Summary - Eric Hoffer "The True Believer" (1951)

Pasted below is the summary handout I've used in my rhetoric classes to begin the discussions of Eric Hoffer's work on True Believers and Mass Movements. I invite you to read through it and see if you think any of these characteristics apply to popular Conservative Talk Radio/Fox News personalities (aka "wingnuts") and/or the Tea Party movements we have witnessed since Barack Obama became President of the United States. Note particularly Hoffer's key insights at the end - and the essential insight that a mass movement need not have a god, but it MUST have a devil. It is this rhetorical anti-thesis that creates their primary identification as a group. "We are who we are because we are not THAT."

For Hitler's Nazi Germany, they were who they were because they were not Jewish (or any other non-Aryan group). Hitler himself remarked that if the Jews had not existed, he would have had to invent them (to be the devil) for the Nazi identity.

So . . .I wonder: who would Tea Partiers be if there was no Barack Obama?

My friend Genma related her experiences at the convention to me last night...and she was simply amazed that the group was so tightly focused on Obama as the (un-American, un-Christian) devil.

Indeed, this morning the keynote address at the convention is titled: "A comparison of the current administration to Marxist dictators of Latin America." (Okay, I'm stumped. Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama is like a Marxist dictator because . . . ???)

Note the determination to associate President Obama with anything "un-American" . . . birthers say he isn't American outright. Others simply keep calling him a "socialist" while still others refuse to believe the man is a Christian. This repeated mantra of "un-American Obama" serves a clear purpose in the identity (and motivation and fervor) of the movement.

I'll leave it to @coviner to tell you about what he found in his ideograph research and the connection between popular Conservative pundits and these movements and the rhetorical motivation that works to fuel this association and fanatical opposition to the President.

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COMM 4650 – Long

Hoffer, E. (1951). The true believer: Thoughts on the nature of mass movements. New York: Harper and Row.

Definition: The true believer = “. . . the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause” (p. xii)

Rationale:

“It is necessary for most of us these days to have some insight into the motives and responses of the true believer. 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 up 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. (p. xiii)

“The assumption that mass movements have many traits in common does not imply that all movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. The book passes no judgments, and expresses no preferences. It merely tries to explain…(p. xiii)

Hypotheses:

“Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.” (p. xii)

“ . . . a mass movement . . . 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.” (p. 12)

Potential Followers and ‘True Believers’ = The Disaffected

“Though the disaffected are found in all walks of life, they are most frequent in the following categories: a) the poor, b) misfits, c) outcasts, d) minorities, e) adolescent youth, f) the ambitious, g) those in the grip of some vice or obsession, h) the impotent (in body or mind), i) the inordinately selfish, j) the bored, k) the sinners.” (p. 25)

Content vs. Form:

“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 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.” (p. 41)

Preface: Part III - United Action and Self-Sacrifice (pp. 58-61)

When we ascribe the success of a movement to it faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, and ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature of mass movements unless it is recognized that their chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice. To know the processes by which such a facility is engendered Is to grasp the inner logic of most of the characteristics attitudes and practices of an active mass movement.

“The reader is expected to quarrel with much that is said in this part of the book….this is not an authoritative textbook. It is a book of thoughts, and it does not shy away from half-truths so long as they seem to hint at a new approach and help to formulate new questions. ‘To illustrate a principle,’ says Bagehot, ‘you must exaggerate much and you must omit much.” (pp. 60).

Factors promoting self-sacrifice (pp. 62-90):

1. identification with a collective whole (44-46)

2. make-believe (47)

3. deprecation of the present (48-55)

4. “things which are not” -

5. doctrine – not meaning but certitude (58-59)

6. fanaticism (60-63)

“What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as the decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come form the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more – and there is. By expiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation….(p75)

“The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude…presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth. 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….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.” (pp. 80-81).

“The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual sources – our of his rejected self – but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. The passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the sources of all virtue and strength….He sacrifices his life to prove his worth.” (p. 85)

“The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to reason or his moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause.” (p. 85).

Mass Movements vs. Armies (p. 88-90).

Unifying agents (pp. 91 – 128):

1. hatred

2. imitation

3. persuasion and coercion

4. leadership

5. action

6. suspicion

Key insights/Summary from The True Believer (P. Bsumek, James Madison University, 2000)

• 1. We may be godless, but we are not irreligious.

• 2. Mass organizations appeal to us through appeals of self- advancement.

• 3. Mass movements offer and in fact require self-renunciation.

• 4. The logical content of the message is irrelevant.

• 5. A mass movement should have a god, but it must have a devil. (p.91)

• Characteristics of a devil:

• Devil is ugly.

• Devil is powerful

• Devil is strangely attractive

• Devil is omnipresent

• 6. If you want to stop a movement, you cannot argue against it logically.

• 7. Movements offer freedom, but only deliver brotherhood.

• 8. Proselytizing as a sign of doubt not of truth.