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The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics) Paperback – January 19, 2010
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Eric Hoffer
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Print length192 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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Publication dateJanuary 19, 2010
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Dimensions0.43 x 5.31 x 8 inches
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ISBN-100060505915
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ISBN-13978-0060505912
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly. . . . It owes its distinction to the fact that Hoffer is a born generalizer, with a mind that inclines to the wry epigram and icy aphorism as naturally as did that of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.” -- New Yorker
“If you want concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement at their most primal level, may I suggest an evening with Eric Hoffer.” -- John McDonough, Wall St. Journal
“[Hoffer] is a student of extraordinary perception and insight. The range of his reading and research is vast, amazing. He has written one of the most provocative books of our immediate day.” -- Christian Science Monitor
“This brilliant and original inquiry into the nature of mass movements is a genuine contribution to our social thought.” -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
“The True Believer glitters with icy wit. . . bristles with deadly parallels. . . . It is a harsh and potent mental tonic.” -- New York Times
“Hoffer has outlined a remarkably clear and suggestive theory about the kind of social change he sums up as ‘mass movements,’ supplied concrete illustrative materials drawn from a wide historical range, and put them together in a brief, readable, and provocative book.” -- New York Herald Tribune
“If you want concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement at their most primal level, may I suggest an evening with Eric Hoffer.” -- John McDonough, Wall St. Journal
“[Hoffer] is a student of extraordinary perception and insight. The range of his reading and research is vast, amazing. He has written one of the most provocative books of our immediate day.” -- Christian Science Monitor
“This brilliant and original inquiry into the nature of mass movements is a genuine contribution to our social thought.” -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
“The True Believer glitters with icy wit. . . bristles with deadly parallels. . . . It is a harsh and potent mental tonic.” -- New York Times
“Hoffer has outlined a remarkably clear and suggestive theory about the kind of social change he sums up as ‘mass movements,’ supplied concrete illustrative materials drawn from a wide historical range, and put them together in a brief, readable, and provocative book.” -- New York Herald Tribune
From the Back Cover
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer -- the first and most famous of his books -- was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.
About the Author
Eric Hoffer (1902 -- 1983) was self-educated. He worked in restaurants, as a migrant fieldworker, and as a gold prospector. After Pearl Harbor, he worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco for twenty-five years. The author of more than ten books, including The Passionate State of Mind, The Ordeal of Change, and The Temper of Our Time, Eric Hoffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Perennial Modern Classics (January 19, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 192 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0060505915
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060505912
- Item Weight : 5.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 0.43 x 5.31 x 8 inches
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Best Sellers Rank:
#16,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10 in Compulsive Behavior (Books)
- #23 in Social Philosophy
- #26 in Sociology of Social Theory
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Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2018
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Revolutions and other mass movements all have commonalities, chief among them are the people who start and promulgate them. This short, concise book breaks down and organizes the characteristics of these people: The True Believers - and the movements they promote. This is a book of genius, comparable to ‘The Prince’ or ‘Rules for Radicals,’ in its simplicity and insights into human nature and organized political action. Hoffer wrote this book after the Second World War while the memories and realities of Fascism and Communism were very present.
If you’ve ever been part of a mass movement, or ever contemplated participating in one, this book will open your eyes to what you can expect as a mass movement gets underway and develops through its active phase. It’ll provide you with an understanding of the motivations and designs of the movement’s leaders, and insight into your own and your fellow believers’ psychology. If you have the ambition to be the next Christ or Hitler to lead a mass movement, this is your blueprint.
In summary:
I. THE APPEAL OF MASS MOVEMENTS
The desire for change starts and lives in the hearts of frustrated people. Attached to this frustration these individuals possess a sense of power to accomplish great change. Faith in the future and the ability to project hope makes for receptivity to change. High hopes and dark endings incongruently go together. Belonging to a mass movement substitutes for deficiencies in the individual. Mass Movements compete with one another, and often are interchangeable. No movement is whole of a singular nature.
II. THE POTENTIAL CONVERTS
The best and worst of society often determine the course of history - over the heads of the great middle. A society without the dregs may be peaceful and complacent, but lacking in the seeds for change. Here are the ranks of mass movement fodder:
New Poor: Memory of better times puts fire in their bellies.
Abject Poor: Too occupied with survival to organize. Discontent is high, however, when misery is still bearable.
Free Poor: Freedom creates and alleviates frustration. Fanatics fear freedom more than persecution. Equality and fraternity are preferred over freedom.
Creative Poor: The ability to create mitigates frustration; however, those whose creativity is fading, or those who didn’t quite achieve creative satisfaction, may seek escape in mass movements.
Unified Poor: Compact or tribal groups are relatively free of frustration. Mass movements often try to break down family units to feed the movement. Compact structures, like families in decline are, however, fertile ground for mass movements.
Temporary Misfits: Adolescents, unemployed, veterans, and new immigrants are unreliable supporters of mass movements; their frustrations abate once circumstances improve.
Permanent Misfits: The incurably frustrated can never have enough of what they really do not want anyway. They are likely to become the most violent true believers.
Inordinately Selfish: Those who have lost faith in themselves, look to attach to a holy cause; In compensation, they become champions of selflessness.
Ambitious with Unlimited Opportunity: Current actions are never enough; they possess excessive readiness for self-sacrifice.
Minorities Intent On Preserving Their Identity: These persons act as tribal groups and lack frustration.
Minorities Bent On Assimilation: These frustrated cannot get in the door of the established order.
Bored: These people are required in quantity for a successful mass movement; they’re looking for fulfillment in a meaningless existence.
Sinners: For the irredeemable, salvation can be found in losing oneself in a holy cause; they are willing to go to extremes.
Mass movements attract and hold followers by offering refuge from anxiety. Mass movements aim to infect people with a malady, then offer a cure. Hope comes in two forms: one immediate and one distant.
III. UNITED ACTION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
The chief preoccupation of mass movements is to foster united action and self-sacrifice. For the individual to commit to self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity, and by ritual be associated with the movement.
To engage in dying or killing, the individual must suffer under the illusion of being a participant in a grand undertaking, or a solemn performance. Glory is theatrical.
The present must be deprecated, pushed off the stage, depicted as mean and miserable and held in utter contempt. In replacement, hope is assured for a better future. The frustrated individual is ready to die for what he wishes to have and wishes to be.
Mass movements strive to interpose a fact-proof screen between the movement’s faithful and the realities of the world, in a word: doctrine. The effectiveness of a doctrine is judged not on its validity or profundity, but on how well it insulates the individual from his self and the world.
The individual’s estrangement proceeds with intense passion and fanaticism. Mass movements prevent the achievement of internal balance for the fanatic individual, but perpetuate insecurity and incompleteness.
Unified individuals in a compact collective of a mass movement body are no longer frustrated. Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. Mass movements can rise without a belief in God, but never without a belief in evil.
Unreasonable hatreds emerge as an expression of the frustrated individual’s effort to suppress his own shortcomings and self-contempt. Self hate emanates from feelings of helplessness, inadequacy, and cowardice, rather than justified grievances. The object of hate is often those other than the ones who committed the perceived wrongs. Committing grave injustices upon the object of hate re-enforces and fuels hate. A guilty conscience lies behind such acts, which demands even greater effort to demonize the hated to suppress this guilty conscience.
Estrangement of the self is required for selflessness and assimilation into the whole of a compact group. The True Believer sees himself as one of ‘the chosen.’ Self-denial and group membership confers the right on them to be harsh upon others, and by which to be rid of personal responsibility. Violence is not the product of leadership, but of a unification of the whole.
Propaganda succeeds not with unwilling minds, but with frustrated individuals. Propaganda operates most effectively in conjunction with coercion. The mass movement requires the ability to make people believe, and by force as a last resort.
Leadership cannot create a mass movement out of thin air. There has to be grievances with intense dissatisfactions and an eagerness of the True Believers to follow and obey. Once the stage is set, however, an outstanding leader is indispensable. The leader personifies the certitude of the movement, as well as defiance and power. He must be able to steer the faithful and maintain its cohesion. To a large degree, charlatanism is required for effective leadership.
Action is a unifier of mass movements. Marching, for instance, kills thought and hastens the end of individuality. An inability to act breeds frustration with the movement, while successful action drains energy and commitment from the movement.
The mass movement must perpetuate the individual’s incompleteness and insecurity.
IV. BEGINNING AND END
Men of Words: Mass movements usually rise when a prevailing order has been discredited. This is the work of men of words with a grievance. They set the groundwork for the movement by undermining existing institutions, promoting the idea of change, and creating a new faith. Men of words may champion the downtrodden, but the grievance that animates them is personal. Their vanity is greater than their ambitions; recognition and the appearance of power is preferred over power itself. Often it’s the men of words who are the tragic figures of the mass movement, as at a certain point, the movement is hijacked by a power hungry clique which usually cheats the masses of the freedoms they seek.
Fanatics: A genuine mass movement is hatched by the fanatic. Men of words shrink before the outbreak of anarchy, they forget the troubled masses they set out to help, and run to the protection of strong ‘men of action.’ For the fanatic, chaos is his element. Fanatics come from the ranks of the non-creative men of words; unfulfilled, they can never be reconciled with their self, and they desire not a finality or a fixed order of things. Hatred becomes a habit, and when the outsiders are vanquished, the fanatics then turn on themselves and threaten to destroy what they have achieved.
Man of Action: The movement begins with men of words, materializes by fanatics, and consolidated by men of action. With a balanced faith in humanity, men of action save the movement from the fanatics, marking the end of the dynamic phase of the movement. Men of action fix and perpetuate the movement’s unity and readiness for self-sacrifice. The new order is founded on the ‘necks of the people, rather than in their hearts.’ The man of action is a man of the law. The movement now becomes a means of self-realization for the ambitious. Concern for the frustrated is still there, not to harness their discontent, but to reconcile them with it; to turn them meek and patient with visions of distance hopes and dreams.
Good and Bad Mass Movements: No matter what good intentions a mass movement starts off with, or what benefit may result, it is hard not to see the active phase as unpleasant, if not outright evil. On the other hand, mass movements are a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead.
Recommended complementary reading: ‘The Anatomy of Revolution’ by Crane Brinton; compares the four greatest revolutions, providing much historical background that Hoffer refers to in ‘The True Believer.’
If you’ve ever been part of a mass movement, or ever contemplated participating in one, this book will open your eyes to what you can expect as a mass movement gets underway and develops through its active phase. It’ll provide you with an understanding of the motivations and designs of the movement’s leaders, and insight into your own and your fellow believers’ psychology. If you have the ambition to be the next Christ or Hitler to lead a mass movement, this is your blueprint.
In summary:
I. THE APPEAL OF MASS MOVEMENTS
The desire for change starts and lives in the hearts of frustrated people. Attached to this frustration these individuals possess a sense of power to accomplish great change. Faith in the future and the ability to project hope makes for receptivity to change. High hopes and dark endings incongruently go together. Belonging to a mass movement substitutes for deficiencies in the individual. Mass Movements compete with one another, and often are interchangeable. No movement is whole of a singular nature.
II. THE POTENTIAL CONVERTS
The best and worst of society often determine the course of history - over the heads of the great middle. A society without the dregs may be peaceful and complacent, but lacking in the seeds for change. Here are the ranks of mass movement fodder:
New Poor: Memory of better times puts fire in their bellies.
Abject Poor: Too occupied with survival to organize. Discontent is high, however, when misery is still bearable.
Free Poor: Freedom creates and alleviates frustration. Fanatics fear freedom more than persecution. Equality and fraternity are preferred over freedom.
Creative Poor: The ability to create mitigates frustration; however, those whose creativity is fading, or those who didn’t quite achieve creative satisfaction, may seek escape in mass movements.
Unified Poor: Compact or tribal groups are relatively free of frustration. Mass movements often try to break down family units to feed the movement. Compact structures, like families in decline are, however, fertile ground for mass movements.
Temporary Misfits: Adolescents, unemployed, veterans, and new immigrants are unreliable supporters of mass movements; their frustrations abate once circumstances improve.
Permanent Misfits: The incurably frustrated can never have enough of what they really do not want anyway. They are likely to become the most violent true believers.
Inordinately Selfish: Those who have lost faith in themselves, look to attach to a holy cause; In compensation, they become champions of selflessness.
Ambitious with Unlimited Opportunity: Current actions are never enough; they possess excessive readiness for self-sacrifice.
Minorities Intent On Preserving Their Identity: These persons act as tribal groups and lack frustration.
Minorities Bent On Assimilation: These frustrated cannot get in the door of the established order.
Bored: These people are required in quantity for a successful mass movement; they’re looking for fulfillment in a meaningless existence.
Sinners: For the irredeemable, salvation can be found in losing oneself in a holy cause; they are willing to go to extremes.
Mass movements attract and hold followers by offering refuge from anxiety. Mass movements aim to infect people with a malady, then offer a cure. Hope comes in two forms: one immediate and one distant.
III. UNITED ACTION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
The chief preoccupation of mass movements is to foster united action and self-sacrifice. For the individual to commit to self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity, and by ritual be associated with the movement.
To engage in dying or killing, the individual must suffer under the illusion of being a participant in a grand undertaking, or a solemn performance. Glory is theatrical.
The present must be deprecated, pushed off the stage, depicted as mean and miserable and held in utter contempt. In replacement, hope is assured for a better future. The frustrated individual is ready to die for what he wishes to have and wishes to be.
Mass movements strive to interpose a fact-proof screen between the movement’s faithful and the realities of the world, in a word: doctrine. The effectiveness of a doctrine is judged not on its validity or profundity, but on how well it insulates the individual from his self and the world.
The individual’s estrangement proceeds with intense passion and fanaticism. Mass movements prevent the achievement of internal balance for the fanatic individual, but perpetuate insecurity and incompleteness.
Unified individuals in a compact collective of a mass movement body are no longer frustrated. Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. Mass movements can rise without a belief in God, but never without a belief in evil.
Unreasonable hatreds emerge as an expression of the frustrated individual’s effort to suppress his own shortcomings and self-contempt. Self hate emanates from feelings of helplessness, inadequacy, and cowardice, rather than justified grievances. The object of hate is often those other than the ones who committed the perceived wrongs. Committing grave injustices upon the object of hate re-enforces and fuels hate. A guilty conscience lies behind such acts, which demands even greater effort to demonize the hated to suppress this guilty conscience.
Estrangement of the self is required for selflessness and assimilation into the whole of a compact group. The True Believer sees himself as one of ‘the chosen.’ Self-denial and group membership confers the right on them to be harsh upon others, and by which to be rid of personal responsibility. Violence is not the product of leadership, but of a unification of the whole.
Propaganda succeeds not with unwilling minds, but with frustrated individuals. Propaganda operates most effectively in conjunction with coercion. The mass movement requires the ability to make people believe, and by force as a last resort.
Leadership cannot create a mass movement out of thin air. There has to be grievances with intense dissatisfactions and an eagerness of the True Believers to follow and obey. Once the stage is set, however, an outstanding leader is indispensable. The leader personifies the certitude of the movement, as well as defiance and power. He must be able to steer the faithful and maintain its cohesion. To a large degree, charlatanism is required for effective leadership.
Action is a unifier of mass movements. Marching, for instance, kills thought and hastens the end of individuality. An inability to act breeds frustration with the movement, while successful action drains energy and commitment from the movement.
The mass movement must perpetuate the individual’s incompleteness and insecurity.
IV. BEGINNING AND END
Men of Words: Mass movements usually rise when a prevailing order has been discredited. This is the work of men of words with a grievance. They set the groundwork for the movement by undermining existing institutions, promoting the idea of change, and creating a new faith. Men of words may champion the downtrodden, but the grievance that animates them is personal. Their vanity is greater than their ambitions; recognition and the appearance of power is preferred over power itself. Often it’s the men of words who are the tragic figures of the mass movement, as at a certain point, the movement is hijacked by a power hungry clique which usually cheats the masses of the freedoms they seek.
Fanatics: A genuine mass movement is hatched by the fanatic. Men of words shrink before the outbreak of anarchy, they forget the troubled masses they set out to help, and run to the protection of strong ‘men of action.’ For the fanatic, chaos is his element. Fanatics come from the ranks of the non-creative men of words; unfulfilled, they can never be reconciled with their self, and they desire not a finality or a fixed order of things. Hatred becomes a habit, and when the outsiders are vanquished, the fanatics then turn on themselves and threaten to destroy what they have achieved.
Man of Action: The movement begins with men of words, materializes by fanatics, and consolidated by men of action. With a balanced faith in humanity, men of action save the movement from the fanatics, marking the end of the dynamic phase of the movement. Men of action fix and perpetuate the movement’s unity and readiness for self-sacrifice. The new order is founded on the ‘necks of the people, rather than in their hearts.’ The man of action is a man of the law. The movement now becomes a means of self-realization for the ambitious. Concern for the frustrated is still there, not to harness their discontent, but to reconcile them with it; to turn them meek and patient with visions of distance hopes and dreams.
Good and Bad Mass Movements: No matter what good intentions a mass movement starts off with, or what benefit may result, it is hard not to see the active phase as unpleasant, if not outright evil. On the other hand, mass movements are a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead.
Recommended complementary reading: ‘The Anatomy of Revolution’ by Crane Brinton; compares the four greatest revolutions, providing much historical background that Hoffer refers to in ‘The True Believer.’
109 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2018
Verified Purchase
Eric Hoffer was a San Francisco longshoreman who self-educated and left behind "The True Believer," an astonishingly insightful examination of the phenomenon of mass movements. Hoffer wrote the book in 1951, when two of the most malignant mass movements in human history, those that produced the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, sprung up, and the writing reflects that to an extent. His insights are timeless, though, and are applicable in examining mass movements of any era.
Hoffer observes that the type of person inclined to join a mass movement values equality and fraternity more than freedom, quoting one Nazi in Germany who stated that he "wanted to be free from freedom." Those who join mass movements respond to the promise of hope and belonging that such movements provide, and Hoffer notes the essentially religious nature of the Communist and Nazi movements, calling Stalinism another opiate of the people.
The author discusses how susceptible certain personality types are to joining mass movements and contrasts practical organizations (collections of individuals with healthy self-esteem) versus mass movements (agglomerations of those with low self-esteem who tend up end up behaving like mobs).
Hoffer asserts that there are conditions in societies that are favorable for the formation of mass movements, and talks of how movements arise, develop, and progress in stages. Men of words and men of action play distinct roles in the formation of mass movements, and the author describes types and roles of leaders in mass movements, who employ persuasion, coercion, and propaganda to psychologically bully those who cannot endure an autonomous existence into choosing self-immolation over healthy individuality.
Other topics touched on include the interchangeability of mass movements, antidotes to mass movements, attitudes of mass movements toward families, and why mass movements tend to lead to unrestrained violence. There are dozens of stunning insights into the human condition in this classic which is just as timely and important today as it was nearly seventy years ago.
Hoffer observes that the type of person inclined to join a mass movement values equality and fraternity more than freedom, quoting one Nazi in Germany who stated that he "wanted to be free from freedom." Those who join mass movements respond to the promise of hope and belonging that such movements provide, and Hoffer notes the essentially religious nature of the Communist and Nazi movements, calling Stalinism another opiate of the people.
The author discusses how susceptible certain personality types are to joining mass movements and contrasts practical organizations (collections of individuals with healthy self-esteem) versus mass movements (agglomerations of those with low self-esteem who tend up end up behaving like mobs).
Hoffer asserts that there are conditions in societies that are favorable for the formation of mass movements, and talks of how movements arise, develop, and progress in stages. Men of words and men of action play distinct roles in the formation of mass movements, and the author describes types and roles of leaders in mass movements, who employ persuasion, coercion, and propaganda to psychologically bully those who cannot endure an autonomous existence into choosing self-immolation over healthy individuality.
Other topics touched on include the interchangeability of mass movements, antidotes to mass movements, attitudes of mass movements toward families, and why mass movements tend to lead to unrestrained violence. There are dozens of stunning insights into the human condition in this classic which is just as timely and important today as it was nearly seventy years ago.
47 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2016
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This book, while somewhat dated (written while Stalin still ruled), is still frighteningly accurate and applicable to events unfolding even now. I found it difficult to read only in the sense that I did not want to believe that words written a few years before I was born could still so accurately portray the world and events that I see today.
125 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

enthymeme
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thought-provoking from start to finish.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2015Verified Purchase
A very engaging and insightful work is this, well researched and academic, to the point where it would be dry were it not for the subject matter and Hoffer’s engaging turn of phrase, which gives not only a theoretical view of the world of the fanatic, but a deep analysis of how the fanatic and his world came about.
Hoffer is very even-handed in his discussion, drawing examples from the Nazi party, the French Revolution, postwar Palestine, Stalinist Russia, the Crusades and Imperial Japan. No period or aspect of life is left unexamined as he walks through the rise of the mass movement, who is motivated to join them and why, and how each religious, political and revolutionary current transitions through various stages, changing its rhetoric, members and even its aims in the pursuit of-what? Something which they all have in common but claim is unique only to their own race of believers.
You could page through it and find multiple parallels with his time and our own, from Nazi Germany to North Korea, and radical Islam to the radical right. Like any good work of history, this shows the reader how parts of the modern world came about and persist today, and how we might be ( or how we have been) led to follow a strange banner and become a True Believer ourselves.
Hoffer is very even-handed in his discussion, drawing examples from the Nazi party, the French Revolution, postwar Palestine, Stalinist Russia, the Crusades and Imperial Japan. No period or aspect of life is left unexamined as he walks through the rise of the mass movement, who is motivated to join them and why, and how each religious, political and revolutionary current transitions through various stages, changing its rhetoric, members and even its aims in the pursuit of-what? Something which they all have in common but claim is unique only to their own race of believers.
You could page through it and find multiple parallels with his time and our own, from Nazi Germany to North Korea, and radical Islam to the radical right. Like any good work of history, this shows the reader how parts of the modern world came about and persist today, and how we might be ( or how we have been) led to follow a strange banner and become a True Believer ourselves.
9 people found this helpful
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sylvia maude
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book to make you think.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2018Verified Purchase
What an amazing book.I found it from a bibliography of a book I had recently read. It is surprising that it was written over 60 years ago. It is relevant today and very perceptive. The writing style is clear, the structure of the book leads the reader on to its conclusions with many sentences that have become regularly quoted. It is not surprising that it has become a classic and I could not put it down.
3 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very insightful read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2020Verified Purchase
Very well researched and presented look at Mass Movements from a non bias point of view. Especially with what is going on in the world today!

Stickershock
5.0 out of 5 stars
Man was free, free to feel inadequate
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2012Verified Purchase
This should be on everyone's reading list.
For Hoffer, there are two kinds of people - those who stand on their own two feet and those who want to distance themselves from themselves and their feeling of inadequacy or lack of meaning and attach themselves to movements - religion, ideology, or any group where they can derive meaning.
For Hoffer, there are two kinds of people - those who stand on their own two feet and those who want to distance themselves from themselves and their feeling of inadequacy or lack of meaning and attach themselves to movements - religion, ideology, or any group where they can derive meaning.
6 people found this helpful
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disgusted of dagenham
4.0 out of 5 stars
The answer to militants everywhere?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 1, 2015Verified Purchase
Not an easy book to read. The thesis - that all mass movements- are essentially the same in origin and progress is quite difficult to absorb.
But worthwhile and enlightening. Reccomended as a read by Martin Wolfe-the F T columnist.A good reccomendation.
But worthwhile and enlightening. Reccomended as a read by Martin Wolfe-the F T columnist.A good reccomendation.
2 people found this helpful
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