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[jodawi]

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classic.) by Eric Hoffer

This little book is a remarkable achievement. Written by Eric Hoffer who, at the time, was a dock worker with no formal education, it is one of the best treatments of the nature and effects of ideological fanaticism ever produced. The presentation, in short chapters - each demanding to be thought about carefully - is a synthesis of years of careful reading and research on Hoffer's part. It is a book that can be read and reread with each new reading shedding new insight on political and social issues of our time.

That Hoffer went on to become something of an apologist for reactionary government response to many of the protest movements during the sixties - including the civil rights movement which he characterized as a 'racket' - should not blind anyone to the value of his first book. Its insights are still fresh and its wisdom is timeless. He, alas, didn't always take his own lessons to heart.

In it he portrayed political fanatics as people who embrace a cause to compensate for their own feelings of guilt and inadequacy.
"It is the true believer's ability to shut his eyes and stop his ears to facts which in his own mind deserve never to be seen nor heard," Hoffer wrote, "which is the source of his unequalled fortitude and consistency."