The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'The True Believer' by Eric Hoffer Part 1

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

47 MinutesSFWPete begins a series reading Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements."The True BelieverPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Antelope Hill - Promo code "peteq" for 5% off - https://antelopehillpublishing.com/FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and add free, head on over to freeman Beyond the Wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now. If you support me through Substack or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there. If you support me through Subscrib Star, Gumroad, or on my website directly, I will send you a link where you can download the file and you can listen to it any way you wish. I really appreciate the support everyone gives me. It keeps the show going. It allows me to basically put out an episode every day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate. I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two, even three a day. And yeah, can't do it without you.

So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. All right, I want to welcome everyone to book number nine in my series. I took a week off or two weeks off and back to it. And this time I'm going to do something different. I'm going to read a book that I haven't read. So we're going to read it together for the first.

time or a lot of people I know have read this book. I just haven't had a chance and I thought, well, here's my chance. So the book is called The True Believer. The subheading is thoughts on the nature of mass movements. It's a non-going by Wikipedia here. It's a non-fiction book authored by the American social philosopher Eric Hoffer published in 1951. It depicts a variety of arguments in terms of applied world history and social psychology to explain why mass movements arise to challenge the status quo. A little bit about Hoffer. Hoffer, it says, was an atheist American philosopher, social critic, conservative, moderate with an atypical working class background. Authored 10 books over his career was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book,

The True Believer, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from scholars and laymen. Early life, many elements of Hoffer's early life were unverified, but in autobiographical statements, Hoffer claimed to have been born in 1902 in the Bronx, city of New York, to Newt and Elsa Goebel Hoffer. Well, his mother's maiden name was Goebel, Gerbil. his parents were immigrants from Alsace, then part of Imperial Germany. By age five, Hoffer could already read in both English and his parents' native German. When he was five, his mother fell down the stairs with him in her arms. He later recalled, I lost my site at the age of seven. Two years before

my mother fell, my mother and I fell down the stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall. I lost my sight, and for a time, my memory, Hoffer spoke with the pronounced German accent all his life and spoke the language fluently. He was raised by a living relative or servant, German immigrant named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15 years old, fearing he might lose it again. He sees in the opportunity to read as much as he could. His recovery proved permanent, but Hoffer never abandoned his reading habit. All right. So this book is recommended by many people. I don't even remember. who recommended it to me first because it's been recommended by so many.

So let's read it together. I'm going to start with the preface, and let's just get into it. This book deals with some peculiarities common to all mass movements, be they religious movements, social revolutions, or nationalist movements. It does not maintain that all movements are identical, but that they share certain essential characteristics which give them a family likeness. All mass movements generate, in their adherence, a readiness. to die and a proclivity for united action. All of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach

and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred, and intolerance. All of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life. All of them demand blind faith and single-hearted allegiance. All movements, however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw their early adherents from the same types of humanity. They all appeal to the same types of minds. mind. Though there are obvious differences between the fanatical Christian, the fanatical Mohammedan, the fanatical nationalist, the fanatical communist, and the fanatical Nazi, it is yet true that the fanaticism which animates them may be viewed and treated as one.

The same is true of the force which drives them on to expansion and world dominion. There is a certain uniformity in all types of dedication of faith, of pursuit of power, of unity, and of self-sacrifice. There are vast differences. in the contents of the holy causes and doctrines, but a certain uniformity in the factors which make them effective, he who, like Pascal, finds precise reasons for the effectiveness of Christian doctrine, has also found the reasons for the effectiveness of communist, Nazi, and nationalist doctrine. However different, the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.

This book concerns itself chiefly with the activity, with the active revivalist phase of mass movements. This phase is dominated by the true believer, the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause, and an attempt is made to trace his genesis and outline his nature. As an aid in this effort, use is made of working hypotheses. starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord. It is assumed one that frustration of itself without any proselytizing, prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer.

That an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind. To test the validity of these assumptions, it was necessary to inquire into the ills that afflict the frustrated, how they react against them, the degree to which these reactions correspond to responses to the true believer, and finally, the manner in which these reactions can facilitate the rise and spread of a mass movement.

It was also necessary to examine the practices of contemporary movements, which successful techniques of conversion had been perfected and applied in order to discover whether they corroborate the view that a proselytizing mass movement deliberately fosters in its adherence a frustrated state of mind, and that it automatically advances its interest when it seconds to propensities of the frustrated. It is necessary for most of us these days to have some insight into the motives and responses the true believer. For though ours is a godless sage, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by

converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities. It is perhaps not just a superfluous to add a word of caution. When we speak of the family likeness of mass movements, we use the word family in a taxonomical sense. The tomato and the nightshader in the same family, the solenis. Solenase. Never said that word before. Though the one is nutritious and the other poisonous,

they may have many morphological, anatomical, and physiological traits in common so that even the non-botonists senses a family likeness. The assumptions that mass movements have many traits in common does not imply that all movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. This book passes no judgment, and expresses no preferences. It merely tries to explain, and the explanations, all of them theories, are in the nature of

suggestions and arguments even when they are stated in what seems a categorical tone. I can do no better than to quote Montaigne. All I say is by way of discourse and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed. So I think that this is going to hit. a lot of people. I think that a lot of people are going to listen to this or read it and they're going to think, well, this doesn't have anything to do with me. This is the other guy. No, I think the intelligent man, the man of history, can examine himself and see where they can find themselves in

pretty much anything. So we'll see how it goes. Part one is called the appealed. Apeachian heel of mass movements. Part one of that is the desire for change. It is a truism that many who join a rising revolutionary movement are attracted by the prospect of sudden and spectacular change in their conditions of life. A revolutionary movement is a conspicuous instrument of change. Many, or I would say, in the culture around them, the term reactionary comes to mind. It gets thrown around. not so obvious is the fact that religious and nationalist movements too can be vehicles of change. Some kind of widespread enthusiasm or excitement is apparently needed for the realization of vast and rapid change,

and it does not seem to matter whether the exhilaration is derived from an expectation of untold riches or is generated by an active mass movement. In this country, the spectacular change of since the civil war were enacted in an environment charged with the enthusiasm born of fabulous opportunities for self-advancement. Read individualism. Where self-advancement cannot or is not allowed to serve as a driving force, other sources of enthusiasm have to be found if momentous changes, such as the awakening and renovation of a stagnant society or radical reforms

in the character and pattern of life of a community, are to be realized and perpetuated. Religious, revolutionary, and nationalist movements are such generating plants of general enthusiasm. So stagnant society, momentous changes, awakening. I'm pretty sure you can get where this is where he's starting this from. In the past, religious movements were the conspicuous vehicles have changed. The conservatism of a religion, its orthodoxy, is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap. A rising religious movement is all change and experiment, open to new views and techniques from all quarters. Islam, when it emerged, was an organizing and modernizing

medium. Christianity was a civilizing and modernizing influence among the savage tribes of Europe. The Crusades and the Reformation both were crucial factors in shaking the Western world from the stagnation of the Middle Ages. In modern times, the mass movements involved in the realization of vast and rapid change are revolutionary and nationalist, singly or in combination. Peter the Great was probably the equal in dedication, power and ruthlessness of many of the most successful revolutionary or nationalist leaders, yet he failed in his chief purpose, which was to turn Russia into a Western nation. And the reason he failed was that he did not infuse the Russian masses with some soul-stirring enthusiasm. He either did not think it necessary or did not know how to make of

his purpose a holy cause. It is not strange that the Bolshevik revolutionaries who wiped out the last of the Tsars and Romanoffs should have a sense of kinship with Peter, a czar, and a Romanov. For his purpose is now theirs, and they hope to succeed where he failed. The Bolshevik Revolution may figure in history as much as much an attempt to modernize a sixth of the world's surface as an attempt to build a communist economy. I think it's interesting that he, when he brings up that Peter failed because he didn't, he wasn't able to stir enthusiasm in the people. And he wanted to basically turn it into a Western

nation, which Russia will never be, ever. And when you look at what the progressives are trying to do, it's so against our nature that instinctively most of us realize that it's wrong and immediately start pushing back against it. So, yeah. And then he talks about, for his purpose now, he talks about the Bolshevik revolution. Well, the way they would get, they wouldn't be able to get people excited for what they were doing. They're just telling them this is the way it's going to be. And if you don't like it, the fact that both the French and Russian revolutions turned into nationalist movement seems to indicate that in modern times, nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and that nationalist fervor must be tapped if the

drastic changes projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated. One wonders whether the difficulties encountered by the present labor government in Britain are not partly due to the fact that the attempt to change the economy of the country and the way of life of 49 million people had been initiated in an atmosphere singularly free from fervor, exultation, and wild hope. The revulsion from ugly patterns developed by most contemporary mass movements has kept the civilized and decent leaders of the Labor Party shy of revolutionary enthusiasm. The possibility still remains that events might force them to make use of some mild form of chauvinism so that in Britain too the socialization of the nation might have, as its corollary,

the nationalization of socialism. So he seems to be implying here that even though we see basically in Britain, even among nationalists, the NHS is just a given, which is a form of socialism. That in the beginning, he's writing this in 1951, so this is post-war, and the NHS came into being, I think it was in 48 or 49, not everybody would have been excited about it. It would have had to have been sold, and it doesn't look like there was any revolutionary enthusiasm. for it. But as time goes on, you make it, you make it a part of, and any of my British listeners who know the history better than I do, you make it a part of the nation. You make it something that they're proud of. You make it, I've referred to it, I've heard it referred to as one of the

crown jewels of England. Well, then no one's ever going to think that, you know, 49 million, any portion of 49 million people could have been against it. The phenomenal modernization of Japan would probably not have been possible without the revitalist spirit of Japanese nationalism. It is perhaps also true that the rapid modernization of some European countries, Germany in particular, was facilitated to some extent by the expurgue and thorough diffusion of nationalist fervor. Judge by present indications, the renaissance, there in a sense of Asia will be brought about through the instrumentality of nationalist movements rather than by other mediums. It was the rise of a genuine nationalist movement which enabled

Kemal Ataturk to modernize Turkey almost overnight. I usually just see Ataturk. Rarely do I see it written with his first name. In Egypt, untouched by a mass movement, modernization is slow and faltering, though its rulers from the day of Mehmed Ali have welcomed Western ideas, and its contacts with the West have been many and intimate. Zionism is an instrument for the renovation of a backward country and the transformation of shopkeepers and brainworkers into farmers, laborers, and soldiers. Had Shanghai Shek known how to set in motion in genuine mass movement, or at least sustain the nationalist enthusiasm kindled by the Japanese invasion, he might have been acting now as the renovator of China. Since he did not know how,

he was easily shoved aside by the masters of the art of religification, the art of turning practical purposes into holy causes. It is not difficult to see why America and Britain or any Western democracy could not play a direct and leading role in rousing the Asiatic countries from their backwardness and stagnation. The democracies are neither inclined nor perhaps able to kindle a revivalist spirit in Asia's millions. The contribution of the Western democracies to the awakening of the East has been indirect and certainly unintended. They have kindled an enthusiasm of resentment across the West, and it is this anti-Western fervor, which is at present rousing the Orient from its stagnation of centuries. So I know that this has been

recommended to me for years. But I don't know, you know, how is he going to feel about nationalism? Is some nationalism okay? Is some nationalism wrong? I have no idea which direction he is. I have a tendency to believe he's going to make the argument that nationalism is wrong, which I don't have a problem with covering and reading because as much as I, well, nationalism, Nationalism is a term that you may have to use when you have a,

maybe one of the only terms you could use when you have a multicultural society, but multicultural societies really don't work, even with nationalism. And some people don't like nationalism amongst monocultural societies. So we'll see where this takes us. Though the desire for change is not infrequently a superficial motive, it is yet worth finding out whether a probing of this desire might not shed some light on the inner working of mass movements. We shall inquire, therefore, into the nature of the desire for change. There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves.

Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all, let me read that again. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is while the frustrated favor radical change. I mean, if I was to try to relate that to today, I mean, the people who think they have a sense of fulfillment, but certainly don't act like it would be progressives, those who defend the regime.

and then those who, and they seek to conserve it, while the frustrated favor radical change, the frustrated would be, I mean, I would consider myself frustrated. I would consider most of the people I know frustrated. If that's a bad thing, well, we'll see where this takes us. The point being is that you can't, this can't exist in a vacuum. Obviously, people who were in the gulag were frustrated and were looking for radical change. So, yeah.

If anything ail a man says DeRoe, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even, he forthwith sets about reforming the world. It is understandable that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failure. The remarkable thing is that the successful, too, however much they pride themselves on their foresight, fortitude, thrift, and other sterling qualities, are at bottom convinced that their success is a result of a fortuitous combination of circumstances. The self-confidence of even the consistently successful is never absolute. They are never sure that they know all of the ingredients which go into the making of their success. The outside world seems to them a precariously balanced mechanism, and so long as it ticks in their favor, they are afraid to tinker with it. thus the resistance to change and the ardent desire for it to spring from the same conviction,

and the one can be as vehement as the other. Anyone who's successful out there disagree with that? You're always waiting for dominoes to start to fall, right? Three, discontent by itself does not invariably create a desire for change. Other factors have to be present before discontent turns into disaffection. one of these is a sense of power. Those who are awed by their surroundings do not think of change no matter how miserable their condition.

When our mode of life is so precarious as to make it patent that we cannot control the circumstances of our existence, we tend to stick to the proven and the familiar. We counteract a deep feeling of insecurity by making of our existence a fixed routine. We hereby acquire the illusion that we have tamed the unpredictable. Fisherfolk nomads and farmers who have to contend with the willful elements, the creative worker who depends on inspiration, the savage aught by his surroundings, they all fear change. They face the world as they would an all-powerful jury. The abjectly poor, too, stand in awe of the world around them and are not hospitable to change.

It is a dangerous life we live when hunger and cold are at our heels. There is thus a conservatism of the destitute as profound as. the conservatism of the privileged, and the former is as much a factor in the perpetuation of a social order as the latter. It's interesting that he connects the very poor to having a fear of change as much as very successful. But it makes sense if you're very poor and you're getting by, change could always make it worse. Where, for the very wealthy, for the very successful, if there's change in the opposite direction,

you have a long path to get to the abjectly poor. Not always, but, yeah. The men who rush into undertaking as a vast change usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power. The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of man's reason in the boundless range of his intelligence. Never, says to Tocqueville, had humanity been prouder of itself,

nor had it ever so much faith in its own omnipotence. And joined with his exaggerated self-confidence was a universal thirst for the change, which came unbidden to every mind. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who plunged recklessly into the chaos of the creation of a new world, had blind faith in the omnipotence of Marxist doctrine. The Nazis had nothing as potent as that doctrine, but they had faith in an infalleled. leader and also faith in a new technique.

For it is doubtful whether national socialism would have made such rapid progress if it had not been for the electrifying conviction that the new techniques of Blitzkrieg and propaganda made Germany irresistible. There was also some technical, some technical progress and prowess there, too. But what do you expect? Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith. faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by men who set out to build a city and a tower, whose top may reach onto heaven and who believe that nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Good reference to Babbel. Four. Or am I reading the page numbers out? No. Well, possibly, but anyway. Offhand, one would expect that the mere possession of power would automatically result in a cocky attitude toward the world and a receptivity to change, but it is not always so. The powerful can be as timid as the weak, which seems to count more than possession of instruments of power is faith in the future. Where power is not joined with faith in the future, it is used mainly to ward off the new and preserve the status quo. On the other hand, extravagant hope, even when not backed by actual power, is likely to generate a most reckless daring. For the hopeful can draw strength from the most ridiculous source of power, a slogan, a word, a button. No faith is potent unless it also has faith in the future, unless it has a millennial component.

So, too, an effective doctrine, as well as being a source of power, it must also claim to be a key to the book of the future. So there has to be a promise. What he's saying is there has to be a promise that things will be getting better. That your lot in life will improve in order for you to join this mass movement. Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. they must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope.

It matters not whether it be hope of a heavenly kingdom of heaven on earth, of plunder and untold riches, of fabulous achievement or world dominion. If the communists win Europe in a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope. Well, since you wrote this in 1951, maybe we can consider that when we look at why they failed. Thus, the differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change. Both the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, they who have achieved might. or little can be afraid of the future. When the present seems so perfect that the most we can expect is its even continuation in the future, change can only mean deterioration. Hence, men of

outstanding achievement and those who live full, happy lives usually set their faces against drastic innovation. So if that's true, and you see any men of incredible means right now who seem to have everything who are calling for change, pay attention. That means something, if his hypothesis is true. The conservatism of invalids and people past middle age stems too from fear of the future. They are on the outlook for signs of decay and feel that any change is more likely to be for the worse than for the better. The objectively poor also are without faith in the future. The future seems to them a booby trap buried on the road ahead. One must step gingerly. To change things is to ask for trouble. As for the hopeful, it does not seem to

make any difference who it is that is seized with a wild hope, whether it be an enthusiastic intellectual, a land-hungry farmer, a get-rich-quick speculator, a sober merchant or industrialist, a plain working man, or a noble lord. They all proceed recklessly with the present, wreck if necessary and create a new world. There can thus be revolutions by the privileged, as well as by the underprivileged. I would say revolution by the privilege, what we call that elite theory? Underprivilege, we'd call that revolution, like real revolution, which is usually funded by elites. The movement of enclosure in 16th and 17th century England was a revolution by the rich,

The woolen industry rose to high prosperity, and grazing became more profitable than cropping. The landowners drove off their tenants and closed the commons and wrought profound changes in the social and economic texture of the country. The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down ancient law and custom, sometimes by means of violence, often by pressure and intimidation. Another English revolution by the rich occurred at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. It was the industrial revolution. The breathtaking potentialities of mechanizations set the minds of manufacturers and merchants on fire. They began a revolution, as extreme and radical as ever inflamed, the minds of sectarians. And in a relatively short time, these respectable, god-fearing citizens changed the face of England beyond recognition.

When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shut our windows, and lie low until the wrath has passed. for there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however, noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four-horsmen of the apocalypse. For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking a 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.

They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap. The men who started the French Revolution were wholly without political experience. The same is true of the Bolsheviks, Nazis, and the revolutionaries in Asia. the experienced man of affairs is a latecomer. He answers the movement when it is already a going concern. It is perhaps the Englishman's political experience that keeps him shy of mass movements.

Part 2. The Desire for Substitutes. There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest. On the other hand, a mass movement, particularly in its active revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A 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. In order to become a movement, you have to give up.

what he's saying is in order to become a part of a movement, you're going to have to give up your individualism. That's how I read it. Somebody wants to, I'm open to people saying I'm wrong. People who say their lives, people who see their lives as irredeemably spoiled cannot find a worthwhile purpose in self-advancement. He's used self-advancement now here two sentences in a row. It's individualism. It has to be. The prospect of an individual career cannot stir them to a mighty effort, nor can it evoke in them faith and single-minded dedication.

They look on self-interest as on something tainted and evil, something unclean and unlucky. Anything undertaken under the auspices of the self seems to be foredoomed. Nothing that has its roots and reasons in the self can be good and noble. Their innermost craving is for a new life, a rebirth, or failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose, and worth by an identification with a holy cause. An active mass movement offers them opportunities from both. If they join the movement as full converts, they are reborn to a new life in its close-knit collective body. Or if attracted as sympathizers, they find elements of pride, confidence, and purpose by identifying themselves with the efforts,

achievements, and prospects of the movement. Basically what he's doing here. I mean, he's He's not using the term, but he's basically saying, like, people who've failed. People who've failed themselves, doing things themselves, they haven't been able to accomplish anything. So by joining a movement, they feel like they can accomplish something. Trying to figure out a good example, and I don't want to insult any of my veteran friends. But I think you see a lot of people who, a lot of kids who do that by joining the military. I don't think that's the only reason people join the military. I think there's good reasons to join the military.

But I think that that's probably a pretty good example. You're joining something that's a movement. You're a part of something. And if you have, if your country has a really good military, you have something to be proud of. There's something to brag about. To the frustrated of a mass movement offers substitutes, either for the whole self or for the elements which make life bear.

and which they cannot evoke out of their individual resources. It is true that among the early adherence of a mass movement, there are also adventurers who join in the group that the movement will give a spin to their wheel of fortune and whirl them to fame and power. On the other hand, a degree of selfless dedication is sometimes displayed by those who join corporations, Orthodox political parties, and other practical organizations. Still, the fact remains that a practical concern cannot endure, unless it can appeal to and satisfy self-interest, while the vigor in growth of a rising mass

movement depends on its capacity to evoke and satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. When a mass movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed its vigorous stage, that it is no longer engaged in molding a new world, but in possessing and preserving the present. It ceases then to be a movement and becomes an enterprise. according to Hitler, the more posts and offices a movement has to hand out, the more inferior stuff it will attract. And in the end, these political hangarsons overwhelm a successful party in such number that the honest fighter of former days no longer recognizes the old movement. When this happens, the mission of such a movement is done for. It sounds like he's

describing gatekeepers. Like some kind of movement. gets going, shows promise, and right before it's about, could be just at the point when it's about to explode and actually, I hate the term mainstream, but be adopted, start being adopted on a wider scale, these people come in, the ones who already have, who have their career, have their individual careers and who are aren't hungry, basically. They come in to just take advantage of what's been built and even stop it in its tracks. And any of you who listen to me listen a lot and, you know, you'll know who I may be talking about.

so. The nature of the complete substitute offered by conversion is discussed in the chapters on self-sacrifice and united action in part three. Here we shall deal with partial substitutes. Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves. The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or his holy cause. Basically, it seemed, when you read that, faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent substitute for lost faith in ourselves. He seems to be, it doesn't even seem to. He's coming at it from individualism, classical liberalism, the kind of things that have sought to infiltrate

you know, real right-wing thinking, you know, who have brought us to where we are, seems that he's championing it, and he's saying that when men abandon that, they're more ready to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or his holy cause. Now, he may be saying that they are doing that when they really shouldn't be taking any credit for it, but, yeah, I think, see where this is going. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business. The mining of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping, and meddling,

and also in feverish interests in communal, national, and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves, we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat. So, minding other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping, and meddling. Okay, here's the thing. Normally when you're noticing what other people are doing and you think it's detrimental to yourself, your society, your family, your culture, your religion, it's because other people, other peoples, he's trying to make peoples here, he's put the apostrophe on peoples, he's trying to make it singular. No, they're coming together. And this is exactly the problem. The problem is, is that you can be an individual all you want and think that you have

it all worked out and that you're going to live the rest of your life and no one's going to hurt you or take your stuff. But there are other people who are coming together and they're gossiping, snooping, snooping, and meddling and looking at you, looking at you and seeking to maybe they don't like what your opinions are on communal, national, or racial affairs. There are no individuals. Individuals are just there waiting to be picked off. So again, the mining of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national, and racial affairs.

In running away from ourselves, we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat. This, I mean, I will say this is human nature. The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life, we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even though, those who practice utmost humility is boundless. So there is no doubt that in exchanging us self-centered for a selfless life,

we gain enormously in self-esteem. What's he saying there? Somebody who's radically individual, now they go and they serve in the military, and they're selfless, and they'll give their life for their, you know, the man standing next to them. That gives them self-esteem. and then he says the vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

So he's calling that vanity. One of the potent attractions of a mass movement is its offering of a substitute for individual hope. This attraction is particularly effective in a society imbued with the idea of progress. For in the conception of progress, tomorrow looms large, and the frustration resulting from having nothing to look forward to is more poignant.

Herman Rochning says of pre-Hittlerian Germany that the feeling of having come to an end of all things was one of the worst troubles we endured after that lost war, World War I. In a modern society, people can live without hope only when kept days and out of breath by incessant hustling. The despair brought by unemployment comes not only from the threat of destitution, but from the sudden view of a vast nothingness ahead. The unemployed are more likely to follow peddlers of hope than the handers out of relief. Sometimes people are unemployed because other people made them so, designed the system so. Mass movements are usually accused of doping their followers with hope of the future while cheating them of enjoyment of the present. Yet to be frustrated, the present is irredeemably spoiled.

Comforts and pleasures cannot make it whole. No real content or comfort can ever arise in their minds but from hope. I guess you have to take into consideration that he's writing this in 1951. He's living in the United States. The United States has, quote unquote, won the war. Hope is everywhere. Prosperity is happening. And things look good, even in the Bronx.

I don't know where he lived when he wrote this. But, yeah, I think it's easy to look at this. Now, if he's able to place himself into the position of someone living in Weimar, or somebody, you know, one of the people who was slaughtered by the Bolsheviks after the revolution, well, hopefully can do that. When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need of something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty, and self-surrender are, in essence, a desperate

clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our feudal, spoiled lives. When he says spoiled, I think he means harmed, destroyed. Hence the embracing of a substitute will necessarily be passionate and extreme. We can have qualified confidence in ourselves, but the faith we have in our nation, religion, race or holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising. So if you look at that sentence, you know, he talks about faith in your nation, your religion, your race, or your holy cause, I think there's your list. That's what he sees as a negative, which is very interesting, considering this was written

right after a year after the authoritarian personality is right. released. Very interesting. A substitute embraced in moderation cannot supplant and efface the self we want to forget. We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it. This readiness to die is evidence to ourselves and others that what we had to take as a substitute for an irrevocably missed or spoiled first choice is indeed the best there ever was. right. And this next part is called the interchangeability of mass movements. I'm going to leave it right there for the first day because I made a lot of, a lot of comments. And this is interesting. He immediately starts talking about pre-Hitlerian Germany, communist or Nazis, overcrowded

pales, czarist Russia, Zionism, Heim Weizmann. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's a lot. This is going to be good. All right. So thanks for tuning in. for this and I will see you on part two. Take care. Bye.