On: The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer

 In a DKos post by lobachevsky: 

Hoffer identified: true believers need an infallible leader because admitting fallibility threatens the entire belief system that gives their lives meaning.

 Earlier in the post, the writer suggests that the "True Believer" "come from the ranks of the frustrated—people who feel their individual lives are 'spoiled or wasted';" from the middle class as someone who has lost their 

middle-class Americans who feel left behind by economic change, cultural shifts, and technological disruption. They're not starving; they're frustrated. Their America—the one where a high school diploma guaranteed middle-class stability—has vanished.

It sounds like they have nothing "to live for", a reason "to get up in the morning".  More generally, they have lost their way.  Being thus lost, finding someone who can point a "clear" direction to follow, people will take it.

 

In a sense, it seems to be saying that "in order to feel secure, one must find security -- somewhere."  At the material, physical, in the real life, level of existence, can  providing "security" be shared among a mutually accountable and responsible group, or will that security be up to yourself alone and the kindness of strangers.

 

the true believer -- no matter how much he preaches the will of God, the voice of history, the will of the people, or the dictates of science -- is actually driven by an inner voice that whispers:  "You are not wanted and there is no place for you in this world." 

 

 We respond to this meaninglessness by becoming true believers.

 

any of us can fall into these patterns when we're frustrated enough, scared enough, or desperate enough for meaning. 

 

And if there are enough people who discover that their frustration, their fear, their confusion is shared with thousands of others, and they begin to share their frustrations, their fears, their confusions, then you have the basis for a mass movement.  But a movement will go nowhere, will wander randomly, without a direction, a pole star, an idea.

 

 

 

What if an essential part of your religion required that you do your utmost to get everyone who is not of your religion to hate you?