On Pages 142 and 143 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer tells how a fanatic is the only one that bring a mass movement to life. I quote him there, and comment on his content.
Hoffer (H after this): “ XVI
The Fanatics
110
When the movement is ripe, only the fanatic can hatch a genuine mass movement. Without him the disaffection engendered by militant men of words remains undirected and can vent itself only in pointless and easily suppressed disorders. Without him, the initiated reforms, even when drastic, leave the old way of life unchanged, and any change in government usually amount to no more than a transfer of power from one set of men of action to another. Without him there can perhaps be no new beginning.
When the old order begins to fall apart, many of the vociferous men of words, who prayed so long for the day, are in a funk. The first glimpse of the face of anarchy frightens them out of their wits. They forget all they said about the ‘poor simple folk’ and run for help to strong men of action—princes, generals, administrators, bankers, landowners—who know how to deal with the rabble and how to stem the tide of chaos.
Not so the fanatic. Chaos is his element. When the old order begins to crack, he wades in with all his might and recklessness to blow the whole hated present to high heaven. He glories in the sight of a world coming to a sudden end. To hell with reforms! All that already exists is rubbish, and there is no sense in reforming rubbish. He justifies his will to anarchy with the plausible assertion that there can be no new beginning so long as the old clutters the landscape. He shoves aside the frightened men of words, if they are still around, though he continues to extol their doctrines and mouth their slogans. He alone knows the innermost craving of the masses in action: the craving for communion, for the mustering of the host, for the dissolution of cursed individuality in the majesty and grandeur of the mighty whole. Posterity is king; and woe to those, inside and outside the movement who hug and hang on to the present.”
My response: The fanatic that hatches the actual mass movement is a dangerous revolutionary and nihilist. To hell with the present, law and order, peace and quiet. Blow everything up, smash everything—let the revolution begin, with gun fire and blood flowing in the streets, with bombs thrown, riots unleashed, and looting and arson running wild.
There is something criminal and juvenile in the thinking of the fanatic. That fanaticism, violence, the rule of the armed street thug, the pure altruist-collectivist ethics of the true-believers unleashed upon society and the existing order are all different facets of raw evil pulsating in the actions of mobs on the march through the cities. In their mob frenzy, the true believer’s blood lust and cruelty are pure hell, and this is when altruism is exposed for what it is, a group living condition.
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