. He sees his life as irrevocably spoiled and
the world perpetually out of joint. He
feels at home only in a state of chaos.
Even when he submits to or imposes an iron discipline, he is but
submitting to or shaping the indispensable instrument for attaining a state of
eternal flux, eternal becoming. Only
when engaged in change does he have a sense of freedom and the feeling that he
is growing and developing (144).
The creative man of words is ill at ease in the atmosphere
of an active movement. He feels that its
whirl and passion sap his creative energies.
So long as he is conscious of the creative flow within him, he will not
find fulfillment in leading millions and in winning victories. The result is that, once the movement starts
rolling, he either retires voluntarily or is pushed aside. Moreover, since the genuine man of words can
never wholeheartedly and for long suppress his critical faculty, he is
inevitably cast into the role of heretic.
Thus unless the creative man of words stifles the newborn movement by
allying himself with practical men of action or unless he dies at the right
moment, he is likely to end up either a shunned recluse or in exile or facing a
firing squad. (144-145)