The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer, began asking certain questions in 1951, when the science delving into Hitler was in its infancy. It is an article of faith on the Right that the only way to oppose tyrants and fanatics, whether Nazis, Communists, or ISIS, is with tyranny and fanaticism. McCarthy, Birchers, Tea Parties, militias, Boogaloo Bois, and especially Qanon.
Monday, 9/22/2014: Grokking Republicans: The True Believer. Free PDF.
This book deals with some peculiarities common to all mass movements, be they religious movements, social revolutions or nationalist movements. It does not maintain that all movements are identical, but that they share certain essential characteristics which give them a family likeness.
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.
Hoffer made no claim to be doing scientific theory-building, which requires careful and extensive collection of data on numerous test subjects. His part was to lay out a series of conjectures for others to investigate more fully, as they have done. It is a truism in science that good questions are more valuable than answers. Many of Hoffer's questions are still very much worth asking.
I wrote
The movements Hoffer considers begin, as in all such studies in the last half-century, with the German Nazis. They immediately include Communist fanaticisms and Italian Fascism, but curiously not Spanish Fascism or the Socialist side in the Spanish Civil War. Various nationalist movements, especially Japanese Imperialism, are included. Slave revolts get special analysis. Religion, especially Christianity and Islam, has a prominent place. The revolutions discussed include the Russian and Chinese Communist Revolutions, the English Civil War, the French Revolution, and the Young Turks [in Turkey, not on the much more recent TV show], but Hoffer has little to say about the numerous colonial revolutions.
In terms of the social science we have been looking at in this Diary series, all of which came after Hoffer wrote this book, the True Believer is primed for
- Cognitive Dissonance, as explained in When Prophecy Fails, by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter.
- Blind obedience to the movement's leaders, as explained in Obedience to Authority, by Stanley Milgram.
- Right Wing Authoritarianism of followers and Social Dominance Orientation of leaders, with rejection of all other authority, as explained in The Authoritarians, by Robert Altemeyer, with those combining both (Double Highs) by far the worst
- Extreme cooperation with members of the same movement, as in the Prisoner's Dilemma, and extreme non-cooperation with the movement's designated enemies, as explained in The Evolution of Cooperation, by Robert Axelrod
Mass movements can be run by Leisure Class aristocrats or robber barons, or against them, and they can be run by princes of the Church or by those whom the Churches want to suppress as heretics, blasphemers, or worse, as when Martin Luther and Pope Leo X denounced each other as the Antichrist.
The leaders of many of these movements demand blind obedience, but are perfectly willing to sacrifice or turn against members of the movement for any hint or even supposition of disloyalty, or even for any real or supposed advantage that such treachery might bring. See the purges and murders by Hitler and Stalin within their own parties, and within their military or paramilitary organizations, like the Night of the Long Knives against the Nazi SA Brownshirts.
It is Hoffer's thesis that mass movements particularly draw in the frustrated, those deeply unsatisfied not only with external conditions, but with themselves, and that the great attraction of the movement is the opportunity to lose oneself in something greater, preferably with a promised Utopia or Kingdom of God at the end.
Four years ago the conventional wisdom was that Trumpism was all about economic frustrations, but it is no longer possible to deny that it is about frustration with loss of unwarranted privilege.
- White privilege
- Male privilege
- Christian privilege
- Straight privilege
- The privileges of wealth
- Nativist privilege
- Supposed Second Amendment privilege, which you will notice only applies to Whites
- The privilege of denying science for power or profit
as it had been for centuries.
It is thus our job to show them a greater, inclusive, non-violent Utopia, where we offer the best to everyone. At the same time, we want to draw their attention to the ways that fanaticism and tyranny redound upon themselves.
- Their right to vote is under attack. It is no longer directed only at Those People, aka us.
- The Trumpista Maladministration is killing vast numbers of regular Americans with covid-19. It is no longer enough for some of the Wrong-Wingers to consider that Blacks Get Hurt Worse. (Lee Atwater)
- The pandemic is killing the economy far worse than the preceding trade wars.
- The police are attacking their children at Black Lives Matter protests, and accusing their children of being terrorists.
- Paul Ryan used to bluster about destroying Social Security and Medicare, but he stayed within the law and the Constitution. These bozos will stop at nothing.
- La Migra brownshirts are threatening millions of essential workers. The plan used to be to keep them here, helpless, but now regular domestic help and nurses and farm workers and food processing workers and so on are all threatened with dying of covid-19, having their children stolen and caged, and in many cases being sent "back" to countries they never came from.
Thus a significant percentage of various previously essential constituencies is deserting the Republican Party and coming over to us. But by no means all. There are still many Southern Whites who vote against their own economic advantage, or against expanding health care, specifically to keep Blacks and others down even lower.
Among those who are impervious to notions of the common good, significant numbers are deserting the Republican Party for the far fringes of the Wrong Wing, or are trying hostile takeovers in deeply Red districts, going far beyond the previous Tea Party takeover.
Six years ago I spent some time on Hoffer's historical examples, but today we are going to focus as much as possible on overt Trumpists.
I mentioned the Republican roots of True Believerism in McCarthyism and the John Birch Society. I will have much more to say about them when we look at The Jack Acid Society Black Book, by Pogo (as told to Walt Kelly).
Suffice it to say, for today, that the father of the Koch brothers, Fred Koch, was the lead funder of the original John Birch Society; that Birchers were implacable anti-Communists, and the Kochs were implacable anti-"collectivists", opposing any action by the Federal government for the Common Good; and that the brothers were the lead funders of Global Warming Denialism and the Tea Parties.
Global Warming Denialism has passed its sell-by date, and is in fairly rapid decline, overtaken not only by the science, but by the fact that the solutions to Global Warming, including renewable energy, electric vehicles, low-carbon and no-carbon manufacturing and agriculture, and much more, are profitable.
The decline of racism and the rest of the fears and hatreds is slower, but equally inexorable. Americans approve Progressive measures on every issue, by ever-growing margins. We are held back only by gerrymanders, voter suppression, and electoral dirty tricks by the Truest Believer leaders. But as the less committed fall away, the purity trolls of the movement become ever louder and nastier.