Just Finished Reading: The True Believer – Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer (FP: 1951)

I lost count of the times that I checked that publication date. Confirmed – it is indeed 1951. But, apart from many references to Nazi’s and the Soviet Union you’d be hard pressed to know that it was written over 60 years ago. Rather impressively the author is an autodidact – self-taught – studying in his ‘downtime’ between various day jobs, sleep and writing articles for newspapers and, of course, a number of books. Apparently this is his most famous – although, until I saw it recommended by Amazon, I had neither heard of it or him until some months ago. After reading it I found the fact that President Eisenhower mentioned it in one of his early television press conferences (making it a bestseller from that point on) less surprising than it might have been otherwise. This is good stuff, grounded in the everyday but deep and thoughtful. The author attempts to distil what makes people fanatics – either political or religious – and what drives them to do what they do, think how they think and interact with the other, non-fanatic, world the way they do.

Of course all of this was written before the Soviet Union really hit its stride, before the Cuban Revolution, before China became the powerhouse that it did and, most obviously, long before the present pre-occupation with Islamic Fundamentalism and the disparate groups we have become terribly familiar with. Yet, despite the political and historical distance, time and again the author hits the nail and the head and helps explain the world we have created for ourselves in the 21st century. I was honestly surprised by how relevant this book was to the news reports we see on our TV’s each and every day. It even helped me start to understand, or at least get my head around, the idea of working class Donald Trump supporters. At least I now have a greater appreciation of why people can, seemingly, vote against their own interests.

I don’t want to give too much away from this slim volume (only 168 pages in my edition) and I’m not going to try to precis his arguments here. Needless to say he looks at what makes someone a fanatic – from both the group and individual perspective – and how that fanaticism is used and can bleed into other areas of a culture. He also explains, importantly, aspects of fanaticism that exist in normal societies that are channelled for the greater good (on the whole!) including military service. Element by element the author dissects what makes a person or group fanatical and that shows how those elements arise in the first place and how they fit together – jigsaw like – to make the fanatic we are all too aware of these days. Finally he looks as the type of leader that cam promote fanatical followers and how they evolve as part of a revolutionary process.

Despite the fact that this is a book very much of its time it is also, in very important ways, timeless. The author has seemingly distilled the essence of the fanatic – the true believer – and laid them bare for all to see. This, I believe, is an important work that should be read much more widely than no doubt it is. Very much relevant today – and not only in the on-going so-called ‘War on Terror’ (BTW – When was the last time you heard that phrase?) but also in seeing popularist movements across the globe more clearly. Highly recommended.