Suspecting

 

From Pages 121 to 123 of his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer discusses how suspicion helps build unity among the faithful in a mass movement. I quote him below and then comment on his content.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “                           Suspicion

 

                                                                   100

 

We have seen the acrid secretion of the frustrated mind, though composed chiefly of fear and ill will, acts yet as a marvelous slime to cement the embittered and disaffected into one compact whole. Suspicion too is an ingredient of this acrid slime, and it too can act as a unifying agent.”

 

My response: It seems that good, decent people of good will, generally are grateful to God and Fate for their blessings, and then live with their crosses to bear, with not quite good cheer, at least with Christian forbearance. Good people are not embittered or disaffected on a constant war standing. Anyone, so filled with unhappiness, bitterness, resentment, self-loathing, spite and anger is, will end up being selfless, a person of ill will and evil conduct. When the self does not mean oneself or anyone else any good, then it is natural that one would be suspicious that others, even those closest to one, are not quite trustworthy, and one should remain suspicious, and sleep with one eye open. The shocker is that this suspicious state of trusting no one, while being personally suspect, unfaithful, and untrustworthy, is a state of familial, group or communal passionate that promotes unity and self-sacrifice. This is yet another Hofferian paradox (One would think if people were trustworthy and trust their neighbors, then unity would follow.), but is likely a dialetheism.

 

H: “The awareness of their individual blemishes and shortcomings inclines the frustrated to detect ill will and meanness in their fellow men. Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eye for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves. Thus when the frustrated congregate in a mass movement, the air is heavy with suspicion. There is prying and spying, tense watching and tense awareness of being watched. The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension but to strict conformity.”

 

My response: Here is another Hofferian paradox: Inside the mass movement, with the air heavy with suspicion and all spy on all, all the time, this atmosphere of universal, communal betrayal of all by all, is a condition that promotes not to disunity and bickering, but strengthen the glue that holds them all together in utter unity of purpose and loyalty. This would seem to be false and counterintuitive, but it is intuitive and true once one realizes that being filled with suspicion inside a mass movement, is a stat of passionate, pure self-loathing, and where selflessness is pure but ruthless, there unity and conformity are 100% practiced by every true believer.

 

H: “Knowing themselves continually watched, the faithful strive to escape suspicion by adhering zealously to prescribed behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith.

 

Mass movements make extensive use of suspicion in their machinery of domination. The rank-and-file among the Nazi party were made to feel they were continually under observation and were kept in a permanent of uneasy conscience and fear. Fear of one’s neighbors, one’s friends and even one’s relatives seems to be the rule within all mass movements. Now and then innocent people are deliberately accused and sacrificed in order to keep suspicion alive. Suspicion is given a sharp edge by associating all opposition within the ranks with the enemy threatening the mass movement from without. This enemy—the indispensable devil of every mass movement—is omnipresent. He plots both inside and outside the ranks of the faithful. It is his voice that speaks through the mouth of the dissenter, and the deviationists are his stooges. If anything goes wrong within the movement, it is his doing. It is the sacred duty of the true believer to be suspicious. He must be constantly on the lookout for saboteurs, spies and traitors.

 

                                                                   101

 

Collective unity is not the result of brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole—the church, party, nation—and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society.”

 

My response: This sentence of Hoffer’s that true loyalty (what I would call love) is possible only in a loose and relatively free society ( a society of individuals that are relatively contented and individualistic, so they love them a lot, and loathe themselves not much) is close to the egoist claim by Ayn Rand and I that selfishness is good (individualistic, egoistic and loving) and selflessness is bad (collectivistic, altruistic and hating of the self and others and each other).

 

H: “As Abraham was ready to sacrifice his only son to prove his devotion to Jehovah, so must the fanatical Nazi or Communist be ready to sacrifice relatives and friends to demonstrate his total surrender to the holy cause.”

 

My response: Note that religious fanaticism/true-believing/zealous, fervent faithfulness at any cost is the religious version of what a true believer will do to demonstrate his total surrender to the holy cause. Note that Hoffer is indicating that secular, atheistic true believers are just as religiously fanatical as are avowed true believers of a sect worshiping a deity openly and actively. The secular ideologies that are holy causes, and their doctrine is their religion, and the guru, prophet, demagogue or dictator is the god their deify, worship and hope die for.

 

H: “The active mass movement sees in personal ties of blood and friendship a diminution of its own corporate cohesion. Thus mutual suspicion within the ranks is not only compatible with corporate strength, but one might almost say, a precondition of it. ‘Men of strong convictions and strong passions, when leagued together, watch one another with suspicion, and find their strength in it; for mutual suspicion creates mutual dread, binds them as by an iron band, prevents desertion, and braces them against moments of weakness.’

 

It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense which cramps and restrains our nature. ‘Our zel works wonders when it seconds our propensity to hatred, cruelty, ambition, avarice, destruction and rebellion.’”

 

My response: Note altruist-collectivist at its worst, most vicious and murderous, when mass movement zeal carries the true believers forward in battle or power struggles, and they are capable of committing the worst crimes conceivable for the sake the advancement and victory of the cause over its opposition, and trampled, extinguished, silence moral sense or innate conscience cannot help any true believer from doing his worst if so commanded to misbehave.