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November 13, 2005
Book Review: The True Believer
Who changes the world?
Everybody has an answer: it is the intellectuals. No, it is the proletariat who does it. Wrong, it is the peasants. 'The meek shall inherit the earth'. Eric Hoffer had a different idea: it is the little man, the frustrated woman, it is the true believer who changes the world.
In The True Believer : Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer presents his case. Looking and the leaders and early adopters of a mass movement's ideology, Hoffer noticed some common characteristics: the leaders were usually frustrated artists or intellectuals. Hitler was a failed painter, Marx an unemployable philosopher. Mao Zedong fancied himself a poet. This pattern is repeated over and over, even in the non mass-murdering, non-apocaliptic mass movements. The followers, likewise, are people longing for change, any kind of change, that will destroy the present they so despise.
A short review, and a not-so-great reviewer like this one cannot hope to make justice to a profound book like this one. (Sorry folks, you'll have to read the whole thing.) I will concentrate instead on one of Hoffer's most startling conclusions: if you want to change the world, you must embrace the true believer.
If Hoffer is right, then "moderate" movements will be hopelessly outmatched. Political parties based on moderation disintegrate. "Moderate" Islam will be outmaneuvered by "militant" Islam. (Not that Islam itself has ever been moderate.) Worse still, those of us who consider Islam a threat to our liberty must embrace the true believer, if we hope to win this struggle. If Mr. Hoffer is right, to change the world, we must change ourselves.
Posted by Ruy Diaz at November 13, 2005 9:14 AM
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