The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

by Hoffer, Eric

• ISBN13: 9780060505912
• ISBN10: 0060505915
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-12-21
• Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics

Summary

A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer -- the first and most famous of his books -- was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.

Author Biography

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) was self-educated. He worked in restaurants, as a migrant field-worker, and as a gold prospector. After Pearl Harbor, he worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco for twenty-five years. The author of more than ten books, including The Passionate State of Mind. The Ordeal of Change, and The Temper of Our Time, Eric Hoffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
The Appeal of Mass Movements
The Desire for Change	p. 3
The Desire for Substitutes	p. 12
The Interchangeability of Mass Movements	p. 16
The Potential Converts
The Role of the Undesirables in Human Affairs	p. 24
The Poor	p. 26
The New Poor	p. 26
The Abjectly Poor	p. 27
The Free Poor	p. 31
The Creative Poor	p. 34
The Unified Poor	p. 34
Misfits	p. 46
The Inordinately Selfish	p. 48
The Ambitious Facing Unlimited Opportunities	p. 49
Minorities	p. 50
The Bored	p. 51
The Sinners	p. 53
United Action and Self-sacrifice
Preface	p. 58
Factors Promoting Self-sacrifice	p. 62
Identification with a Collective Whole	p. 62
Make-believe	p. 66
Deprecation of the Present	p. 68
"Things Which Are Not"	p. 76
Doctrine	p. 79
Fanaticism	p. 83
Mass Movements and Armies	p. 88
Unifying Agents	p. 91
Hatred	p. 91
Imitation	p. 101
Persuasion and Coercion	p. 105
Leadership	p. 111
Action	p. 120
Suspicion	p. 124
The Effects of Unification	p. 126
Beginning and End
Men of Words	p. 130
The Fanatics	p. 143
The Practical Men of Action	p. 147
Good and Bad Mass Movements	p. 153
The Unattractiveness and Sterility of the Active Phase	p. 153
Some Factors Which Determine the Length of the Active Phase	p. 157
Useful Mass Movements	p. 162
Notes	p. 169
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