Charlatan

 

On Pages 113 and 114 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer describes the questionable yet oddly beguiling characteristics of personality often demonstrated by the leader of a mass movement. I quote him and will comment on his content.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                                  91

 

The crude ideas advanced by many of the successful mass movement leaders of our time incline one to assume that a certain coarseness and immaturity of mind is an asset to leadership. However, it was not the intellectual crudity of an Aimee McPherson or a Hitler which won and held their following but the boundless self-confidence which prompted these leaders to give full rein to their preposterous ideas. A genuinely wise leader who dared to follow out the course of his wisdom would have an equal chance of success. The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

 

My response: This point, about the shallow, illogical conceptualizing and concluding done by leaders of mass movements—and swallowed hook, line, and sinker as gospel by their followers, seems realistic. People that have fled from their lives and personal consciousness, hiding inside their collective unit and its ideology, require and year for a leader whose boundless self-confidence over banal beliefs that he holds is just fine with his followers.

 

H: “Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts. No solid, tangible advantage can hold a following and make it zealous and loyal unto death. The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and idealist.”

 

My response: True believers require lies, half-truths, exaggerations, theatricality and drama to embrace with zeal and to be willing to die for. The leader’s vision is their very reason for living and dying.

 

H: “Originality is not a prerequisite of great mass movement leadership. One of the most striking traits of the successful mass movement leader is his readiness to imitate both friend and foe, both past and contemporary models. The daring which is essential to this type of leadership consists as much in the daring to imitate as in the daring to defy the world. Perhaps the clue to any heroic career is an unbounded capacity for imitation; a single-minded fashioning after a model. This excessive capacity for imitation indicates that the hero is without a fully developed and realized self. There is much in him that is rudimentary and repressed. His strength lies in his blind spots and in plugging all outlets but one.”

 

My response: The psychological state of the guru or demagogue leading a mass movement is rich and not fully understood. His gift for imitating others renders him irresistible to his follower for he the imitator is selfless, and his cheap, dramatic unreal, copied self is exactly how they are charmed by him as they imitate him, a copy of him, their selfless hero.