The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

In the life cycle of a mass movement, the fanatics ascend as the men of words decline. Fanatics emerge first from inside the ranks of the literate. They are “noncreative men of words—the eternal misfits and the fanatical contemners of the present” (145). The “noncreative” element is key, for creative men of words can find satisfaction in their work and thus reconcile themselves to the present, but the noncreative man of words finds solace only in nihilism.

Practical men of action help stabilize a mass movement by rescuing it from reckless fanatics. Men of action have no wish to reverse the movement but merely to ensure that its central features—unified action and self-sacrifice—become institutionalized.

This process involves a continuance of propaganda, often in the form of endless paeans to the movement’s glory days, but above all it requires coercion, for the movement’s active phase has ended. At this stage, “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” (152).

Section 1: “The Unattractiveness and Sterility of the Active Phase”

A mass movement’s active phase, the book’s chief subject, is “molded and dominated by the true believer” and for this reason “is bound to strike us as unpleasant if not evil” (153). The duration of this active phase determines whether or not the movement produces anything good. Hoffer cites the Reformation, the English Civil War, and the French and American Revolutions as mass movements that had positive effects because their active phases did not last long. In some cases, the dominant features of the active phase—unified action and self-sacrifice—endure for centuries, smothering creativity and ensuring prolonged “intellectual sterility and emotional monotony” (156).

Section 2: “Some Factors Which Determine the Length of the Active Phase”

A fixed and realistic objective, such as liberation from tyranny, can shorten a mass movement’s active phase. On the other hand, when mass movements pursue united action and self-sacrifice as goals unto themselves, an entire society can take on the ugly characteristics of a mass movement’s active phase, thereby prolonging it indefinitely.

Historically, large-scale heterogeneous mass movements have resulted in prolonged violence, as have mass movements untaken in societies whose people have already been trained to submission. A leader’s personality also has the potential to either shorten or extend a movement’s active phase. Finally, when a liberty-seeking movement commences in an expectant mood, the movement’s active phase is likely to terminate immediately upon the achievement of liberty.

Section 3: “Useful Mass Movements”

Western democracies produce fewer mass movements in large part because comparative affluence means fewer people are willing to sacrifice a comfortable present for the sake of an idealized future. When threatened, however, democratic societies have shown the ability to shape themselves into temporary mass movements that compel united action and self-sacrifice.

Mass movements also have the potential to rouse entire societies from some form of stagnation. Foreign influences cannot direct but can trigger such movements, as in the case of 19th-century Japan’s rapid industrialization. Hoffer concludes by noting that “J.B.S. Haldane counts fanaticism among the only four really important inventions between 3000 B.C. and 1400 A.D.,” that fanaticism is a “Judaic-Christian invention,” and that it is a “malady of the soul” but also “an instrument of resurrection” (168).