From Pages 127 to 131 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer discusses how men of words influence the mass movement that they are associated with. I quote Hoffer and then comment on his content.
Hoffer (H after this): “ Part Four
Beginning And End
XV
Men of Words
104
Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”
My response: This may be one of Hoffer’s most insightful and critically significant points. He long distrusted academics and other professional thinkers and intellectuals. He knew they were of two opposing minds. The conservatives among them defended and propped up the status quo.
The other batch of thinkers were enemies of the status quo, and quite dangerous to the survival of society as it is. These angry, unhappy, revolutionary malcontents filled with revenge lust against individualistic, middle class American society that admired intellectuals, but kept them out of power, until the Leftist revolution ruling today, allowed intellectuals to wield power, and they started running all our institutions from the 1960s increasingly to the present day.
Hoffer had their number; they knew it, so they conspired to make him unpopular and ignored, so it worked because he is now forgotten.
Hoffer realized they were able to overthrow America’s culture and prevailing order by their endless carping and gaslighting our great way of life. Their grievances and suspect compassion actually masked their raw lust for power. They were treasonous fanatics, seeking to take down our capitalism middle class, industrial democracy, and then install a new Communist Party, a new elite to run things, and these intellectuals will be among the authoritarians ruling class pushing the conquered masses around.
The political and cultural Progressive revolution that has come close to overthrowing America’s traditional political and cultural order is made up of these men of words, and they made possible the mass movement that is now, after 60 years, seeking to finalize its takeover of all things American.
Now what Hoffer explains about intellectuals is that they are aristocratic, managers, elitist and rulers by nature; they actually see themselves as genetically superior to the common people, and that their self-assigned description of themselves as smarter, better, more talented, and intellectually and morally superior to the masses, and this proclaimed if false and disprovable self-justification, is their means of warranting their natural right to rule: they are destined to rule and direct the lives of the pathetic commoners so weak, sinful, contemptible, selfish unenlightened and unable to conduct their own affairs.
Men of words as a class are rulers or part of the ruling class; if they are part of the prevailing dispensation, they are conservatives and defend the status quo. If they are dislodged from power and thrown out into the darkness or never had a stake among the ruling elite in running the prevailing franchise, they are revolutionary and seek to overthrow what is, and all of their angry communications, writing, carping and theorizing are aimed to overthrow what is.
My plain is to make society foolproof against elites and their men of words, be they intellectual elitists pro-status quo because they are among the rulers, or if they are the enemies of the status quo, pretending to be compassionate social justice warriors, putting it all on the life as selfless altruists and heroic martyrs, willing to die while fighting for the victims tyrannized, oppressed, exploited, enslaved under the existing system. But the real motive of these radicals is much darker and more sinister: their real motive is to overthrow the status quo with a new social order in which the revolutionaries now run things and boss the masses around.
A society, with elites on top with all the power and money, with 90% on the bottom rungs of society, without power money or freedom, is a sick dysfunctional society. But revolutionary overthrow of any corrupt society never makes things better.
Here is America, a just, kind country as a people, the revolutionary Left, liars, defamers, and slanderers all, have smeared America and deconstructed it: they now with their gradually emerging, Fabianized mass movement are implementing their cultural, Marxist revolution in anticipation of coming, ultimate, irreversible revolutionary victory.
Chris Rufo is writing that to launch his needed and justified counterrevolution to restore America to its noble and grand traditions, he wants to cultivate a new conservative intellectual counter-revolutionary elite. He is right about the counterrevolution but dead wrong about bringing in a counter elite of intellectuals to affect the revolution and then run things afterward.
We do not need professional thinkers to conduct the counterrevolution or run society conservatively once the counterrevolution is reinstated. Our Found Father were weird, unique revolutionaries, aristocratic revolutionaries, propertied, farmers, Southern Aristocrats, lawyers, doctors, wealthy merchants, ministers. As aristocratic, conservative revolutionaries, the Founders were living dialetheia, living paradoxes or living contradictions--conservative and revolutionary at the same time. This is why their mass movement was constructed and then taken down before totalitarianism or a new monarchy followed it like Napoleon did in France.
We need individuating supercitizens to be living dialetheia like the Founders were. The supercitizens will be self-actualized individuators and intellectuals (each one, in the same person as wise, principled, humane, sane, reasonable integrated personality and supercitizen) so they are a hybrid that is one half elitist and one cultural aristocrat. That will make them so smart and independent that no elite of intellectuals will be able to intimidate, deceive, manipulate, coerce, brainwash, outthink, over-impress, out-talk or mesmerize these critically thinking original thinkers. That will end elites ever ruling America again or any place else that fosters this system of anarchist-individuating supercitizens where the majority of citizens are upper class in a capitalist system of small, limited government a constitutional republic.
Since the individuators, even if academic professors, will have a business or two on the side, they will remain connected to the common people. They will make so much money and build so much per capita wealth apiece in a very prosperous, affluent America that anyone with an IQ above 85 and some physical ability with hard work and a practical shrewd sense of personal wealth creation and protection, that this society of upper class individuators will make 90% of the people slightly or substantially upper middle class with still a few remaining poor and a few billionaires and a few middle class folks existing but both well off. This new American social order will make the people not poor, not exploited, not tyrannized.
We will have a constitutional republic run for and by upper middle class individuating supercitizens that will keep society stable and yet gently, constantly, moderately, peacefully, legally, quietly revolutionary—where change is ongoing without disrupting the social fabric—always traditional but always evolving while staying the same, so people conserve what is good about the old order, and add what is good for the order--new ideas from intellectuals out on the fringes of society will be credited them but mediated against destroying society, while gently changing society. This mitigates the needs for men of words, whether pro status quo or radically bent on replacing the existing dispensation and introducing a new status quo. Society for and run by the people, upper class individuating supercitizens will deprive powerful elites, and powerless the majority of commoners a say in running society. Humans require no more stratified social orders with ruling elites lording it over the masses, a most unstable social arrangement causing much needless suffering and malevolence can go away.
It seems to me if the middle class could become upper middle class with that level of affluence becoming near universal for most Americans, and if the citizens were anarchist-individuator supercitizens making lots of money as supercitizens, each of which was a flesh-and-blood dialetheism: part intellectual and self-actualizer, and part commoner.
H: “Where the articulate are absent or without a grievance, the prevailing dispensation, though incompetent and corrupt, may continue in power until it falls and crumbles of itself. On the other hand, a dispensation of undoubted merit and vigor may be swept away if it fails to win the allegiance of the articulate minority.”
My response: If we train up a generation of individuating supercitizens who defend the status quo, while constantly introducing new ideas and reforms and are on the lookout for the latest reform fad or suggestion from a disenfranchised intellectual with a grievance, and they invite that person in to be credited with his idea and society can use the idea to some degree. By coopting the grievance-laden intellectual and bringing into the system as welcome partners, then each new generation of articulate minority intellectuals are brought into the system, and they will usually defend the system out of gratitude and loyalty. If ignored or persecuted, these radicalized radicals will employ their articulate aptitude for badmouthing the ruling dispensation, which could lead people to lose faith in it and overthrow it.
Individuating supercitizens would be like our Founding Fathers, those wonderful, unique, hybrid (aristocratic, conservative revolutionaries) citizens, half conservative and aristocrat and half radical and common seeking liberty and equality. The supercitizen, like the Founders, is moderate, and that creates a society that is good and constructive because each supercitizen is half conservative and half revolutionary or reformer. They keep society from stagnating and having much of stratification with ruling elites and suffering the ill effects of enforcing downgraded conditions upon majority masses.
Supercitizens will not be rigidly conservative lest we end up with a system so top heavy, oppressive, and reactionary that men of words with a grievance spark a mass movement and revolution to get rid of it. Supercitizens also will not run a society that is so liberal as to be radical and revolutionary, thereby destroying cherished, desirable American middle class free democracy and industrial capitalism system for the people.
H: “As pointed out in Section 83 and 86, the realization and perpetuation of a mass movement depend on force. A full-blown mass movement is a ruthless affair, and its management is in the hands of ruthless fanatics who use only words to give an appearance of spontaneity to a consent gained by coercion. But these fanatics can move in and take charge only after the prevailing order has been discredited and has lost the allegiance of the masses. The preliminary work of undermining existing institutions, of familiarizing the masses with the idea of change, and of creating a receptivity to a new faith, can be done only by men who are, first and foremost, talkers or writers and are recognized as such by all. As long as the existing order functions in a more or less orderly fashion, the masses remain basically conservative.”
My response: With the masses being individuator supercitizens, they not elites will decide if the majority opinion agreed upon and negotiated and ever renegotiated among the peacefully, courteously disagree, dialoguing, agreeing masses until they reach a compromise on a national agenda to order the politicians to obey and implement or else. The supercitizens will tell their leaders what to do, far more than elites or leaders will tell the masses what to do and what is their duty and obligation. The supercitizenns will decide how much and how long they remain conservative, when they become liberal or even revolutionary, or to what degree or for how long.
H: “They can think of reform but not of total innovation. The fanatical extremist, no matter how eloquent, strikes them as dangerous, traitorous, impractical and even insane. They will not listen to him. Lenin himself recognized that where the ground is not ready for them the Communists ‘find it hard to approach the masses . . . and even get them to listen to them.’ Moreover, the authorities, even when feeble or tolerant, are likely to react violently against the activist tactics of the fanatic and may gain from his activities, as it were, a new vigor.
Things are different in the case of the typical man of words. The masses listen to him because they know that his words, however urgent, cannot have immediate results. The authorities can either ignore him or use mild methods to muzzle him. Thus imperceptibly the man of words undermines established institutions, discredits those in power, and sets the stage for the rise of a mass movement.”
My response: What Hoffer shares in these two paragraphs is key to understanding his account of mass movements and how they operate. Intellectuals, or the men of words, quite often but not always, do not seem to the masses or the authorities ruling these masses, to be an existential threat. And the men of words ordinarily are not an immediate, existential threat to the institutions that they, by the revolutionary and radical ideas that they present and seek to have the masses champion to overthrow the entrenched dispensation; men of words are an indirect threat, upstream from the fanatical men of action, who are the direct threat to ruling elites and the masses underneath them, as the conservatives resist accepting the introduced conceptual and theoretical campaign, downgrading existent institutions, and by displacing and replacing the metaphysics, myths and cultural narrative spun by the traditionalists to explain and justify their current hegemony is a give society.
The philosophy and theories of thinkers in one generation will become the law or culture of the next generation. This is historical fact. We do not want totalitarian control of our Western democracies by ruling elites and Communist or Nazi political parties of radical ideologues, drunk with power, and hating the masses they rule and oppress.
If a generation of individuating supercitizens could be reared up, aware of the threat, direct or indirect, that men of words, and their activist thugs that lead and run destructive, murderous mass movements, bring about change at a very high price in terms of waste, violence, murder, the increase of malevolence and needless suffering among people, then these united supercitizens could build and maintain a human, free, prosperous status quo, while debating all critics of society, binging in their changes a little at a time but constantly to take the new and bring it in but keep it peaceful, lawful, orderly and yet ever evolving. To steal the thunder of the malcontent men of words and men of action, the radicals that hate the status quo, and work tirelessly for its destruction and overthrow: the aim is to give them say, but never the revolutionary, totalitarianized, mass-movementized power to smash society and inflict their evil, unworkable, idealistic nightmares upon suffering humanity.
The old Aristotelian idea that the moral agent also has a political role to play as a citizens involved in running his government is a normative standard that the modern individuating supercitizens needs to adopt on steroids.
These supercitizens, in whatever country, must demand that the government (international—UN, federal, state, local) be limited small but powerful, efficient, limited in scope and ambition, and efficiently and cost-effectively run (a balanced budget) be durable and sturdy, but only a bit more large and extensive in reach than the minarchist, night-watchmen state, proposed by Libertarians. The supercitizens want a constitutional republic, with free market economics and the right to keep and bear arms as individuals.
Each supercitizen should expect and demand of himself that he spends 10-15 hours a week running government on all levels. Government grows, and power corrupts and absolute centralized power corrupts all, Government is Sauron’s ring of power that will corrupt all, likely even the Good Spirts or the good deities, who have a teensy bit of evil in them still (If Good Spirits and Good Spirts did not have a trace of evil in them, if they were not a very small part evil, they could not understand, interact with or effectively work against forces of darkness on the march everywhere). Only individuating supercitizens can keep government small and power dispersed, for government and institutions of all kinds, secular or sacred, private or public in nature, always grow, always turn corrupt, always reduce the masses to group-living, nonindividuating, evil-loving and living in accordance with an altruist-collectivist morality.
The individuating supercitizens can never trust the President, the legislators, the bureaucrats, or the Courts: those that protect and serve the people always end up attacking and living off of the people and seek to reduce them to serfdom. Centralized power in any institution or hierarchy is always corrupting and prone to turning corrupt, elitist, evil and authoritarian. And, as the government grows, evil and sickness proliferate throughout society.
The people must know this and work constantly against it for there is never any guarantee beyond one generation that the kids in the next generation will know and learn from history and be trained up to be the new generation of individuating supercitizens.
We must pass few laws, but be willing to pass strong but not overbearing, overreaching laws when we do enact legislation into law. Every law pass restrict liberty, individualism, personal power of powerfulness, the growth and maintenance of spiritual and moral goodness in the world. The individuator is not perfect but only he can be the repository of power throughout society; he is still corruptible, being basically evil, but he is less inclined to do it or allowed to do it by 200 million other American supercitizens that are also rich, powerful, patriots, unwilling to bow to any dictator or guru. We never pass more laws than we have to, and we never grow any institution bigger than necessary for centralizes power corrupts inevitably.
Still, we need structure and institutions so this American social order should be gently, gradually experimented with, pruned, shaped, remodified and reconstituted with extreme, humility, deliberation caution and care. A society with no institutions and no structure will turn lawless with pure liberty and then end up as a totalitarian police state, a pure centralized structure, very wick and malevolent. When men of words and men of action, radicals, reactionaries and revolutionaries, scheme to overthrow the standing dispensation, they are both naïve and foolish, not aware of the damage they are doing—and yet on some level of consciousness, they are willfully blind and know exactly the price to be paid by people if this dystopian nightmare that they promote is brought into being. They know what they are sowing, and they pray that it will come about for they are planning to bring maximum pain to humanity.
The True Believer with my individuating supercitizen political normative standard should be a civics class taught to all 8th graders to prepare the kids for running the society ten years later.
H: “The division between men of words, fanatics and practical men of action, as outlined in the following sections, is not meant to be categorical. Men like Ghandi and Trotsky start out as apparently ineffectual men of words and later display exceptional talents as administrators and generals. A man like Mohammed starts out as a man of words, develops into an implacable fanatic and finally reveals a superb practical sense. A fanatic like Lenin is a master of the spoken word, and unequaled as a man of action. What the classification attempts to suggest is that the readying of the ground of a mass movement requires the temperament and talents of the fanatic; and the final consolidation of the movement is largely the work of practical men of action.
The emergence of an articulate minority where there was none before is a potential revolutionary step. The Western powers were indirect and unknowing fomenters of mass movements in Asia not only by kindling resentment (see Section 1) but also by creating articulate minorities through educational work that was largely philanthropic. Many of the revolutionary leaders in India, China and Indonesia received their training in conservative Western institutions. The American college at Beirut, which is directed and supported by Godfearing, conservative Americans, is a school for revolutionaries in the illiterate Arab world. Nor is there any doubt that the Godfearing missionary school teachers in China were unknowingly among those who prepared the ground for the Chinese revolution.”
My response: Hoffer introduces three technical names above. First, the men of words or the intellectuals provide the revolutionary theory and argument against the standing dispensation, thereby laying the ground for the introduction of a mass movement into a traditional society.
Second, the activist fanatics or men of action will take the ideas of the fanatical men of action and bring them to life as a social phenomenon, the mass movement itself is made a real, going concern. Men of words and men of action may be the same person, or usually are different persons.
Third, once the mass movement overthrows the standing order, and become the replacement regime controlling a society and its people, then the active phase of the mass movement is over, the victorious, new ruling elite is constituted by practical men of action take control of the government and then run it as a going concern.
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