True believers and mass movements
As an aid in this effort, use is made of a working hypothesis. Starting out from the fact that the frustrated1 predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculi
... See moreEric Hoffer • The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics)
People who are left naked and alone by radical individualism do what their genes and the ancient history of their species tell them to do: They revert to tribe. Individualism, taken too far, leads to tribalism. Hannah Arendt noticed the phenomenon decades ago. When she looked into the lives of people who had become political fanatics, she found two
... See moreDavid Brooks • The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
The Communists and Nazis said that it was necessary to establish a world that would correspond to the natural order of things. Historians and anthropologists later said that Communism and Nazism replaced religious belief with a belief in revolution and that people supported Communism and Nazism for the same motives, the strongest of which was the f
... See morePatrik Ourednik • Europeana (Dalkey Archive Essentials)
All mass movements generate in their adherents 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;
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