The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Eric Hoffer, 1951
HarperCollins
177 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060505912
Summary
This best-selling analysis of fanaticism and mass movements is an important addition to the field of sociology.
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences. Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 25, 1902
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Death—May 21, 1983
• Where—San Francisco, California
• Awards—Presidential Medal of Freedom—February, 1983
Eric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. In 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award was established in his honor with permission granted by the Eric Hoffer Estate in 2005.
Early life
Hoffer was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1902 (or possibly 1898), the son of Knut and Elsa Hoffer, immigrants from Alsace. By the age of five, he could read in both German and English. When he was age five, his mother fell down a flight of stairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons two years later, but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma. ("I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall. I lost my sight and for a time my memory"). After his mother's death he was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German woman named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.
Hoffer was a young man when his father, a cabinetmaker, died. The cabinetmaker's union paid for the funeral and gave Hoffer a little over three hundred dollars. Sensing that warm Los Angeles was the best place for a poor man, Hoffer took a bus there in 1920. He spent the next 10 years on Los Angeles' skid row, reading, occasionally writing, and working odd jobs. On one such job, selling oranges door-to-door, he discovered he was a natural salesman and could easily make good money. Uncomfortable with this discovery, he quit after one day
In 1931, he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but the attempt failed as he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and became a migrant worker. Following the harvests along the length of California, he collected library cards for each town near the fields where he worked and, living by preference, "between the books and the brothels." A seminal event for Hoffer occurred in the mountains where he had gone in search of gold. Snowed in for the winter, he read The Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's book impressed Hoffer deeply, and he often made reference to its importance for him. He also developed a great respect for America's underclass, which, he declared, was "lumpy with talent."
Hoffer was in San Francisco by 1941. He attempted to enlist in the Armed forces there in 1942 but was rejected because of a hernia. Wanting to contribute to the war effort, he found ample opportunity as a longshoreman on the docks of The Embarcadero. It was there he felt at home and finally settled down. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while earning a living loading and unloading ships. He continued this work until he retired at age 65.
Writings
Hoffer's first work was The True Believer, a landmark explanation of fanaticism and mass movements. The Ordeal of Change is also a literary favorite. In 1970 he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hoffer was a charismatic individual and persuasive public speaker. Despite authoring 10 books and a newspaper column, in retirement Hoffer continued his robust life of the mind, thinking and writing alone, in an apartment near San Francisco’s waterfront. A longtime smoker, Hoffer developed emphysema towards the end of his life.
Hoffer drew confidence and inspiration from his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote:
My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.
Hoffer also took solace in being an outcast, believing that the outcasts have always been the pioneers of society. He did not consider himself an "intellectual", and scorned the term as descriptive of the allegedly anti-American academics of the West. He believed academics craved power but were denied it in the democratic countries of the West (though not in totalitarian countries, which Hoffer understood to be an intellectual's dream). Instead, Hoffer believed academics chose to bite the hand that fed them in their quest for power and influence.
Although his writings were often likened to the centrist political philosophies of mid 20th century liberals such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., his structural approach to analyzing and understanding mass movements and their ideologies often led Hoffer to consistently non-ideological positions. He said, "my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree." When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a long-shoreman. Hoffer has been dubbed by some authors as "longshoreman philosopher."
Ideas
Hoffer was among the first to recognize the central importance of self-esteem to psychological well-being. Hoffer focused on the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. Concerned about the rise of totalitarian governments, especially those of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, he tried to find the roots of these "madhouses" in human psychology. He postulated that fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. As he describes in The True Believer, he believed a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life.
The mass movements discussed in The True Believer include religious mass movements as well as political, including extensive discussions of Islam and Christianity. They also include seemingly benign mass movements that are neither political nor religious. A core principle in the book is Hoffer's insight that mass movements are interchangeable; he notes fanatical Nazis later becoming fanatical Communists, fanatical Communists later becoming fanatical anti-Communists, and Saul, persecutor of Christians, becoming Paul, a fanatical Christian. For the true believer the substance of the mass movement isn't so important as that they are part of that movement. Hoffer furthermore suggests that it is possible to head off the rise of an undesirable mass movement by substituting a benign mass movement, which will give those prone to joining movements an outlet for their insecurities.
Hoffer's work was original, staking out new ground largely ignored by dominant academic trends of his time. In particular, Hoffer's work was completely non-Freudian, at a time when almost all American psychology was informed by the Freudian paradigm. Many argue[who?] Hoffer's lack of a formal college education contributed to his independent thought, with his book remaining an insightful classic today. Hoffer appeared on public television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s. Both times he drew wide response for his patiently considered but unorthodox views. (All biographical information from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Some of the world's most provocative, controversial and influential books have been written by shrewd and learned men...Machiavelli, Marx, Spengler, Ortega y Gasset, Sorokin, Toynbee.... A new candidate for inclusion in their company has volunteered this week...Eric Hoffer.
Orville Prescott - New York Times (1951)
It is in the cards, as surely as weeds outnumber nutritious plants, that many souls are doomed to suffer pangs of self-disgust engendered by frustration. This searching pain drives the victim to seek release in politico-religious identification.
E.B. Garside - New York Times (1951)
If you want concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement at their most primal level, may I suggest an evening with Eric Hoffer.... It’s an odd coincidence that the 50th anniversary of its publication should coincide so precisely with the renewed and remarkable relevance of its ideas.
New York Herald Tribune (now defunct)
Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.... It owes its distinction to the fact that Hoffer is a born generalizer, with a mind that inclines to the wry epigram and icy aphorism as naturally as did that of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
John McDonough - Wall St. Journal
[Hoffer] is a student of extraordinary perception and insight. The range of his reading and research is vast, amazing. He has written one of the most provocative books of our immediate day.
Christian Science Monitor
Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.... It owes its distinction to the fact that Hoffer is a born generalizer, with a mind that inclines to the wry epigram and icy aphorism as naturally as did that of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
The New Yorker
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The True Believer:
1. What is Hoffer's central thesis regarding mass movements? To what does he attribute their formation? What are the specific ingredients necessary to create a movement?
2. How does he describe or define the True Believer? What is the appeal of a mass movement to its followers?
3. Overall, how would you say Hoffer views human nature? Do you agree with his view or not?
4. Hoffer sees similarities in all mass movements despite their ideological content. They are, he believes, interchangeable. Do you agree with his lumping together of, say, the nazi-fascist movement with the early Christian or Jewish religion?
5. Hoffer writes, "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." Do you agree with this passage, or disagree? Or somewhere in between?
6. What roles (and why) do make-believe, play-acting, ceremonies and pageantry play in mass movements? Why are they important? What about fear-mongering and hatred of outsiders...or the world at large...? What role do they play?
7. Some readers have talked about the timelessness of Hoffer's book—that it is as relevant now as it was nearly 60 years ago when first issued. Do you agree or disagree...and for what reasons? What, if any, parallels do you see today?
8. Identify some mass movements that have developed after 1951, the year this book was published?
9. Do you agree, or not, with this statement by Hoffer: "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves."
10. In what ways does a mass movement, according to Hoffer, improve participants' self-esteem? What does he mean when he says, "the vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless"? (A side question: Does that vanity also apply to individual acts of charity—do we feel proud of ourselves when we donate to a cause? Is that the reason we give, even when we're not part of a movement?)
11. Here is another comment by Hoffer: "Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us." First of all, define self-righteousness. Then consider the meaning of Hoffer's passage...and whether or no you agree with him.
12. Is Hoffer's book a dispassionate (objective) work? Or is it a polemical statement that makes judgments on mass movements and their members?
13. Hoffer claims that the success of a movement doesn't depend on the truth of its claims but by how well its organization and management deliver fulfillment to their followers. Agree? Give examples? Disagree?
14. Does Hoffer believe that mass moments are bad? What do you think?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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