The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

Hoffer notes the “monstrous incongruity” between a mass movement’s professed ideals and the behavior of its true believers (11), which speaks to The Irrelevance of Doctrine. The “ivied maidens” and “garlanded youths” who wave flags and march in parades are often the same people who terrorize a mass movement’s unfortunate victims.

“In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat.”

There are two key elements to this quotation. First, Hoffer argues that the typical true believer acts on a desire to escape individual existence, which amounts to “running away” from oneself. Second, the flight from individuality means that the true believer will become absorbed into a collective and thereby adopt its dichotomous worldview in which neighbors are either comrades or enemies

“The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.”

True believers seek meaning in surrendering themselves to a cause, which reflects The Appeal of United Action and Self-Sacrifice. They regard surrender as an act of selflessness. Ironically, this new attachment to something they perceive as selfless makes them feel better about themselves. Although this enhanced self-worth comes entirely from membership, it has the paradoxical effect of intensifying the true believer’s vanity.

“Slaves are poor; yet where slavery is widespread and long-established, there is little likelihood for the rise of a mass movement.”

Slave societies seldom produce mass movements because the condition of being enslaved precludes hope. Likewise, the close-knit enslaved community, where everyone shares equally in misery, forestalls individual frustration in all except those who once tasted freedom. Here Hoffer explains, for instance, one reason why the Western Hemisphere, between the 16th and 19th centuries, witnessed so few slave rebellions. This quotation also supports Hoffer’s contention that poverty is not an automatic indicator of receptiveness to the proselytization of a mass movement.

“In the rest of the world where communism is still a struggling movement, it does all it can to disrupt the family and discredit national, racial and religious ties.”

Hoffer argues that the “unified poor,” those with strong familial or tribal structures, are less susceptible to mass movements than those who experience frustration and live more isolated lives. As an ideology, communism rejects “national, racial, and religious ties,” but if it is to mold true believers and succeed as a mass movement, it also must obliterate the individual’s connection to family. Hoffer devotes more than ten pages to an analysis of the relationship between disruptive mass movements and a society’s most natural corporate structure. Where kinship is strong, mass movements fail.

“It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises.”

Hoffer contends that a mass movement’s likelihood of success has little to do with its specific doctrine or program, emphasizing The Irrelevance of Doctrine to a movement’s success. This does not mean that the doctrines of all mass movements contain equal shares of truth, or that their programs pursue equally realistic goals. It does mean, however, that truth and realism have no direct bearing on the movement’s prospects. If a society overflows with frustrated individuals, and if a mass movement can offer escape from that frustration, then the movement’s specific doctrines and programs become secondary.

“Thus it seems that the passage from war to peace is more critical for an established order than the passage from peace to war.”

An army is a stable corporate structure. Demobilization results in an immediate disintegration of that structure, leaving many former soldiers feeling like “temporary misfits” as they struggle to reintegrate into civilian life (47). This can be a dangerous time for a society. If returning soldiers lack a corporate structure such as that a strong family provides, or if they fail to find meaning in their individual peacetime pursuits, they become susceptible to mass movements. This example serves as a reminder of The Role of Frustration in creating adherents to mass movements.

“The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice.”

This is the opening sentence of Part 3. It is also the clearest statement of the book’s major theme, which doubles as Part 3’s title: “United Action and Self-Sacrifice.” In the ensuing sentence, Hoffer emphasizes The Appeal of United Action and Self-Sacrifice by contrasting them with other factors he deems less important: “When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice” (58).

“When the Middle Ages returned for a brief decade in our day, they caught the Jew without his ancient defenses and crushed him.”

The modern-day “Middle Ages” refers to the era of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich in Germany, which had passed into history only six years before The True Believer was published (See: Background). The European Jew’s “ancient defenses” included “the ghetto of the Middle Ages,” which was “more a fortress than a prison,” for it preserved a strong Jewish community that in turn fostered a “sense of unity and utmost distinctness” (64). By contrast, the partially assimilated Jews of 20th-century Europe lived a more atomized existence, which left them defenseless against history’s most notorious mass movement.

“The same Russians who cringe and crawl before Stalin’s secret police displayed unsurpassed courage when facing—singly or in a group—the invading Nazis.”

This quotation describes what some might regard as contradictory behavior. As a true believer, the cringing Communist coward somehow exhibits bravery in defense of the Soviet motherland. Hoffer explains that the “Russian feels a mere individual” when confronted by the regime’s secret police, but the Russian draws strength from unified action and self-sacrifice while serving in the Red Army and fighting the Germans (65).

“To lose one’s life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much.”

A mass movement succeeds in part because it offers frustrated true believers a glorious future to contrast with an irredeemable present. Since it makes no sense to die for something one might otherwise tangibly enjoy, mass movements defer their goals indefinitely. The glorious future must never become the glorious present—otherwise, the true believer’s rationale for united action and self-sacrifice will vanish.

“It is not altogether absurd that people should be ready to die for a button, a flag, a word, an opinion, a myth and so on. It is on the contrary the least reasonable thing to give one’s life for something palpably worth having.”

This relates to Quotation #12 above in that it explains why mass movements make war on the present. In surrendering themselves to a cause, true believers abandon their individual existence. They seek united action and self-sacrifice, but their willingness to sacrifice themselves “cannot be a manifestation of tangible self-interest” (78). The contradiction would amount to an absurdity: to die for something that makes life worth living. Hence, the mass movement concentrates the true believer’s desire for united action and self-sacrifice on symbols and abstractions.

“The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude.”

Hoffer regards the true believer’s craving for united action and self-sacrifice as the central feature of all mass movements, so the fanatic need only believe that the movement’s doctrine contains “the one and only truth” (80). Persuasion is unnecessary and even counterproductive, for the true believer has no desire to exercise individual judgment. This passage speaks to The Irrelevance of Doctrine.

“Though they seem to be at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end.”

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this quotation for understanding how Hoffer’s argument relates to political extremism. In the 20th century, fascists and communists engaged one another in history’s most brutal war. When viewed through the traditional lens of “right” and “left,” they are indeed opposites. Hoffer, however, regards political ideologies as secondary to the meaning and success of mass movements. For Hoffer, all fanatics “are neighbors and almost of one family” (86).

“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”

Mass movements “rise and spread” when they can find a “devil” worthy of hatred. Hitler once remarked that if the Nazis did not have the Jew to serve as the demonic object of their collective hatred, they “should have then to invent him” (91). In a short book, Hoffer devotes 10 pages to hatred as a unifying agent.

“Even when men league themselves mightily together to promote tolerance and peace on earth, they are likely to be violently intolerant toward those not of like mind.”

Hoffer argues that united action and self-sacrifice, by their very natures, “produce a facility for hating” (99). When fanatics fancy themselves agents of “tolerance and peace on earth,” it makes no difference that “tolerance and peace on earth” are, by themselves, admirable ideals. In the hands of the true believer, “tolerance and peace on earth” become weapons. The smug and self-satisfied agents of “tolerance and peace on earth” feel empowered to persecute. Hoffer concludes, as a general rule of mass movements, that the “surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance” (99).

“The hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness.”

The true believer’s claim to “selflessness” rests on having surrendered a presumably selfish individual existence. That original surrender, however, came with an abdication of responsibility. Meanwhile, the true believer’s claim to “selflessness” produced a self-satisfied conceit that developed into the “pride and arrogance” described in Quotation #17 above (99). The fanatic’s disavowal of responsibility left pride and arrogance unbridled. This accounts for the extreme violence that characterizes the active phases of mass movements. In short, Hoffer argues that the selfish are less hateful, cruel, venomous, and ruthless than the fanatically selfless true believers.

“‘Not to reason why’ is considered by all mass movements the mark of a strong and generous spirit.”

Mass movements demand “blind obedience,” often to an omnipotent leader but always to the cause (117). Having relinquished their individual lives, true believers find no difficulty in such obedience. In fact, they crave it, which is why they elevate obedience to the status of a virtue, “the mark of a strong and generous spirit.” The moment they begin to think for themselves, investigate problems, and question mandates from above is the moment they cease to be true believers.

“The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves.”

Here Hoffer connects his analysis of leadership as a unifying agent with his earlier contention (see Quotation #3 above) that fanatics join mass movements because they are “running away” from themselves (14). This does not mean that anyone peddling a message of self-abdication could succeed as a mass movement’s leader, but it does mean that a leader must know how to channel the true believer’s personal frustration into a program of united action and self-sacrifice.

“Thorough unification, whether brought about by spontaneous surrender, persuasion, coercion, necessity or ingrained habit, or a combination of these, tends to intensify the inclinations and attitudes which promote unity.”

In Chapter 14, Hoffer identifies a number of unifying agents, including hatred, imitation, and suspicion. Here he argues that the very fact of unification itself “tends to intensify” these same “inclinations and attitudes” that produced unity in the first place. This seems strange because the true believer, having joined the mass movement, no longer feels frustrated. Hoffer explains that the new unified true believer might experience diminished frustration, but this cannot lead to inner peace or self-confidence because the entire self has been swallowed up in the movement, so the true believer “has no choice” but to “cling to the collective body or like a fallen leaf wither and fade” (127). Clinging to the movement means continuing to hate, imitate, and suspect.

“When his superior status is suitably acknowledged by those in power, the man of words usually finds all kinds of lofty reasons for siding with the strong against the weak.”

The “man of words” is an intellectual, perhaps a priest or a professor, whose talent for crafting arguments can be useful to an established regime provided the regime’s leaders or agents are willing to gratify the intellectual’s enormous vanity. When the regime fails to acknowledge the intellectual’s “superior status,” the intellectual often grows disillusioned and frustrated with the status quo, turning his or her talents of articulation to the cause of upsetting the prevailing order. The “man of words” never leads a mass movement, for the intellectual remains an individual at heart, vain and arrogant perhaps but sincerely desirous of justice. In the history of mass movements, the “man of words” merely undermines the established regime and thus paves the way for the movement’s fanatic-led active phase.

“When we debunk a fanatical faith or prejudice, we do not strike at the root of fanaticism.”

Hoffer again refers to the “man of words,” the intellectual who paves the way for a mass movement. Whether by reason or mockery, the intellectual helps “debunk a fanatical faith or prejudice” associated with the prevailing order. In doing so, however, the intellectual “unwittingly creates” a void that other fanatics rush to fill (140).

“A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics, and consolidated by men of action.”

The opening sentence of Chapter 17 encapsulates the first three chapters of Part 4. These three types—men of words, fanatics, and men of action—are the subjects of Chapters 15, 16, and 17, respectively. The entire book focuses on a mass movement’s active phase, which corresponds with the reign of the fanatic, so Hoffer in Part 4 devotes more space to the men of words who pave the way for mass movements, as well as the men of action who stabilize them.