Eric Hoffer

Hoffer came to public attention with the 1951 publication of his first book, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, which consists of a preface and 125 sections, which are divided into 18 chapters. Hoffer analyzes the phenomenon of "mass movements," a general term that he applies to revolutionary parties, nationalistic movements, and religious movements. He summarizes his thesis in §113: "A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of actions."[22]

Hoffer argues that fanatical and extremist cultural movements, whether religious, social, or national, arise when large numbers of frustrated people, believing their own individual lives to be worthless or spoiled, join a movement demanding radical change. But the real attraction for this population is an escape from the self, not a realization of individual hopes: "A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation."[23]

Hoffer consequently argues that the appeal of mass movements is interchangeable: in the Germany of the 1920s and the 1930s, for example, the Communists and National Socialists were ostensibly enemies, but sometimes enlisted each other's members, since they competed for the same kind of marginalized, angry, frustrated people. For the "true believer," Hoffer argues that particular beliefs are less important than escaping from the burden of the autonomous self.

Harvard historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. said of The True Believer: "This brilliant and original inquiry into the nature of mass movements is a genuine contribution to our social thought."[24]

Subsequent to the publication of The True Believer (1951), Eric Hoffer touched upon Asia and American interventionism in several of his essays. In "The Awakening of Asia" (1954), published in The Reporter and later his book The Ordeal of Change (1963), Hoffer discusses the reasons for unrest on the continent. In particular, he argues that the root cause of social discontent in Asia was not government corruption, "communist agitation," or the legacy of European colonial "oppression and exploitation," but rather that a "craving for pride" was the central problem in Asia, suggesting a problem that could not be relieved through typical American intervention.[25]

For centuries, Hoffer notes, Asia had "submitted to one conqueror after another." Throughout these centuries, Asia had "been misruled, looted, and bled by both foreign and native oppressors without" so much as "a peep" from the general population. Though not without negative effect, corrupt governments and the legacy of European imperialism represented nothing new under the sun. Indeed, the European colonial authorities had been "fairly beneficent" in Asia.[25]

To be sure, Communism exerted an appeal of sorts. For the Asian "pseudo-intellectual," it promised elite status and the phony complexities of "doctrinaire double talk." For the ordinary Asian, it promised partnership with the seemingly emergent Soviet Union in a "tremendous, unprecedented undertaking" to build a better tomorrow.[25]

According to Hoffer, however, Communism in Asia was dwarfed by the desire for pride. To satisfy such desire, Asians would willingly and irrationally sacrifice their economic well-being and their lives as well.[25]

Unintentionally, the West had created this appetite, causing "revolutionary unrest" in Asia. The West had done so by eroding the traditional communal bonds that once had woven the individual to the patriarchal family, clan, tribe, "cohesive rural or urban unit," and "religious or political body."

Without the security and spiritual meaning produced by such bonds, Asians had been liberated from tradition only to find themselves now atomized, isolated, exposed, and abandoned, "left orphaned and empty in a cold world."[25]

Certainly, Europe had undergone a similar destruction of tradition, but it had occurred centuries earlier at the end of the medieval period and produced better results thanks to different circumstances.

For the Asians of the 1950s, the circumstances differed markedly. Most were illiterate and impoverished, living in a world that included no expansive physical or intellectual vistas. Dangerously, the "articulate minority" of the Asian population inevitably disconnected themselves from the ordinary people, thereby failing to acquire "a sense of usefulness and of worth" that came by "taking part in the world's work." As a result, they were "condemned to the life of chattering posturing pseudo-intellectuals" and coveted "the illusion of weight and importance."[25]

Most significantly, Hoffer asserts that the disruptive awakening of Asia came about as a result of an unbearable sense of weakness. Indeed, Hoffer discusses the problem of weakness, asserting that while "power corrupts the few... weakness corrupts the many."[25]

Hoffer notes that "the resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence." In short, the weak "hate not wickedness" but themselves for being weak. Consequently, self-loathing produces explosive effects that cannot be mitigated through social engineering schemes, such as programs of wealth redistribution. In fact, American "generosity" is counterproductive, perceived in Asia simply as an example of Western "oppression."[25]

In the wake of the Korean War, Hoffer does not recommend exporting at gunpoint either American political institutions or mass democracy. In fact, Hoffer advances the possibility that winning over the multitudes of Asia may not even be desirable. If on the other hand, necessity truly dictates that for "survival" the United States must persuade the "weak" of Asia to "our side," Hoffer suggests the wisest course of action would be to master "the art or technique of sharing hope, pride, and as a last resort, hatred with others."[25]

During the Vietnam War, despite his objections to the antiwar movement and acceptance of the notion that the war was somehow necessary to prevent a third world war, Hoffer remained skeptical concerning American interventionism, specifically the intelligence with which the war was being conducted in Southeast Asia. After the United States became involved in the war, Hoffer wished to avoid defeat in Vietnam because of his fear that such a defeat would transform American society for ill, opening the door to those who would preach a stab-in-the-back myth and allow for the rise of an American version of Hitler.[26]

In The Temper of Our Time (1967), Hoffer implies that the United States as a rule should avoid interventions in the first place: "the better part of statesmanship might be to know clearly and precisely what not to do, and leave action to the improvisation of chance." In fact, Hoffer indicates that "it might be wise to wait for enemies to defeat themselves," as they might fall upon each other with the United States out of the picture.[27] The view was somewhat borne out with the Cambodian-Vietnamese War and Chinese-Vietnamese War of the late 1970s.

In May 1968, about a year after the Six-Day War, he wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times titled "Israel's Peculiar Position:"

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single one.[28]

Hoffer asks why "everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world" and why Israel should sue for peace after its victory.[28]

Hoffer believed that rapid change is not necessarily a positive thing for a society and that too rapid change can cause a regression in maturity for those who were brought up in a different society. He noted that in America in the 1960s, many young adults were still living in extended adolescence. Seeking to explain the attraction of the New Left protest movements, he characterized them as the result of widespread affluence, which "is robbing a modern society of whatever it has left of puberty rites to routinize the attainment of manhood." He saw the puberty rites as essential for self-esteem and noted that mass movements and juvenile mindsets tend to go together, to the point that anyone, no matter what age, who joins a mass movement immediately begins to exhibit juvenile behavior.

Hoffer further noted that working-class Americans rarely joined protest movements and subcultures since they had entry into meaningful labor as an effective rite of passage out of adolescence while both the very poor who lived on welfare and the affluent were, in his words, "prevented from having a share in the world's work, and of proving their manhood by doing a man's work and getting a man's pay" and thus remained in a state of extended adolescence. Lacking in necessary self-esteem, they were prone to joining mass movements as a form of compensation. Hoffer suggested that the need for meaningful work as a rite of passage into adulthood could be fulfilled with a two-year civilian national service program (like programs during the Great Depression such as the Civilian Conservation Corps): "The routinization of the passage from boyhood to manhood would contribute to the solution of many of our pressing problems. I cannot think of any other undertaking that would dovetail so many of our present difficulties into opportunities for growth."

Hoffer appeared on public television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s.