Drew Maciag is a history professor that wrote an article in July, 2023, That Other Big Book On Irrational Politics. The article is copied and pasted by me below, and I will comment on it when necessary to do so.
Drew (D after this): “
July 20, 2023
That Other Big Book on Irrational Politics
It is easy to assume that people who disagree with us politically are crazy, especially when their beliefs seem irrational. With the rise of the Tea Party, birtherism, pizza-gate, MAGA Republicanism, and the spouting of blatant absurdities by candidate and (later) President Donald Trump, it was not surprising that Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics enjoyed a revival amongst progressives. Twenty-first-century right-wing delusions of a “deep state” or a stolen election bear a family resemblance to 1950s right-wing phobias about an “immense” Communist conspiracy or the fluoridation of public water supplies. Conspiracy theories have proven to be a powerful method for explaining why political, social, and economic realities do not conform to one’s liking. Hofstadter noted that conspiracy-driven manias have accompanied periods of national trauma since the 1790s (and not all have been conservative), but the focus of his argument was the “pseudo-conservative” paranoia of the mid-twentieth century.[1] It is that same reactionary paranoia, reassembled to fit post-Cold War conditions, that haunts us today. When there is widespread discontent in the land, dark forces are blamed, and simplistic solutions are sought.”
My response: It would be Hoffer’s take—and mine as well—that the ideologies, and the mass movements spawned by them, which terrorize and tear up humankind, can be culturally epidemic, damaging, and dangerous. It matters less if the ism gaining traction among a populace is religious or secular, Communist or Fascist, Left or Right; they are all socialistic in the sense of being social phenomena which are pure collectivistic arrangements. Fanaticism, authoritarianism, mass enslavement, oppression and exploitation, warmongering, the use of violence to win power and to silence gentler opponents, are all predictable and observable attributes of isms/holy causes and the mass movements which are their muscle, which bulldoze a path to power for the guru who started or runs the ism.
It is morally acceptable and politically harmless for rational, peaceful citizens to promote legislative improvements as moderates, nonviolently passionate promotion of their favorite cause while respecting and advocating for change within the American tradition of democracy, universal freedom and peaceful resolution of disputes and peaceful transfer of parties in power through free and fair elections. America stands for equal opportunity and access to affluence for all that work hard, are peace-making, and peace-keeping. We must defend, love, and preserve American capitalism and individualism. Our goal is that we will abound with non-mass movement living arrangements with our cultural institutions intact, in place and flourishing.
D: “Paranoid Style was published in 1965, a year after Barry Goldwater’s landslide election defeat at the hands of Lyndon Johnson. Hofstadter accused Goldwater of living off the “emotional animus” of the extreme right, so his repudiation by voters seemed to vindicate the moderate mainstream political culture of the postwar era. George McGovern, candidate of the radical, utopian, moralistic left, sustained an almost identical rejection by voters in 1972 (losing to Nixon); apparently confirming from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum that extremism in American politics does not pay. Of course, we now know that it does. And the mission before us is to understand why. Hofstadter’s analysis was based on group psychology. That is, Americans who share some collective outlook or sense of identity will periodically react against perceived threats to their status, political clout, settled world view, or material well-being. Paranoid Style presented a theory of how entire groups of people can act irrationally in unison. They rally to express a shared sense of anger and resentment, to identify common villains, malignant forces, and unfair institutions, to propose (often unrealistic or contradictory) actions, and to wallow in panaceas. Hofstadter’s work is open to criticism, yet after fifty years it still packs a punch.
Another book on fanatical mass movements that made a huge impression on postwar political culture in the United States is less revisited today.”
My response: Drew notes that Hoffer is less read today, especially by Leftists academics who resent that he is onto their games and aristocratic contempt for the masses, their bottomless craving for power over the masses.
D: “That book is The True Believer by Eric Hoffer.[2] First published in 1951, it sold briskly enough to delay the issuance of a paperback edition for fifteen years; by 1967 it had sold half-a-million copies. True Believer was wildly praised by almost every publication that reviewed books, and Hoffer became a national celebrity. Granted, the public’s fascination with Hoffer did not stem exclusively from the guts of his book; part of his appeal came from the uniqueness of his background. Unlike Hofstadter (who was a Columbia University professor) Hoffer worked as a longshoreman on the docks of San Francisco. Although later research would cast doubt on his whereabouts prior to 1934, Hoffer claimed to have been born in the Bronx, to have gone blind as a child—and so received no schooling whatsoever—and, after recovering his eyesight, moved to Los Angeles where he lived on skid row and supported himself doing odd jobs; later he spent years as a migrant farm worker. During all this time, which included a stint prospecting for gold, Hoffer educated himself by checking books out of public libraries. This was an impressive personal story that does not hold up to close scrutiny, but it made Hoffer famous as the common man of uncommon erudition and insight.[3]””
My response: Drew is likely a progressive historian and a revisionist historian, not the traditional, pro-American consensus-kind of historian that is proud of America who paints it primarily as a land of justice, freedom, potential wealth-acquisition, happiness, and opportunity for all.
Drew is a professor and likely a Leftist. He seems almost jealous that the self-educated Hoffer was the blue-collar darling of a generation or two of Americans. They liked him because he was decent, and stood up for traditional America, and because he spoke the truth, was self-educated, decent, moderate, and pro-American.
Most professors hate America and seek to transform it into a globalist, authoritarian, socialist police state where the masses will know their place and are subjugated, ruled by the elite party in charge. This ruling elite would be the America CCP, and its most enthusiastic supporters will be the professors and intellectuals. Who in return for their strong support for the conducted revolution, when the revolutionaries triumph and take over, these esteemed intellectuals will not be the heralded darling of the new order, the pampered comrades, part of the ruling elite, authorized to keep their boots on the neck of the masses.
Professors and intellectuals hate Hoffer because he like Prometheus long ago gave fire to humans in darkness, warning them that intellectuals and professors are the most dangerous, cruel, power-sickened, and power-addicted group of humans. Hoffer knew what professors are and alerted the public to keep these people out of power—and the exact opposite has happened as intellectuals, professors and experts have run the government on all levels as part of the Administrative State and Washington Swamp.
Hoffer likely fibbed about being from Bavaria, but over all he does not lie, and he is the real deal. and the American people loved him for it.
Intellectuals will never forgive Hoffer for two things: revealing to themselves and the public how cruel and perilous intellectuals can be when running things. Hoffer was a democrat, capitalist, and individualist, and he had no use for the cultural Marxists of his day pushing Leftism, totalitarianism and a rigid class society with intellectuals are part of the ruling class. Hoffer was self-taught and spoke up for the masses as I hope to emulate by advocating for individuating supercitizenship for all our citizens, especially the masses.
It seems like Drew is discrediting Hoffer by calling him a fake who lied about getting his education as an autodidact, that he likely had plenty of formal education back in Germany, and lied about being born in the Bronx, to cover up that he actually was an illegal immigrant from Bavaria.
I disagree with Drew: Hoffer was a self-educated man, a common man even if he fibbed and covered up about likely being an illegal immigrant from Germany—he did not want to be deported, it seems likely.
D: “True Believer was a perfect book for its time. It appeared just after the defeat of European fascism, Japanese militaristic nationalism, Mao’s Communist victory in China, the outbreak of the Korean War, and at the height of McCarthyism. So there was an eager audience for an explanation of why and how extremist creeds turned into dangerous political movements. Hoffer’s argument was no less dependent on psychological interpretation than Hofstadter’s was. But while Hofstadter focused on group psychology, Hoffer built his case around alienated individuals. For Hoffer, the substance of any cause is far less important than the movement’s ability to invest its individual members with a sense of worth and a feeling of belonging.”
My response: Again, I largely disagree with Drew. Hoffer’s The True Believer did explain how and why extremist creeds turned into dangerous political movements, where the sense of personal identity was available to lost, frustrated souls only by their group-solidarity, their group identity as a true believer in a mass movement.
Yes, Hoffer interpreted people psychologically, but his expertise in his analysis of the human condition encompassed both group psychology and the thinking of each individual, both the joiners and the loners, the groupists. and the individualists.
I agree wholeheartedly with Drew when he wrote this: For Hoffer, the substance of a cause is far less important than the movement’s ability to invest its individual members with a sense of worth and a feeling of belonging.
Hoffer, unlike the doctrinaire ideologues of every stripe, realized and wrote that the substance of the cause, its story and values, are much less important that the movement’s ability to invest its individual members with a sense of worth This fake but personally pleasing sense of worth is supplied by the holy cause’s guru, with his absolutely correct--he claims--fanatical positions rigidly stated and adhered to by the true believers. Members need a holy cause and a mass movement to flee into to escape their guilty consciences, their wrenchingly felt self-hatred, and a panicky need to forever escape from the ruined personal life, to extinguish all personal consciousness when surrendering totally to the guru and his cause. It matters not if he is fascist, nationalist, tribalist, socialist or militantly religious: he just needs to have all the answers, all the time, with his one true cause, and as the frustrated masses stampede into his cause with great enthusiasm because he is providing them a mass movement in which to escape from their spoiled lives and unbearable selves.
D: “Hoffer’s true believer is a weak and pliable loner who willingly becomes dependent on a mass movement for his (all Hoffer’s pronouns are masculine) purpose in life.”
My response: Drew has totally misread, and misunderstood Hoffer based upon what he wrote right above in this one sentence. Hoffer’s true believer is a weak and pliable, pure joiner who change and circumstances had pushed him out into atomistic awakeness, and he most reluctant is forced to encounter God, reality and himself, and he found it utterly repugnant. He willed to and will find an escape from the self, person freedom and self-esteem challenges by going back to sleep as a joined groupist inside some collective enterprise where its corporateness wholly swallows up and devours his selfness ego. Afterwards and as the result, he has ceased to be a separate, free, conscious agent. As a separate individual, he no longer exists, and that is what he deliberately sought and settled for. He depends on a mass movement for his purpose in life, to disappear and to unite, to self-sacrifice and die for his holy cause should the need arise.
D: “The mass movement will do his thinking for him, and paradoxically this sets him free; it frees him from the labor of thought, and the pain of making decisions.”
My response: Yes, when the shattered individual, a pure joiner and groupist reared in selfless, altruistic morality, with little self-esteem, at his best moment when fitted into a traditional cultural niche, has now be catapulted by reality out into the cold, cruel world run by Fate, to rely on his own ingenuity and resources, collapses and hitches a ride on the nearest mass movement that provides him with esteem (not real, sturdy self-esteem but with its specious replacement, grounded in plenty of mendacious group pride, mendacious, pack oriented self- esteem). and anonymity, a home where his conscious ego is murdered, never to return, and his consciousness is but a husk of its former nonindividuaitng self. Only in complete slavery and complete self-annihilation has this poor benighted soul found relief and if this is freedom, it is the freedom of the happy slave that is a totalitarian slave ready to fight and die for his cause and its brotherhood.
D: “Men who are unemployed, or who have recently been discharged from the military (where they became accustomed to following orders), or who have always been misfits, or who have failed at intellectual or artistic pursuits, are prime recruits for mass movements. True believers feel personally shunned, rejected, marginalized, misunderstood, or discarded. Hoffer’s political or religious fanatics are psychologically troubled or socially inadequate in ways that Hofstadter’s movement fanatics are not. Indeed, Hofstadter explicitly stated that he was describing “more or less normal people” who succumb to an irrational, paranoid style of politics. But Hoffer’s mass movement recruits are spiritually dispossessed; they are failures, drifters, empty vessels. Perhaps this was part of the appeal of True Believer. It must have been easy for initial readers to feel superior to the “slime of frustrated souls” who were painted broad brush by Hoffer. Postwar American readers no doubt felt more positively connected to society than did the human detritus described in the book; hence they could be confident that they were beyond (or above) the reach of simple-minded fanaticism. Psychologically healthy, socially well-adjusted people were not dangerous, because they did not need great causes in order to make their lives complete.”
My response: Hoffer’s misfits were discarded by society, and I cannot accept that Hofstadter’s true believers are not social detritus and undesirables either. I think Hoffer is a sophisticated thinker, but I do concede that the people on the fringes of society would be of course more readily susceptible to seek out and join a guru and his mass movement, but Hoffer’s point is that the psychologically healthy, employed, popular, enfranchised, well-adjusted masses are discontent and in quiet despair at the best of times, though they manage to cope. But when change smashes their culture, way of life, their economic prosperity and perhaps their democratic government, then these discontent groupists and joiners with little actual self-esteem are overexposed and desperate like hobos and other misfits, all now misfitted, all or most seek refuge in a mass movement to find group, find meaning and find a way of life that obliterates private, personal consciousness. The independent self must be cast off, and this quick, decisive willingness to surrender the self-consciousness and power to the guru and his holy cause is to lose whatever self-esteem, the little one retained as an individualist, egoist and individual discontented in traditional settings. All that are frustrated become misfitted, thus ripe to accept the invitation to stampede into the collective movement to flee from a hated, wretchedly unhappy self.
D: “Here was both the practical allure and the central flaw of the book. True Believer has been recognized as a potent representative of “consensus school” thought, primarily because it condemned equally the radicalism of both the Left and Right.”
My response: Apparently the practical allure for conservatives and the American mases of Hoffer’s pro-American book, The True Believer, is that he supported a consensus view of American history, that conservatives, liberals, even progressive could work for modest, peaceful change, a consensus to work nonviolently in the system to make limited reforms, or few reforms because America was so fine just the way it was and is. This view or pro-Americanism is what Drew consider the books major flaw: in fact, instead if Hoffer’s foremost achievement in the book, his major accomplishment and significant impact: Hoffer reminded Americans that civilized democratic people condemn and turn their backs of radicalism either Left or Right. If opposing revolutionary overthrow of America by any radical ism and its mass movement backing it up offends Drew, dismissed pejoratively by him as a consensus view of history, it makes me wonder what he secretly or openly aspires to for America, and its sounds like he is promoting the current Leftists mass movement, cultural Marxism. Is he just another Progressive professor, a true believer for this secular faith, of his, if it is his?
D: “It also turned a jaundiced eye toward religious fanaticism at a time when secularization and ecumenicism seemed to align with reason and moderation (Hoffer was an atheist who criticized fanatical atheists). But the book’s dramatic attack on fanatics and radicals blinded readers to Hoffer’s implicit dismissal of belief itself.”
My response: Hoffer turned a jaundiced eye towards religious fanaticism and any type of fanaticism because groupism, altruism, radicalism are the visible, tangible mass misbehaviors that introduce evil on earth among people and Hoffer well recognized it and fought it.
Ecumenism might have brought in reason and moderation in the mid-20th century, but it sure looks like in 2025 that the Jews, the Catholics and Protestants are as culturally Marxists as aging Hollywood liberals, and a zealot for religion, cultural Marxism, is promoting a pseudo religion based upon hatred of God and humans, and is at bottom, merely a push to acquire totalitarian control run by the government elite over all Americans.
Yes, Hoffer was an atheist, and he was leery of religious enthusiasm, because he knew that excessive enthusiasm in belief led to mass movements and fanaticism, that none of this is moral or from God, not matter how pious the zealots pushing holy war and forced conversion insist they are noble and idealistic, attributing to themselves the purest, highest motives--all while employing the sword and torture rack to “win” converts.
Hoffer is not against belief per se, he is against fanatical belief where the misfitted, confused angry, self-loathing masses seek an ism to provide then with a home barricading the door against that personal aggressor, self-awareness so the forgotten, abandoned self can remain suppressed, unconscious and segregated from the self, now self-celebrating and proud of the shattered self, a the way to live and flourish, reduced to living as a slave reveling in his glorious self-debasement. He is now but a purely submissive, obedient member of the pack, his mass movement, his ism, and its demagogue.
Hoffer is not just against fanatical religious belief but he is against radicalized, enthusiastic, howling group belief of any kind as savage, backward, intolerant, violent and regressive.
D; “True Believer and Hoffer’s other writings betray a prejudice against strongly held political beliefs in general: even beliefs that are short of radicalism and devoid of fanaticism, and even when their advocates do not fit Hoffer’s profile of alienation or personal frustration.”
My response: No, I do not accept as fact that Hoffer’s writing are prejudiced against strongly held beliefs, for he surely boldly, passionately outspoken in sharing his publicly expressed, strongly held beliefs. But he would advise that one should be principled do so with a mutual agreement to speak respectfully, tolerantly, cooperatively, peacefully nonviolently as part of a pattern among citizens of mutual respect and peaceful, lawful coexistence while civil discourse is maintained, devoid of radicalism, violence, and fanaticism.
D: “ Hoffer opposed FDR’s New Deal reforms, and the Vatican II reforms of the Catholic Church, and he despised the “rights movements” of the 1960s. Despite the many liberal intellectuals who had praised True Believer (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., for instance) Hoffer was suspicious of progressive reform. He seems to have adhered to a mix of traditionalist and libertarian conservatism that expected people to accept society as they found it and focus on living their own lives without trying to change the system. Maybe this was another reason for True Believer’s popularity during the Eisenhower era, when Americans in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II decided that they had had enough involvement with great causes, and that they would henceforth cultivate their new suburban gardens.”
My response: Hoffer did not just expect people to live with whatever tradition they had, no he liked America’s wondrous human exceptionalism so he was conservative about allowing intellectuals and mas movements of any kind, from the Left or Right to overthrow America and bring in communism or Nazism.
Hoffer the egoist moralist (hidden even from himself) and humanitarian (genuine kindness, not self-virtual signaled) knew that general progress is better achieved by individual self-reform carried out privately by each of the masses running their own affairs in their personal lives, not seeking social justice along channels which are collective, public, mandatory, freedom-depleting universally legislated statutes and bureaucratic mandates dictums, which lead to and grow tyranny, the evil growth of Communism, and hatred growing out of low centralized self-esteem and collectivized egolessness. Drew seems like a typical Leftist professor, activistic and promoting socialism (I have not researched his politics and it does not much matter.).
Drew: “Nevertheless, Hoffer’s True Believer still retains much that is intriguing and even relevant today. It is a short book (about 150 pages) that is divided into 18 chapters and 125 subsections; the style is aphoristic, allowing readers to appreciate many of Hoffers pungent observations without having to accept his larger arguments. Of special importance in today’s environment is Hoffer’s wariness—bordering on hostility—toward intellectuals, the “men of words” who supply the ideas that fanatical “men of action” and their fanatical followers build into mass movements.”
My response: No, intellectuals are most dangerous kind of human, seeking centralized power over others, above all other ambitions.
D: “ Curiously, True Believer’s final chapter on “good,” “bad,” and “useful” movements, counters or complicates much of what is said elsewhere in the book, as if Hoffer was anticipating criticism (he doesn’t use it, but the old excuse that exaggeration and simplification are often necessary for making one’s point would have worked). In the final analysis, True Believer contains brilliant insights that are uncommonly well stated. Yet its gut-level message seems to be that too much passion devoted to any cause is a sign of personal sickness.”
My response: Hoffer does not like excessive passion in pursuing one’s ideology for it is immoderate and what is emotional and immoderate is evil and groupist more than good, and what is moderate, individualistic and rational is good more than evil.
D: “But shouldn’t the decisive factor—in 1951 or 2023—be the value of the cause? Is the dedicated crusader for civil rights just as “fanatical” (in the pejorative sense of the term) as the rabid defender of segregation and white supremacy? Isn’t one more rational than the other? Moreover, if a powerful commitment to reform signals one’s psychological infirmity, does political apathy confirm one’s mental health?”
My response: We want people to be gently passionate about their causes and to be principled, but zealots and ideologues pushing violent revolution as the solution to America’s problems would have wrecked America, because what they propose would not have worked in Hoffer’s day or today.
I advocate no apathy, that the masses actively participate in running our constitutional republic--but only as indviduating supercitizens, and these participate will spearhead a reform for America, a reform which is powerful, direct unending political involvement by the smart, willful enlightened masses to run things nearly forever, taking power and keeping power but at moderate, moral, calm, room temperature to avoid violence, authoritarianism, and mob excess.
D: “I’d like to close with a personal observation, knowing full well that most readers of this blog are considerably younger than me, and probably are not aware of Hoffer’s impact or his book’s stature. I was not around when True Believer debuted in 1951, but the book and its author were still current enough to be mentioned in my high school and college classes (1968-1976). The book’s reputation was large enough that I bought a copy on my own initiative (nothing to do with school) in 1973, and several of my friends had either read it or were at least familiar enough with it to occasionally speak about it. (I still have that paperback copy, which I purchased used for 25¢.) Hoffer was often referenced by journalists and by talking heads on television. Interviews with Hoffer ran on public television and CBS; I recall watching a later PBS documentary on him toward the end of his life (he died in 1983).[4] Granted, much of the media’s admiration for Hoffer was based naively on his alleged working-class wisdom. I wonder if True Believer would have been as highly celebrated if Hoffer had been a typical academic at Berkeley rather than an atypical longshoreman from across San Francisco Bay. (For what it’s worth: I had never heard of Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style until I entered graduate school in the 1990s.)
I would be very interested in hearing from others regarding their familiarity (or not) with True Believer.
[1] Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (1965; New York: Vintage, 2008). The four essays of Part 1: “Studies in the American Right” combine to make Hofstadter’s case; but see also essay #7 on the Free Silver movement of the 1890s.
[2] Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951; New York: Perennial Library, 1966). Additional editions attest to the book’s success: Mentor (1958), New American Library (1960), Time, Inc. (1963), Time-Life (1980), Harper Perennial (1989, 2002), Perennial Classic (2010), HarperCollins (2019).
[3] Tom Bethell, Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher (Stanford, Calf.: Hoover Institution Press, 2012); chapter 5 for True Believer sales and reception; passim for additional information on Hoffer. Bethell suggests that Hoffer was probably born in Germany and came to the United States illegally via Mexico in the 1930s; Hoffer’s false claim of birth in the Bronx shielded him from deportation during the depression.
[4] Most likely, the documentary I watched was a 90-minute PBS program produced by WPBT Miami, broadcast in January 1978.
July 20, 2023”
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