The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

The True Believer was published in 1951. It is important to remember, therefore, that Eric Hoffer wrote the book with several of history’s most notorious mass movements still fresh in his mind. With a perspective shaped by recent events, Hoffer nonetheless takes a long historical view of mass movements.

Hoffer describes mass movements as a general phenomenon. He is interested in common denominators, so he does not dwell at length on any particular mass movement. At times, however, he derives the general from the particular, and no single mass movement contributes more particulars to his general portrait than Nazism.

Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich (1933-45) passed into history only six years before The True Believer appeared in print. Hoffer quotes Hitler on several occasions, and in many other places the relevance of the short-lived Nazi regime appears obvious. For instance, Hoffer cites genuine creativity as a factor that mitigates frustration in an individual who otherwise might feel unfulfilled and come to loathe individual existence as meaningless. Hitler’s unrealized artistic aspirations constitute a familiar biographical element in his frustrated early life. Likewise, Hoffer’s description of a mass movement’s theatrical aspect calls to mind the Nazi Party’s Nuremberg rallies.