Fifty years ago, this book explained terrorist minds such as Osama bin Laden.
Eric Hoffer had a perceptive mind and a persistent intellectual curiosity. In the years after World War II, he was puzzled at how dedicated Nazis could become dedicated communists literally within a heartbeat. His conclusion doomed the continuing success of his book, he defined the mind of the fanatic rather than defending the ideology of politics.
The book was first published in 1951, at the height of the McCarthy witch hunts. Instead of attacking communism, Hoffer identified fanatics as guilt-ridden hitch-hikers who thumb a ride on any ideology from Christianity to communism. The fault, according to Hoffer, was the mind of the fanatic who needs a Stalin or a Hitler or a Christ or a bin Laden to worship and die for. His description of a fanatic fitted Sen. Barry Goldwater's assertion that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." It applies to Jerry Falwell with the same rigor as he would define bin Laden today.
Consider some of Hoffer's assertions:
"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.
"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.
"This minding of other's people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat."
Now tell me, does this sound like bin Laden and/or Falwell (plus a wide number of other zealots you may wish to name):
"The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless."
Sound familiar ? It is the terrorist mind. It applies equally well to the John Birch Society and the militia movements as to the KKK and the anti-war fervor as to bin Laden and the Palestinian suicide-bombers. In America, fanatics were relegated to the silly fringes of society. In parts of the world, they are elevated to be heroes.
The fanatic is forever with us. The very definition of fanaticism rejects toleration for others; yet, to survive, we must tolerate the ideas of others -- even the most outlandish. The answer is from one of the greatest Native Americans, President Benito Juarez of Mexico, who asserted "Peace is respect for the rights of others."
Hoffer outlined the problem with brilliance, but he failed to offer a solution. Americans don't like open-ended problems; from sit-coms to revenge for the World Trade Center, they want answers. That is the weakness of the book, and perhaps why it isn't better known today.
For now, the answers will be bombs, bullets and cruise missiles. But, revenge only digs two graves. On a long-term basis, the answer must surely be something along the line of Juarez's statement. In ending his short book, Hoffer quotes J. B. S. Haldane who counted fanaticism among the only four really important inventions made between 3000 BC and 1400 AD.
"It was a Judaic-Christian invention," Hoffer wrote. "And it is strange to think that in receiving this malady of the soul the world also received a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead -- an instrument of resurrection."
Or, in more prosaic terms, the inability to hold a grudge.
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