Buchholz On Hoffer

 

Lt. Col. Benjamin Buchholz, US Army, an Army strategic planner expanded on what he thought about Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer, in the January-February edition of Military Review, and I copied and pasted the article from online and will respond to it, and it might be lightly edited.

 

Here is the article: Buchholz (B after this): “

 

 

January-February 2017 MILITARY REVIEW126

The True

Believer

Thoughts on the Nature

of Mass Movements

Eric Hoffer, Harper Perennial,

New York, 2010, 192 pages

Lt. Col. Benjamin Buchholz, U.S. Army

Many theories attempt to define and offer

solutions for dealing with the brand of

radical Islam that fuels Middle Eastern

movements such as Daesh.1 Other attempts have been

made to demonstrate that radical Islam is not Islam at

all, except in the most superficial or perverted manner.

The constant claim in those scenarios is that Islamist

ideology not only misrepresents Islam, but it can also

be viewed as “a virulent vision all its own, one that its

adherents have created by plucking selections from

centuries of traditions.””

 

My response: It is my opinion that the theologians, mullahs and political leaders of Islam too often support shariah law, holy war, and war against infidels and this is religious extremism, that radical Islam is not just a fringe, perverted ideology inverting the loving, peaceful intent of a temperate religion. The leaders of Islam must preach moderation, demilitarization and deradicalization of their faith, worldwide.

 

A good rule of thumb ethically is any cause, ism, religion, or mass movement, if radical in its mission statement and absolutist about its knowledge claims, that extremism is evil and condemnable. Even worse, is when even a reasonable sounding or actually logical cause, ism, religion or mass movement, its founder or his descendants transform it into an ideology, or religiofied holy cause, at that moment it becomes a virulent version of its more reasonable self, and now it is the devil’s tool to be shunned, renounced and defeated by force if need be.

 

B: “2 However, this argument rarely

extends far enough to give the “virulent vision” a name

other than radical, or fundamental Islam, let alone sug-

gest remedies.3 Common to both of these approaches

is the base assumption that the problem of Daesh and

al-Qaida should be defined in Islamic terms. An alter-

native methodology, one that applies the sociology of

mass movements rather than the prejudices of religion,

removes ipso facto the contentiousness of religious de-

bate and provides insights into—and new methods for

countering—these movements’ appeal.4

As such, Eric Hoffer’s study in The True Believer:

Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements not only

provides a roadmap for analyzing radical Islam as

something other than religious heterodoxy but also

offers solutions that suggest new approaches to dealing

with the many, apparently intractable issues radical

Islam presents. 5 The work is broken into four main

parts, though two apply most practically to the mass

movement of radical Islam: a discussion of why mass

movements have appeal and an analysis of the traits

most likely to produce converts to a mass movement.6

The Appeal of Mass Movements

Two points that apply directly to the rise of Daesh as

a mass movement appear in the beginning of The True

Believer. First, Hoffer states,

The contribution of the Western democra-

cies to the awakening of the East has been

indirect and certainly unintended. They have

kindled an enthusiasm of resentment against

the West; and it is this anti-Western fervor

which is at present rousing the Orient from

its stagnation of centuries.”

 

My response: In his book, The Ordeal Of Change, Eric Hoffer notes that sheer historical change is enough to dislodge people from their relative contentedness and sleep, even fatalistic acceptance of their traditional dispensation and way of life. Western cultures and economics have involuntarily awakened and disrupted Eastern and Muslim masses most unwilling to be awakened, to individualize, to be atomistic, to be shoved out of their warm, communal matrix where human discontent is bearable even preferred. Now, awake and abandoned by their comforting matrix, masses often seek pride, identity, meaning and a new corporate structure to flee successfully from unwanted selfhood, back into tribal anonymity, and this bill is filled quite adequately for them by passing mass movement and their snake-oil, guru salesmen.

 

B: “7Second, instead of merely blaming discontent for the

rise of mass movements, Hoffer digs deeper. He situates

REVIEW ESSAY

127MILITARY REVIEW January-February 2017

REVIEW ESSAY

the rise of mass movements at the intersection of dis-

content and power, stating,

For men to plunge headlong into an under-

taking of vast change, they must be intensely

discontented yet not destitute, and they

must have the feeling that by the possession

of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or

some new technique they have access to a

source of irresistible power. 8

Here, the potential effects of the various Arab Spring

movements come to mind, albeit stifled or subsumed,

with both discontent in a present situation and hope in a

doctrine (at that point, democracy) strongly intermixed

across the Middle East. Where democracy could not take

root, which was nowhere in any of those movements—

not in Egypt, not in Yemen, certainly not in Syria or Iraq,

nor in the states of the Arabian Gulf—Islamism provided

and still provides an alternate source for the inculcation

of a sense of “irresistible power.”

The individual’s craving for that power is Hoffer’s next

main point. He maintains that, rather than a Western

concept of individual self-sufficiency offering a pallia-

tive, mass movement “attracts and holds a following not

because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but

because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.”9

Individualism scares most of the masses, more so with

those who have come from a communal mindset, for

when they succeed within a Western milieu those “who

attain fortune and fame often find it difficult to gain

entrance into the exclusive circles of the majority. They

are thus made conscious of their foreignness.”10 Those who

fail, and have neither individual success nor any longer a

sense of communal identity, “see their lives and the present

as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and

wreck both; hence, their recklessness and their will to cha-

os and anarchy.”11 In the particular case of a deeply tribal

and communal society such as those that comprise most

of the Middle East, and especially with hope of a transi-

tion to democracy waning, Hoffer’s statement that “all the

advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes

for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal

existence” rings especially true.12 Mass movements, like

those on which Daesh and al-Qaida fuel their respective

brands of radical Islam, provide the anonymity of a by-

gone commune, a purpose into which individual strivings

can be melded and forgotten, and a power the subsumed

individual can believe irresistible.

Hoffer makes two additional points in this section

that are worth mentioning in the context of Islamic

radicalism. First, he states that mass movements are a

zero-sum proposition, competitive against one anoth-

er for the raw material of financing and recruitment.13

This bears out in the ongoing conflict not only in Syria

between various splinter Islamist groups that coalesced

into a dominant Daesh presence in early 2014, but also in

the now apparent struggle in various parts of the world

between Daesh and al-Qaida.14 Second, Hoffer begins his

analysis by emphasizing that mass movements are inter-

changeable with one another. He says, in reference to the

West, “In the past, religious movements were the conspic-

uous vehicles of change. The conservatism of a religion—

its orthodoxy—is the inert coagulum of a once highly

reactive sap.”15 He continues with other cases, “In modern

times, the mass movements involved in the realization of

vast and rapid change are revolutionary and nationalist.”16

He cites numerous examples of this interchangeability,

and sums up the entire equation by stating,

Since all mass movements draw their adher-

ents from the same types of humanity and

appeal to the same types of mind, it follows:

(a) all mass movements are competitive, and

the gain of one in

adherents is the loss

of all the others; (b)

all mass movements

are interchangeable.

… A religious move-

ment may develop

into a social revolu-

tion or a nationalist

movement; a social

revolution, into mili-

tant nationalism or a

religious movement; a

nationalist movement

into a social revo-

lution or a religious

movement.17

It just so happens that

the sap flowing now, not

soon to coagulate in the

Middle East, takes the

form of a religious move-

ment, rather than a social

Lt. Col. Benjamin

Buchholz, U.S. Army, is

a strategic planner at U.S.

Central Command. He

served as Army attaché

and chief of attaché opera-

tions in Sana’a, Yemen, from

2013 through the end of

2014. He received an MA

from Princeton’s Near East

Studies program. His novel,

One Hundred and One

Nights (New York: Little,

Brown, 2011), was cited

by Publisher’s Weekly as

a “top-ten contemporary

war novel,” and his article,

“The Human Shield in

Islamic Jurisprudence,”

was featured in the

May-June 2013 issue of

Military Review.

January-February 2017 MILITARY REVIEW128

or nationalist movement. Still, to shift emphasis away

from the “religious” aspect and toward the idea of this

being a “movement,” and to understand that the religious

dynamic might just as easily be (or become) social or

nationalist, allows a wider range of options for secular

engagement with, or against, the phenomenon.

Potential Converts

Hoffer next tackles the definition and categorization

of the types of potential converts a mass movement

draws upon. The key insight here is that neither the abject

poor nor the unified poor present a threat, but that—

among others—the newly poor, the creative poor, and a

category he calls “misfits” contribute most of the partici-

pants to a mass movement’s active phase. Hoffer says it “is

usually those whose poverty is relatively recent, the ‘new

poor,’ who throb with the ferment of frustration. The

memory of better things is as fire in their veins.”18

It is worth noting here that the driving force behind

much of Daesh’s military success has been not a reli-

gious fervor but the planning, abilities, and impassioned

involvement of a number of Saddam Hussein’s former

military officers.19 These officers were marginalized due

to disbandment of the Iraqi Army after the U.S.-led in-

vasion of 2003. They became poor, yet remembered, and

still remember, the power and status conferred through

their positions in Hussein’s regime. As unreliable and po-

tentially murderous as these individuals might be, at least

in terms of participation in a mass movement such as

radical Islam, as Hoffer says, they are not a lost cause but

rather, “They (the veterans) are receptive to the preaching

of a proselytizing movement and yet do not always make

staunch converts. For they are not irrevocably estranged

from the self; they do not see it as irrevocably spoiled ...

the slightest evidence of progress and success reconciles

them with the world and their selves.”20

This last aspect likely contributed to the success of

the Anbar Awakening, as Sunni leaders, many of whom

were former Baathists, united in the hope of working

as part of, rather than against, the new Iraqi govern-

ment.21 Even now, leaders of Daesh drawn from among

former Iraqi Baathist officials and military personnel

do not seem to be irrevocably committed, as one local

described Daesh’s current wali, or leader, in Anbar itself,

“I last saw him in 2009. He complained that he was very

poor. He is an old friend, so I gave him some money …

He was fixable. If someone had given him a job and a

salary, he wouldn’t have joined the Islamic State. There

are hundreds, thousands like him.”22

Additionally, in those areas of Syria and Iraq where

citizens had been relatively affluent prior to the start of

the civil war in 2011, many men turned to Daesh as a

means to maintain the livelihood of their families.23 The

need to maintain a livelihood would not be such a mo-

tivating impulse if the citizens in these areas had always

been abjectly poor, for, as Hoffer says,

The poor on the borderline of starvation live

purposeful lives. To be engaged in a des-

perate struggle for food and shelter is to be

wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals

are concrete and immediate. … What need

could they have for “an inspiring super-indi-

vidual goal which would give meaning and

dignity to their lives?” They are immune to

the appeal of a mass movement. 24

Thus, for both the core of former Iraqi government

and military veterans participating in radical Islam’s mass

movements, and for the percentage of men who permit,

or even assist this particular mass movement in order

that they themselves and their families not become part

of the new poor, the provision of financial and social lucre,

or even hope, may sway significant and influential parti-

sans toward more desirable pursuits.

Another category of potential manpower from

Hoffer’s work relates specifically to Daesh’s recruiting;

these are the “bored.” Hoffer says of them: “There is

perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness

for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved

boredom.”25 The attraction of fighting for Daesh proves

powerful in this regard, especially “to the bored, secure,

and the uninspired in Western liberal democracies”

to whom fighting in this mass movement provides “a

thrilling cause and call to action that promises glory

and esteem in the eyes of friends.”26 This segment of the

population’s needs for excitement and purpose, rather

than (or in conjunction with) approaches aimed at in-

terdicting the beginning stages of religious radicalization,

should be studied.

Finally, one group Hoffer labels as difficult for mass

movements to recruit—the unified poor—presents itself

as a potential remedy for decreasing Daesh’s appeal. The

unified poor tend not to join mass movements because,

even though they are not wealthy, they have a strong

sense of identity and collective self-worth derived from

129MILITARY REVIEW January-February 2017

REVIEW ESSAY

that identity.27 Hoffer goes on to actually prescribe this as

a remedy for mass movements, saying that “any arrange-

ment which either discourages atomistic individualism or

facilitates self-forgetting or offers chances for action and

new beginnings tends to counteract the rise and spread of

mass movements.”28 As such, rather than encourage the

individualism and democratic sense of self so embedded

in a liberal Western worldview (which would be counter

to the goal of diffusing a mass movement), actions and

programs that instead discourage individualism and

encourage small-group cohesion along with opportunity,

would reduce the allure of Daesh and other organizations

built on these religiously styled mass movement prin-

ciples.29 The exact type of promoted small group might

vary from place to place and from time to time, depend-

ing on local conditions, perhaps attaining from traditional

tribal structures, guilds or clubs, family, school, military

affiliation, or other sources of identity and advantage.

Conclusion

Hoffer’s treatment of mass movements, when

applied to radical Islam, approaches the sources of

the movement’s appeal in a way that does not directly

engage with, or condemn, Islam as a religion, therefore

falling closer to the sphere of influence that secular

Western governments and institutions are structured to

effect. Some of Hoffer’s solutions and ideas about how

best to engage with and diffuse a mass movement can

be applied directly to Daesh and al-Qaida, and may

yield new approaches and techniques:

The substitution of one mass movement for

another. Hoffer states, “this method of stopping one

movement by substituting another … is not always

without danger, and it does not usually come cheap.”30

By way of example, he cites pre-World War II Italy and

Germany where “practical businessmen acted in an

entirely ‘logical’ manner when they encouraged a Fascist

and Nazi movement in order to stop communism. But

in doing so, these practical and logical people promoted

their own liquidation.”31 Likewise, substituting some-

thing like democracy in the Middle East (such as nearly

happened during the Arab Spring) could unintention-

ally destabilize regimes that have been useful partners

and important pillars of the global economy. Despite

such risk, it is worth noting that the zero-sum nature

of mass movements, as claimed by Hoffer, will mean

that—if true—any other rising movement, ideally less

committed to violence against the Western world, will

decrease the resources upon which Daesh and other

religiously based movements can draw.

The substitution of tribal or other small group

structures for individualism. These alternatives

could possibly enhance a locale’s ability to stabilize

itself and resist proselytization into religiously based

mass movements. However, this essentially means

encouraging an older, and likely less liberal, way of life.

It is, as Hoffer says, an equation where “equality with-

out freedom creates a more stable social pattern than

freedom without equality.” 32

The treatment of specific sectors of people from

whom mass movements draw their strength. This ap-

plies specifically to veterans, formerly successful persons

trying not to become newly poor, and the bored. An ap-

proach aimed at these target populations may be the most

feasible over the short term. Institutions and programs

already exist to tackle similar problems.33 The suggestion

here would be to look at those programs and determine

whether priorities, messaging strategies, funding sources,

and suitable alternatives for hope and financial stability

are in place; or if it could be shifted from other approach-

es that might be wrongly aimed at religious counter-nar-

ratives to instead relieve the conditions that conspire to

spoil an individual’s sense of self-satisfaction.

Emigration. Finally, and perhaps most practically,

Hoffer says, “emigration offers some of the things the

frustrated hope to find when they join a mass movement,

namely, change and a chance for a new beginning.”34 Since

mass emigration away from the Levant, North Africa,

and Yemen already occurs, legally and illegally, perhaps it

would be wise to examine the streams of emigration not

just for the potential to help individuals, or to ensure that

radicalization—or radicals themselves—do not cross bor-

ders, but to also look at the overall situation as a possible

panacea for the illness upon which the mass movement

of radical Islam feeds. This would mean encouraging

emigration, and promoting and facilitating it as a way

to relieve pressures fueling mass movements—through

some sort of controlled and global mechanism—rather

than continuing the current system of temporary camps

and temporary solutions. Hoffer maintains that mass

movements arise when people see their individual lives

to be irremediably spoiled and cannot find a worthwhile

purpose in self-advancement.35 The dedication, devotion,

loyalty, and self-surrender that fuel mass movements

January-February 2017 MILITARY REVIEW130

are in essence a desperate clinging to something that

might give worth and meaning to futile, spoiled lives.36

This article repurposes four of Hoffer’s ideas to uncouple

radical Islam from the engine of its own mass movement:

offer a substitute movement (dangerous), encourage

small-group cohesion (potentially illiberal), target specific

groups of people with financial stability and hope (quick

but perhaps not long-lasting), and restructure emigration

in a way that offers a release for the masses most at risk

(global and long-reaching).

Notes

1. Some notable opinions on this can be found in Bernard Lewis,

The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1988), 117n3; John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 8; Natana J. DeLong-Bas,

Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad, 1st ed.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 228; Sadik J. al-Azm, “Is-

lamic Fundamentalism Reconsidered: A Critical Outline of Problems,

Ideas and Approaches,” South Asia Bulletin, Comparative Studies of

South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 13, no. 1 and 2 (Spring/Fall

1993), 95–97.

2. Lee Keath and Hamza Hendawi, “How Islamic Is Islamic State

Group? Not Very, Experts Say,” Associated Press, 2 March 2015,

accessed 14 May 2016, https://www.yahoo.com/news/islamic-islamic-

state-group-not-very-experts-131121264.html?ref=gs.

3. Hamza Yusuf, who is at the forefront of scholarly Islamic

criticism of the Islamic State ideology, suggests linking well (i.e.,

noncorrupt) representative governance to less marginalization

by liberal elites of normative Islamic practices as a potential

remedy. The second portion of this approach could work,

because normative Islam bolsters rather than detracts from

good governance (opposite of the Christian tradition in many

ways). However, normative Islam is not particularly conducive

to representative governance. See Sina Toossi and Yasmine

Taeb, “Prominent Islamic Scholar Refutes Claims of ISIS’s Links

to Islam,” Think Progress online, 5 March 2015, accessed 14 May

2016, http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/03/05/3630340/

prominent-islamic-scholar-refutes-claims-isiss-links-islam/.

4. As an added bonus, by looking at the problem set from a

nonreligious perspective, secular governments and institutions may

be able to obviate the impulse toward joining or supporting such

movements without those same governments and institutions having

to engage in a religious debate they are ill equipped to win.

5. Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass

Movements (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010).

6. Ibid., xi. Suggestions from the other two portions of Hoffer’s

topical organization have been incorporated and referenced in

this article, but for the sake of brevity and relevance, emphasis has

been placed only on the first two sections. The next section covers

Hoffer’s theory for how mass movements inculcate united action

and self-sacrifice; and finally, the last section enumerates the types

of leaders necessary at the initial, fanatical, and practical phases of a

mass movement’s existence.

7. Ibid., 6. While it seems Hoffer intended the Far East (China,

Japan) rather than the Middle East as his “Orient,” the general senti-

ment applies perhaps more strongly and presciently to the subject

of this paper. This statement delves beyond a superficial “clash of

cultures” into a more nuanced point, that Middle Eastern societies

do not only envy the West’s relative riches, but more regret the loss

of prestige from the thousand-plus years where the Middle East was,

more than Europe, a center of learning and progressiveness.

8. Ibid., 11.

9. Ibid., 12.

10. Ibid., 51.

11. Ibid., 25.

12. Ibid., 38.

13. Ibid., 17.

14. Associated Press, “Timeline: Daesh’s Reign of Ter-

ror,” Gulf News website, 18 June 2015, accessed 24 Oc-

tober 2016, http://gulfnews.com/news/mena/iraq/

timeline-daesh-s-reign-of-terror-1.1537224.

15. Hoffer, The True Believer, 4.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., 17.

18. Ibid., 26.

19. Liz Sly, “The Hidden Hand Behind the Islamic State

Militants? Saddam Hussein’s,” Washington Post website, 4 April

2015, accessed 24 April 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/

world/middle_east/the-hidden-hand-behind-the-islamic-state-mil-

itants-saddam-husseins/2015/04/04/aa97676c-cc32-11e4-8730-

4f473416e759_story.html.

20. Hoffer, The True Believer, 46.

21. Eli Lake, “Meet Iraq’s Most Important Man,” New York Sun

website, 3 April 2007, accessed 14 May 2016, http://www.nysun.

com/opinion/meet-iraqs-most-important-man/51693/.

22. Sly, “The Hidden Hand Behind the Islamic State Militants.”

23. Pamela Engel, “One Reason Why Men Join ISIS Is Not Flat-

tering for the ‘Caliphate,’” Business Insider website, 5 October 2015,

accessed 24 April 24 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/a-huge-

reason-men-join-isis-is-not-flattering-for-the-caliphate-2015-10.

24. Hoffer, The True Believer, 26.

25. Ibid., 51.

26. Omar Sultan Haque et al., “Why Are Young Westerners

Drawn to Terrorist Organizations like ISIS?” Psychiatric Times website,

10 September 2015, accessed 24 October 2016, http://www.

psychiatrictimes.com/trauma-and-violence/why-are-young-western-

ers-drawn-terrorist-organizations-isis/page/0/2#sthash.u2lOB3bI.dpuf.

27. Hoffer, The True Believer, 35.

28. Ibid., 19.

29. Ibid., 63. Here he clarifies further: “The capacity to resist co-

ercion stems partly from the individual’s identification with a group.”

30. Ibid., 19.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., 33.

33. One such organization is the Sawab Center, accessed 24

October 2016, http://www.sawabcenter.org. See also France’s “Plan

d’action contre la radicalisation et le terrorisme,” accessed 14 May

2016, http://www.ville.gouv.fr/?plan-d-action-contre-la.

34. Hoffer, The True Believer, 20.

35. Ibid., 12.

36. Ibid., 16.