The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics)

But this is exactly the wrong way to look at the problem. What you really want to know—what the argument was originally about—is why, at certain points in human history, large groups of people were slaughtered and tortured, ostensibly in the name of an idea. Redefining a word won’t change the facts of history one way or the other. Communism was a c

Eric Hoffer writes that if the doctrine of such a movement “is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable.”4

It is also possible to lose oneself in systems of action that demand nothing but faith and allegiance. Fundamentalist religions, mass movements, and extremist political parties also offer opportunities for self-transcendence that millions are eager to accept. They also provide a welcome extension of the boundaries of the self, a feeling that one is