The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious.”

As the Western world has trended in a secular direction, it has produced mass movements filled with true believers whose fanatical faith in their own cause rivals or exceeds that of the most ardent religious people. This is one of Eric Hoffer’s key insights: Secular mass movements, in which a revered leader plays the role of a deity, have all the markings of religious fanaticism.

“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