Mike’s Reviews > The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements > Status Update

Hitler...[said] that a movement retains its vigor only so long as it can offer nothing in the present- only 'honor and fame in the eyes of posterity'...The movement [at the end] still concerns itself with the frustrated- not to harness their discontent in a deadly struggle with the present, but to reconcile them to it...the movement [becomes] an instrument of power for the successful and an opiate for the frustrated.

The fact that mass movements...often manifest less individual freedom than the order they supplant, is usually ascribed to the trickery of a power-hungry clique that kidnaps the movement...However, the freedom the masses crave is not...self-expression and self-realization...but faith- blind, authoritarian faith.

Now that I'm near the end of your book, Professor Hoffer, I'm looking forward to the chapter where you explain how to counteract these pesky mass movements and get everything back to normal.

Um, that is the last chapter...isn't it?

This enemy- the indispensable devil of every mass movement- is omnipresent. He plots both outside and inside the ranks of the faithful. It is his voice that speaks through the mouth of the dissenter...If anything goes wrong within the movement, it is his doing.

...propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new...It penetrates only into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients...it is the music of their own souls they hear in the impassioned words of the propagandist.

It is doubtful whether the fanatic who deserts his holy cause or is suddenly left without one can ever adjust...to an autonomous...existence. He remains a homeless hitch hiker on the highways of the world thumbing a ride on any eternal cause that rolls by...He is even ready to join...against his former...cause, but it must be a genuine crusade- uncompromising, intolerant, proclaiming the one and only truth.

"Though his single-minded dedication is a holding on for dear life, he easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings...He cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted."

...mass movements strive to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the...absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth...outside it...The fanatical Communist refuses to believe any unfavorable report or evidence about Russia, nor will he be disillusioned by seeing with his own eyes the cruel misery there...

"...though a mass movement at first turns its back on the past, it eventually develops a vivid awareness, often specious, of a distant glorious past...a vivid awareness of past and future robs the present of its reality. It makes the present a...section in a procession or parade. The followers...see themselves in a soul-stirring drama played to a vast audience- generations gone and generations yet to come."

"Where people live autonomous lives and are not badly off, yet are without abilities or opportunities for creative work or useful action, there is no telling to what desperate and fantastic shifts they might resort in order to give meaning and purpose to their lives."