More On Hoffer And Truth

 

On Page 67 of the biography, Eric Hoffer, biographer Calvin Thomkins shares some monologuing by Eric Hoffer that reveals Hoffer deep penchant for seeing the world as it is: “I told him, sure, you’d better be wary of us, you’d better be suspicious of us, because when you people find out the truth about America, they’ll see that they can get along without intellectuals, just the way we have done over here . . . ‘But it’s true what I told that little Indonesian,’ he said reflectively. ‘Some people try to tell me that the masses in Asia and other places are different from the masses here. Which I don’t believe. I believe they’re ninety percent the same as here. And that’s why all foreign intellectuals hate America—because we are the only real mass civilization that has ever existed, and our impulse is to do what is good for the masses and to say to hell with intellectuals. It’s the foreign intellectuals who are always the worst enemies of the masses . . . Of course, I know that now everything is changing here. The intellectuals are taking over, and the American masses are on the way out. There’s been a new tilt in the social landscape in this country. Up until recently, most of the energy and ambition and talent in America found its main outlet in business. Lots of people who might have become intellectuals somewhere else went into mining, into engineering, into the struggle to pile up big fortunes. They set their hearts on toys, and that’s always fine for the masses. The best condition for the masses is when the country is being run by people who set their hearts on toys.”

 

My response: As I interpret this quote with fresh, mature eyes as the author of Mavellonialism, I see where Hoffer anticipated almost all my major points—he is indeed the grandfather of Mavellonialism.

 

Note how he seems obsessed with intellectuals—especially foreign intellectuals. He should be, because they wreck society, and are a permanent, serious menace to the public good if not kept out of power. Hoffer the individualistic conservative is the genuine egalitarian thinker. He knows that all people are created more or less equal, that elites of any kind are an artificial, social construct in the way of human liberation, happiness, success and achievement.  He knew that the common people required a constitutional republic to live in, that they should run society with a thin layer of resolute, competent term-limited politicians-leaders pulled from the ranks of the masses, and forced to resign after their term, and go back into the ranks of the masses, to prevent the establishment of hereditary, permanent elites entrenched and in charge.

 

Note that intellectuals are always for the poor, the minority, the disadvantaged. Compassion is not what drives them—it is raw power and fighting for revolution and the collectivist good is the most efficient, proven means catapulting them into power, the new elite to run stratified society with the collective, cowering masses, disarmed, illiterate, impoverished, sick, over-worked, underpaid, terrorized and beaten down as is their due, the intellectuals secretly believe.

 

Note Hoffer’s remarkable insight that foreign intellectuals hate America because it is the only mass culture that has ever existed, and it flourished as the freest, most prosperous, most sought-after new home by legal and illegal immigrant masses from all over the world, who instinctively knew where the masses from anywhere belong, and feel most at home.

 

Intellectuals, foreign and domestic, have long plotted to wipe out Western and the American way of life to make sure that the masses here or anywhere do not have America as their beacon on the hill that they will have a chance to run their own affairs with minimal supervision from overlords, where their liberty will be maximized. For intellectuals, such a near-paradise is insufferable and must be eliminated at all costs as their first priority.

 

Note how Hoffer, like me, believes in one universal human nature: that the masses from wherever are more or less the same as masses in America. He implicitly suggests that people from any race, group or country are the same as and equal to white Americans, requiring the same things, the same opportunities, and protection from the corrupt elites, fascist, Marxist, theocratic, authoritarian, or totalitarian, ruling the roost with big government, crony capitalism and a command-and-control governmental interference with the free market in their home country.

 

Note that Hoffer the realist is well aware that, since Sputnik the intellectuals have been in ascendance in America, remaking the police state, and seeking avidly to have bureaucrats, academics and Hollywood supervise and direct the obedient masses.

 

Note the implicit axiom of ontological, normative, cultural, and political moderation that Hoffer advocates as ideal for keeping the masses safe from corrupt, domineering elites: the masses are safest and happiest in this country, or any other country, where the political leaders have their hearts set on toys.

 

I translate this to illustrate that true-believing, dead-serious, zealous intellectuals seeking to impose their cause upon a nation by overthrowing everything are post-modernist, Leftist myrmidons close to remaking America in their own image.

 

Where leaders are more temperate and sensible, even wasting time on toys and other idle diversions, they are not inclined to rush about as wild-eyed, humorless idealists out to revolutionize or destroy our lovely, decent, kind, country.