The True Believer

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is a non-fiction book authored by the American social philosopher Eric Hoffer. Published in 1951, it depicts a variety of arguments in terms of applied world history and social psychology to explain why mass movements arise to challenge the status quo.

Numerous editions. Page numbers here are from the mass market paperback edition published by Harper & Row (in The Perennial Library) in 1966.

Italics as in the book. Bold face added for emphasis. Ellipses all represent elisions of brief sections for the sake of continuity.

Preface

• 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 Christian, the fanatical Mohammedan, 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 the 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.
  • Preface (pp. 9-10)

• 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.
  • Preface (pp. 10-11)

Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements

• Where self-advancement cannot, or is not allowed to, serve as a driving force, other sources of enthusiasm have to be found if momentous changes, such as the awakening and renovation of a stagnant society or radical reforms in the character and pattern of life of a community, are to be realized and perpetuated. Religious, revolutionary and nationalist movements are such generating plants of general enthusiasm.
  • Section 1, “The Desire for Change”, Chapter 1 (p. 13)

• There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.
  • Section 1, Chapter 2 (p. 16)

• It is understandable that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failure.
  • Section 1, Chapter 2 (p. 16)

• Extravagant hope, even when not backed by actual power, is likely to generate a most reckless daring. For the hopeful can draw strength from the most ridiculous sources of power—a slogan, a word, a button.
  • Section 1, Chapter 4 (p. 18)

• Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope. It matters not whether it be hope of a heavenly kingdom, of heaven on earth, of plunder and untold riches, of fabulous achievement or world dominion.
  • Section 1, Chapter 4 (p. 18)

• For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.
  • Section 1, Chapter 6 (p. 20)

• There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest. On the other hand, 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.
  • Section 2, “The Desire for Substitutes”, Chapter 7 (p. 21)

• Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.
  • Section 2, Chapter 8 (p. 22)

• The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
  • Section 2, Chapter 9 (p. 23)

• A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.
  This minding of other people’s business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national, and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat.
  • Section 2, Chapter 10 (p. 23)

• There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
  • Section 2, Chapter 11 (p. 23)

• When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives. Hence the embracing of a substitute will necessarily be passionate and extreme.
  • Section 2, Chapter 13 (p. 24)

• When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement, and not solely for one with a particular doctrine or program.
  • Section 3, “The Interchangeability of Mass Movements”, Chapter 14 (p. 25)

• This receptivity to all movements does not always cease even after the potential true believer has become the ardent convert of a specific movement. Where mass movements are in violent competition with each other, there are not infrequent instances of converts—even the most zealous—shifting their allegiance from one to the other. A Saul turning into a Paul is neither a rarity nor a miracle.
  • Section 3, Chapter 14 (p. 25)

• Since all mass movements draw their adherents from the same types of humanity and appeal to the same types of mind, it follows: (a) all mass movements are competitive, and the gain of one in adherents is the loss of all the others; (b) all mass movements are interchangeable.
  • Section 3, Chapter 14 (p. 26)

• The religious character of the Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions is generally recognized. The hammer and sickle and the swastika are in a class with the cross.
  • Section 3, Chapter 15 (p. 27)

Part Two: The Potential Converts

• There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members. Though manifestly unfair, this tendency has some justification. For the character and destiny of a group are often determined by its inferior elements.
  • Section 4, “The Potential Converts”, Chapter 18 (p. 29)

• The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
  • Section 4, Chapter 18 (p. 29)

• The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present. They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy. They also crave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul-stirring spectacular communal undertaking—hence their proclivity for united action. Thus they are among the early recruits of revolutions, mass migrations and of religious, racial and chauvinist movements, and they imprint their mark upon these upheavals and movements which shape a nation’s character and history.
  • Section 4, Chapter 18 (p. 30)

• A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, decent, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come. It was not the irony of history that the undesired in the countries of Europe should have crossed an ocean to build a new world on this continent. Only they could do it.
  • Section 4, Chapter 18 (p. 30)

• The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility.
  • Section 5, “The Poor”, Chapter 20, “The New Poor” (p. 32)

• Where people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams.
  • Section 5, Chapter 21, “The Abjectly Poor” (p. 33)

• Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
  • Section 5, Chapter 23 (p. 34)

• There is a hope that acts as an explosive, and a hope that disciplines and infuses patience. The difference is between the immediate hope and the distant hope.
  • Section 5, Chapter 25 (p. 34)

• A rising mass movement preaches the immediate hope….Later, as the movement comes into possession of power, the emphasis is shifted to the distant hope—the dream and the vision….Every established mass movement has its distant hope, its brand of dope to dull the impatience of the masses and reconcile them with their lot in life. Stalinism is as much an opium of the people as are the established religions.
  • Section 5, Chapter 25 (pp. 34-35)

• Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual.
  • Section 5, Chapter 26, “The Free Poor” (p. 35)

• Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, “to be free from freedom.” It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?
  • Section 5, Chapter 26 (pp. 35-36)

• Even the mass movements which rise in the name of freedom against an oppressive order do not realize individual liberty once they start rolling.
  • Section 5, Chapter 27 (p. 36)

• Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.
  They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually, their innermost desire is for an end to the “free for all.” They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society.
  • Section 5, Chapter 28 (p. 37)

• Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
  • Section 5, Chapter 29 (p. 37)

• Equality without freedom creates a more stable social pattern than freedom without equality.
  • Section 5, Chapter 29 (p. 37)

• The less a person sees himself as an autonomous individual capable of shaping his own course and solely responsible for his station in life, the less likely is he to see his poverty as evidence of his own inferiority.
  • Section 5, Chapter 31, “The Unified Poor” (p. 39)

• It is obvious that a proselytizing mass movement must break down all existing group ties if it is to win a considerable following. The ideal potential convert is the individual who stands alone, who has no collective body he can blend with and lose himself in and so mask the pettiness, meaninglessness and shabbiness of his individual existence. When a mass movement finds the corporate pattern of family, tribe, country, etcetera in a state of disruption and decay, it moves in and gathers the harvest. Where it finds the corporate pattern in good repair, it must attack and disrupt.
  • Section 5, Chapter 31 (p. 39)

• Not one of our contemporary movements was so outspoken in its antagonism toward the family as was early Christianity.
  • Section 5, Chapter 32 (p. 40)

• The Western colonizing powers offer the native the gift of individual freedom and independent. They try to teach him self-reliance. What it actually amounts to is individual isolation. It means cutting off of an immature and poorly furnished individual from the corporate whole and releasing him, in the words of Khomiakov, “to the freedom of his own impotence.”
  • Section 5, Chapter 33 (p. 42)

• What de Tocqueville says of a tyrannical government is true of all totalitarian orders—their moment of greatest danger is when they begin to reform, that is to say, when they begin to show liberal tendencies.
  • Section 5, Chapter 35 (p. 48)

• The man just out of the army is an ideal potential convert, and we find him among the early adherents of all contemporary mass movements. He feels alone and lost in the free-for-all of civilian life. The responsibilities and uncertainties of an autonomous existence weigh and prey upon him. He longs for certitude, camaraderie, freedom from individual responsibility, and a vision of something altogether different from the competitive free society around him—and he finds all this in the brotherhood and the revivalist atmosphere of a rising movement.
  • Section 5, Chapter 35 (p. 48)

• There is perhaps no more reliable an indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom.
  • Section 10, “The Bored”, Chapter 41 (p. 53)

• When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.
  • Section 10, Chapter 41 (p. 54)

• Here, as elsewhere, the technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
  • Section 11, “The Sinners”, Chapter 42 (p. 55)

Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

• Such diverse phenomena as a deprecation of the present, a facility for make-believe, a proneness to hate, a readiness to imitate, credulity, a readiness to attempt the impossible, and many others which crowd the minds of the intensely frustrated are, as we shall see, unifying agents and prompters of recklessness.
  • Section 12, “Preface”, Chapter 43 (p. 58)

• The technique of fostering a readiness to fight and to die consists in separating the individual from his flesh-and-blood self—in not allowing him to be his real self.
  • Section 12, “Preface”, Chapter 43 (p. 59)

• To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness.
  • Section 13, “Factors Promoting Self-sacrifice”, Chapter 44, “Identification With a Collective Whole” (p. 60)

• This is undoubtedly a primitive state of being, and its most perfect examples are found among primitive tribes. Mass movements strive to approximate this primitive perfection, and we are not imagining things when the anti-individualist bias of contemporary mass movements strikes us as a throwback to the primitive.
  • Section 13, Chapter 44 (p. 61)

• 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 that 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.
  • Section 13, Chapter 47, “Make-Believe” (p. 65)

• In the practice of mass movements, make-believe plays perhaps a more enduring role than any other factor. When faith and the power to persuade or coerce are gone, make-believe lingers on.
  • Section 13, Chapter 47 (p. 65)

• Not only does a mass movement depict the present as mean and miserable—it deliberately makes it so. It fashions a pattern of individual existence that is dour, hard, repressive and dull. It decries pleasures and comforts and extols the rigorous life. It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial or even discreditable, and represents the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral. To enjoy oneself is to have truck with the enemy—the present. The prime objective of the aesthetic ideal preached by most movements is to breed contempt for the present. The campaign against the appetites is an effort to pry loose tenacious tentacles holding onto the present. That this cheerless individual life runs its course against a colorful and dramatic background of collective pageantry serves to accentuate its worthlessness.
  • Section 13, Chapter 48, “Deprecation of the Present” (pp. 66-67)

• There can be no genuine deprecation of the present without the assured hope of a better future.
  • Section 13, Chapter 49 (p. 67)

• Dying, too, they see as a gesture, an act of make-believe.
  • Section 13, Chapter 50 (p. 69)

• The well-adjusted make poor prophets.
  • Section 13, Chapter 51 (p. 69)

• The radical and the reactionary loathe the present…Wherein do they differ? Primarily in their view of the malleability of man’s nature. The radical has a passionate faith in the infinite perfectibility of human nature. He believes that by changing man’s environment and by perfecting a technique of soul forming, a society can be wrought that is wholly new and unprecedented. The reactionary does not believe that man has unfathomed potentialities for good in him. If a stable and healthy society is to be established, it must be patterned after the proven models of the past. He sees the future as a glorious restoration rather than an unprecedented innovation.
  • Section 13, Chapter 52 (p. 71)

• Thus by deprecating the present they acquire a vague sense of equality.
  • Section 13, Chapter 53 (p. 72)

• Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.
  • Section 13, Chapter 54, “Things Which Are Not” (p. 74)

• The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life. He who is free to draw conclusions from his individual experience and observation is not usually hospitable to the ideal of martyrdom. For self-sacrifice is an unreasonable act. It cannot be the end-product of a process of probing and deliberating. All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ….To rely on the evidence of senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.
  • Section 13, Chapter 56, “Doctrine” (p. 75)

• It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and consistency. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. Strength of faith, as Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move. And it is the certitude of his infallible doctrine that renders the true believers impervious to the uncertainties, surprises, and the unpleasant realities of the world around him.
  Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is.
  • Section 13, Chapter 56 (p. 76)

• The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth. It must be the one word from which all things are and all things speak. Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth.
  • Section 13, Chapter 57 (p. 76)

• It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.
  • Section 13, Chapter 57 (p. 76)

• The devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts and not their minds….When a movement begins to rationalize its doctrine and make it intelligible, it is a sign that its dynamic span is over; that it is primarily interested in stability.
  • Section 13, Chapter 57 (p. 77)

• If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine. When some part of a doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate and obscure it. Simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness.
  • Section 13, Chapter 57 (p. 77)

• To be in possession of an absolute truth is to have a net of familiarity spread over the whole of eternity. There are no surprises and no unknowns. All questions have already been answered, all decisions made, all eventualities foreseen. The true believer is without wonder and hesitation.
  • Section 13, Chapter 58 (p. 77)

• The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: “[They] pray not only for [their] daily bread, but also for [their] daily illusion.” The rule seems to be that those who find difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.
  • Section 13, Chapter 59 (p. 78)

• A peculiar side of incredulity is that it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not characteristic solely of children. The inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism.
  • Section 13, Chapter 59 (p. 79)

• By kindling and fanning violent passions in the hearts of their followers, mass movements prevent the settling of an inner balance. They also employ direct means to effect an enduring estrangement from the self. They depict an autonomous, self-sufficient existence not only as barren and meaningless, but also as depraved and evil. Man on his own is a helpless, miserable and sinful creature. His only salvation is in rejecting his self and in finding a new life in the bosom of a holy corporate body—be it a church, a nation or a party.
  • Section 13, Chapter 60, “Fanaticism” (p. 80)

• It goes without saying that the fanatic is convinced that the cause he holds on to is monolithic and eternal—a rock of ages. Still, his sense of security is derived from his passionate attachment and not from the excellence of his cause. The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness and holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold on to. Often, indeed, it is his need for passionate attachment which turns every cause he embraces into a holy cause.
  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. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted. His passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached.
  • Section 13, Chapter 61 (pp. 80-81)

• Though they seem to be at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one 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. They are as far apart and close together as Saul and Paul. And it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal.
  • Section 13, Chapter 62 (p. 81)

• 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.
  • Section 13, Chapter 62 (p. 81)

• There seems to be a thin line between violent, extreme nationalism and treason.
  • Section 13, Chapter 62 (p. 81)

• The ex-soldier is a veteran, even a hero; the ex-true believer is a renegade.
  • Section 13, Chapter 64, “Mass Movements and Armies” (p. 83)

• Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents.
  • Section 14, “”Unifying Agents”, Chapter 65, “Hatred” (p. 85)

• Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
  • Section 14, Chapter 65 (p. 86)

• Common hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements.
  • Section 14, Chapter 66 (p. 86)

• Whence 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 68 (p. 88)

• 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. Russians, bullied by Stalin’s secret police, are easily inflamed against “capitalist warmongers”; Germans, aggrieved by the Versailles treaty, avenged themselves by exterminating Jews; Zulus, oppressed by Boers, butchered Hindus; white trash, exploited by Dixiecrats, lynch Negroes.
  • Section 14, Chapter 68 (pp. 88-89)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 69 (p. 89)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 71 (p. 89)

• A sublime religion inevitably generates a strong feeling of guilt. There is an unavoidable contrast between loftiness of profession and imperfection of practice. And, as one would expect, the feeling of guilt promotes hate and brazenness. Thus it seems that the more sublime the faith the more virulent the hatred it breeds.
  • Section 14, Chapter 72 (p. 90)

• It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise. The Japanese had an advantage over us in that they admired us more than we admired them. They could hate us more fervently than we could hate them. The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American’s hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life....
  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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 73 (pp. 90-91)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 74 (pp. 91-92)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 75 (p. 92)

• Unity and self-sacrifice, of themselves, even when fostered by the most noble means, produce a facility for hating. 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 a like mind.
  • Section 14, Chapter 77 (p. 92)

• The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others. The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is that the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit this earth and the kingdom of heaven, too.
  • Section 14, Chapter 77 (p. 93)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 77 (p. 93)

• Thus hatred is not only a means of unification but also its product.
  • Section 14, Chapter 77 (p. 93)

• The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness; and both these ends are reached by imitation.
  • Section 14, Chapter 78, “Imitation” (p. 94)

• The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.
  • Section 14, Chapter 78 (p. 95)

• Every device is used to cut off the faithful from intercourse with unbelievers.
  • Section 14, Chapter 82 (p. 97)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 83, “Persuasion and Coercion” (p. 98)

• Propaganda by itself succeeds mainly with the frustrated. Their throbbing fears, hopes and passions crowd at the portal 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 83 (p. 98)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 84 (p. 99)

• It is probably as true that violence breeds fanaticism as that fanaticism begets violence. It is often impossible to tell which came first.
  • Section 14, Chapter 85 (p. 99)

• The practice of terror serves the true believer notably to cow and crush his opponents but also to invigorate and intensify his own faith. Every lynching in our South not only intimidates the Negro but also invigorates the fanatical conviction of white supremacy.
  • Section 14, Chapter 85 (p. 99)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 85 (p. 100)

• It was the temporal sword that made Christianity a world religion. Conquest and conversion went hand in hand, the latter often serving as a justification and a tool for the former. Where Christianity failed to gain or retain the backing of state power, it achieved neither a wide nor a permanent hold.
  • Section 14, Chapter 86 (p. 100)

• In the phenomenal spread of Islam, conquest was a primary factor and conversion a by-product.
  • Section 14, Chapter 86 (p. 101)

• It also seems that, where a mass movement can either persuade or coerce, it usually chooses the latter.
  • Section 14, Chapter 86 (p. 101)

• The missionary zeal seems rather an expression of some deep misgiving, some pressing feeling of insufficiency at the center. Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth.
  • Section 14, Chapter 88 (p. 102)

• It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction between profession and practice—that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt—are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others.
  • Section 14, Chapter 88 (p. 103)

• No matter how vital we think the role of leadership in the rise of a mass movement, there is no doubt that the leader cannot create the conditions which make the rise of a movement possible.
  • Section 14, Chapter 89, “Leadership” (p. 103)

• Once the stage is set, the presence of an outstanding leader is indispensable. Without him there will be no movement.…
  Exceptional intelligence, noble character and originality seem neither indispensable nor perhaps desirable. The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants. This last faculty is one of the most essential and elusive.
  • Section 14, Chapter 90 (pp. 105-106)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 91 (p. 107)

• Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
  • Section 14, Chapter 91 (p. 107)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 92 (p. 108)

• All mass movements rank obedience with the highest virtues and put it on a level with faith.
  • Section 14, Chapter 92 (p. 108)

• 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. They are eager to barter their independence for relief of the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.
  • Section 14, Chapter 93 (p. 109)

• 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. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.
  • Section 14, Chapter 94 (p. 110)

• Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie.
  • Section 14, Chapter 97 (p. 111)

• All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. The conflicts a mass movement seeks and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium. Clearing of land, building of cities, exploration and large-scale industrial undertakings serve a similar purpose. Even mere marching can serve as a unifier. The Nazis made vast use of this preposterous variant of action. Hermann Rauschning, who at first thought this eternal marching a senseless waste of time and energy, recognized later its subtle effect. “Marching diverts men’s thoughts. Marching kills thought. Marching makes an end of individuality.”
  • Section 14, Chapter 98 (p. 112)

• Faith organizes and equips man’s soul for action. To be in possession of the one and only truth and never doubt one’s righteousness; to feel that one is backed by a mysterious power whether it be God, destiny or the law of history; to be convinced that one’s opponents are the incarnation of evil and must be crushed; to exult in self-denial and devotion to duty—these are admirable qualifications for resolute and ruthless action in any field.
  • Section 14, Chapter 99 (pp. 112-113)

• 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 intense awareness of being watched. 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 100, “Suspicion” (p. 114)

• 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. As Abraham was ready to sacrifice his only son to prove his dedication to Jehovah, so must the fanatical Nazi or Communist to be ready to sacrifice relatives and friends to demonstrate his total surrender to the holy cause. The active mass movement sees in the personal ties of blood and friendship diminution of its own corporate cohesion.
  • Section 14, Chapter 101 (p. 115)

• The true believer is eternally incomplete, eternally insecure.
  • Section 14, Chapter 102, “The Effects of Unification” (p. 117)

• 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.
  • Section 14, Chapter 103 (p. 118)

Part Four: Beginning and End

• A full-blown mass movement is a ruthless affair, and its management is in the hands of ruthless fanatics who use words only to give an appearance of spontaneity to a consent obtained by coercion. But these fanatics can move in and take charge only after the prevailing order has been discredited and has lost the allegiance of the masses.
  • Section 15, “Men of Words”, Chapter 104 (p. 119)

• The emergence of an articulate minority where there was none before is a potential revolutionary step.
  • Section 15, Chapter 104 (p. 120)

• There is apparently an irremediable insecurity at the core of every intellectual, be he non-creative or creative.
  • Section 15, Chapter 105 (p. 121)

• What is not so obvious is the process by which the discrediting of existing beliefs and institutions makes possible the rise of a new fanatical faith. For it is a remarkable fact that the militant man of words who “sounds the established order to its source to mark its want of authority and justice” (quoting Pascal) often prepares the ground not for a society of freethinking individuals but for a corporate society that cherishes utmost unity and blind faith. A wide diffusion of doubt and irreverence those leads often to unexpected results.
  • Section 15, Chapter 108 (p. 127)

• 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 formulate a philosophy and a doctrine, they are more an 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. The fanatics and the faith-hungry masses, however, are likely to invest such speculations with the certitude of holy writ, and make them the fountainhead of a new faith. Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.
  To sum up, the militant man of words prepares the ground for the rise of a mass movement: 1) by discrediting prevailing creeds and institutions and detaching from them the allegiance of the people; 2) 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; 3) by furnishing the doctrine and the slogans of the new faith; 4) 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. They see no sense in dying for convictions and principles, and yield to the new order without a fight.
  • Section 15, Chapter 108 (p. 128)

• The tragic figures in the history of a mass movement are often the intellectual precursors who live long enough to see the downfall of the old order by the action of the masses.
  • Section 15, Chapter 109 (p. 129)

• The reason for the tragic fate which almost always overtake the intellectual midwives of a mass movement is that, no matter how much they preach and glorify the united effort, they remain essentially individualists. They believe in the possibility of individual happiness and the validity of individual opinion and initiative. But once a movement gets rolling, power falls into the hands of those who have neither faith in, nor respect for, the individual. And the reason they prevail is not so much that their disregard of the individual gives them a capacity for ruthlessness, but that their attitude is in full accord with the ruling passion of the masses.
  • Section 15, Chapter 109 (p. 130)

• When the moment is right, only the fanatic can hatch a genuine mass movement.
  • Section 16, “The Fanatics”, Chapter 110 (p. 130)

• Thus on the morrow of victory most mass movements find themselves in the grip of dissension. The order which yesterday found an outlet in a life-and-death struggle with external enemies now vents itself in violent disputes and clash of factions. Hatred has become a habit. With no more outside enemies to destroy, the fanatics make enemies of one another.
  • Section 16, Chapter 112 (p. 133)

• A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action.
  • Section 17, “The Practical Men of Action”, Chapter 113 (p. 134)

• The man of action saves the movement from the suicidal dissensions and the recklessness of the fanatics. But his appearance usually marks the end of the dynamic phase of the movement. The war with the present is over. The genuine man of action is intent not on renovating the world but on possessing it. Whereas the life breath of the dynamic phase was protest and a desire for drastic change, the final phase is chiefly preoccupied with administering and perpetuating the power won.
  • Section 17, Chapter 114 (p. 135)

• The institutions freeze a pattern of united action. The members of the institutionalized collective body are expected to act as one man, yet they must represent a loose aggregation rather than a spontaneous coalescence. They must be unified only through their unquestioning loyalty to the institutions. Spontaneity is suspect, and duty is prized above devotion.
  • Section 17, Chapter 114 (p. 136)

• He takes, therefore, great care to preserve in the new institutions an impressive façade of faith, and maintains an incessant flow of fervent propaganda, though he relies mainly on the persuasiveness of force. His orders are worded in pious vocabulary, and the old formulas and slogans are continually on his lips. The symbols of faith are carried high and given reverence. The men of words in the fanatics of the early period are canonized.
  • Section 17, Chapter 115 (p. 136)

• Christianity, too, when after the conflicts and dissensions of the first few centuries it crystallized into an authoritarian church, was a patchwork of old and new and of borrowings from friend and foe. It patterned its hierarchy after the bureaucracy of the Roman Empire, adopted portions of the antique ritual, developed the institution of an absolute leader, and used every means to absorb all existent elements of life and power.
  • Section 17, Chapter 115 (p. 137)

• In the hands of a man of action the mass movement ceases to be a refuge from the agonies and burdens of an individual existence and becomes a means of self-realization for the ambitious. The irresistible attraction which the movement now exerts on those preoccupied with their individual careers is a clear-cut indication of the drastic change in its character and of its reconciliation with the present. It is also clear that the influx of these career men accelerates the transformation of the movement into an enterprise.
  • Section 17, Chapter 116 (pp. 137-138)

• Thus at the end of its vigorous span the movement is an instrument of power for the successful and an opiate for the frustrated.
  • Section 17, Chapter 116 (p. 138)

• Now it seems to be true that no matter how noble the original purpose of a movement and however beneficent the end result, its active phase is bound to strike us as unpleasant if not evil. The fanatic who personifies this phase is usually an unattractive human type. He is ruthless, self-righteous, credulous, disputatious, petty and rude. He is often ready to sacrifice relatives and friends for his holy cause. The absolute unity and the readiness for self-sacrifice which give an active movement its irresistible drive and enable it to undertake the impossible are usually achieved at a sacrifice of much that is pleasant and precious in the autonomous individual.
  • Section 18, “Good and Bad Mass Movements”, Chapter 117, “The Unattractiveness and Sterility of the Active Phase” (pp. 138-139)

• The blindness of the fanatic is a source of strength (he sees no obstacles), but it is the cause of intellectual sterility and emotional monotony.
  The fanatic is also mentally cocky, and hence barren of new beginnings. At the root of his cockiness is the conviction that life and the universe conform to a simple formula—his formula.
  • Section 18, Chapter 118 (p. 141)

• The eventual emancipation of the Christian mind at the time of the Renaissance in Italy drew its inspiration not from the history of early Christianity but from the stirring examples of individual independence and defiance in the Graeco-Roman past.
  • Section 18, Chapter 123 (p. 146)

• In the eyes of the true believer, people who have no holy cause are without backbone and character—a pushover for men of faith. On the other hand, the true believers of various hues, though they view each other with mortal hatred and are ready to fly at each other’s throat, recognize and respect each other’s strength.
  • Section 18, Chapter 124, “Useful Mass Movements” (p. 147)

• All the true believers of our time—whether Communist, Nazi, Fascist, Japanese or Catholic—declaimed volubly (and the Communists still do) on the decadence of the Western democracies.
  • Section 18, Chapter 124 (p. 147)

• There is a grain of sense and more than a grain of nonsense in these declamations.
  • Section 18, Chapter 124 (p. 147)

• It is probably better for a country that when its government begins to show signs of chronic incompetence it should be overthrown by a mighty mass upheaval—even though such overthrow involves a considerable waste of life and wealth—than that it would be allowed to fall and crumble of itself.
  • Section 18, Chapter 125 (p. 149)