Thread by @Noahpinion

From Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer".

"Intensely discontented but not destitute" sounds exactly like my image of the disappointed educated class that forms the backbone of the new American socialist movement.

In a way, the social justice movement and the alt-right were also both revolutionary movements, after a fashion.

Maybe the disappointments of the 2000s and early 2010s left a great many Americans intensely discontented but not destitute.

Hoffer says that people who join mass movements often feel like failures, and see the movement as their chance to redeem their lives.

"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves."

"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."

"Until or in lieu of a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system, how can we hope to lessen or prevent — instead of just temporarily stanch — burnout?"

- Anne Helen Petersen

Hoffer: "It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt...the intensity of discontent seems to be in inverse proportion to the distance from the object fervently desired."

Hoffer has his own version of Horseshoe Theory: It's not about the ideologies, it's about the type of people who join movements.

A reminder that a winner-take-all economy with no obvious path to moderate success for the majority of people gives fuel to mass movements.

Silicon Valley disruptors, take note.

Here's another Hoffer paragraph that Silicon Valley folks would do well to read.

This paragraph makes me think about how Twitter contributes to mass movements. With Twitter, we're never alone; our revolutionary comrades are always a button click away.

This Hoffer paragraph explains why so many of the Twitter crazies have profiles filled with memes, cartoon characters, grandiose photos, and long strings of emojis.

Hoffer on why mass movements try to catastrophize the present - to convince people that Heaven is on the way, it helps to tell them that they live in Hell.

There is no room in the revolutionary mindset for the idea of "a problem that is serious but not catastrophic".

Such nuanced perspectives exist only in the minds of milquetoast liberal reformers...

fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-…

National rent control, federal job guarantee, vast sweeping campaign of public housing, universal basic income, a zero-carbon economy in 8 years, a national health service, 70% income taxes, and a wealth cap

This paragraph about fanaticism doesn't have much that's new in it, but it is very well written.

Sick burn on MMT right here 😃

An interesting thing about this book is that Hoffer doesn't think mass movements are automatically *bad*. He views them as immensely dangerous, but also necessary for creating real social change.

I love Hoffer's personality-based horseshoe theory.

I often can't tell whether anime-girl-avatar accounts are fanatical rightists or fanatical leftists...

This paragraph explains why Trump is always trying to demonize immigrants.

Damn, this sentence gave me chills.

"The True Believer", ultimately, is just one guy ranting. A good way to remind yourself that you're reading one guy's rant, rather than a dispensation of pure eternal truth, is to notice when he makes an obvious howler.

Like this one:

The idea that doing horrible things makes people more fanatical (out of a desire to avoid guilt) is fairly banal, yet shouldn't be forgotten.

To this I'd add that *making excuses for* horrible acts (like the Christchurch shooting!) is itself a horrible act that creates guilt.

HEY LIBERTARIANS

This paragraph explains why movement leaders tend to annoy me:

Hoffer shares my intuition that unions are a vaccine against communism.

Hoffer thinks any mass movement relies on some form of Cancel Culture.

This paragraph makes me wonder to what extent our current unrest is a product of the fact that we train so many more PhDs than the academic job market can hire.

The paradox of doubt and critique.

...and this is why I have a Yeats avatar.

The paradox of revolution: Overthrow the Lord Ruler, and you may release the Spirit of Ruin.

Hoffer slips in a pitch for inspiring but non-fanatical leaders.

Hoffer thinks that the key to a *good* mass movement - one that benefits the world instead of hurting it - is for the movement's fanatical phase to be very short.

And Hoffer thinks the key to having fanaticism be brief and temporary is for a movement to have a concrete, more-or-less realizable objective instead of eternal striving toward the creation of an impossible utopia.

Hoffer thinks that a Hitler or Stalin might rise to power in America, but would probably be deposed fairly quickly.

Hoffer also offers, in passing, a plug for...Vladimir Lenin?

Remember: Hoffer doesn't think mass movements and revolutions are bad; he thinks they're necessary! But that because they're necessarily carried out by fanatics and bitter losers, they're very dangerous things, and should be brief and to-the-point.

Anyway, "The True Believer" is just the mostly unsupported ranting of one guy. But it has many interesting ideas that might help to understand current events! You can order it here:

amazon.com/True-Believer-…

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