The True Believer. Eric Hoffer.

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Eric Hoffer
New York: Time Incorporated
1951 (1963)

Why read it? Hoffer has thought deeply about mass movements and seems to put those thoughts on paper in a random fashion. What's missing is transitions from one paragraph to another. However the ideas are connected. The reader has to make the connections. In his opinion, "True Believers" are frustrated people who seek to lose their personalities in a cause, any cause, for which they are willing to do anything, even give their lives. Hoffer explores the many implications of this type of personality.

Some sample ideas from the book: "Hoffer's hero is 'the autonomous man,' the confident man at peace with himself, engaged in the present."

" 'The true believer'...begins as a frustrated man driven by guilt, failure and self-disgust to bury his own identity in a cause oriented to some future good." "...spoiling the present with dreams of the future." "In our world, frustration is the inescapable and unendurable fate of the many; they can break away from this fate only by losing themselves in causes, ends, and movements greater than themselves." "Key terms, 'frustrated' and 'mass movement' seem to depend on each other."

"It [the true believer] is the state of mind of the man who is willing to sacrifice himself, if need be to die, for a cause--no matter what the cause." "The fanatic who dies for a cause is willing to sacrifice others as well as himself for his truth." "There is nothing that a fanatic will not do to achieve his goal; the end justifies the use of any means."

"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."

Quote: "Thus in the end...the movement is an instrument of power for the successful and an opiate for the frustrated."

Quote: "When its existence is threatened and it has to unify its people and generate in them a spirit of utmost self-sacrifice, the democratic nation must transform itself into something akin to a militant church or a revolutionary party."