Posted on 08/06/2013 10:16:58 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
The twentieth anniversary of the death of Eric Hoffer, in May 1983, passed with very little notice of one of the most incisive thinkers of his time -- a man whose writings continue to have great relevance to our times.
How many people today even know of this remarkable man with no formal schooling, who spent his life in manual labor -- most of it as a longshoreman -- and who wrote some of the most insightful commentary on our society and trends in the world?
You need only read one of his classics like The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements to realize that you are seeing the work of an intellectual giant.
Having spent several years in blindness when most other children were in school, Hoffer could only do manual labor after he recovered his sight, but was determined to educate himself. He began by looking for a big book with small print to take with him as he set out on a job as a migratory farm worker.
The book that turned out to fill this bill -- based on size and words -- was the essays of Montaigne. Over the years, he read many landmark books, including Hitler's Mein Kampf, even though Hoffer was Jewish. If ever there was a walking advertisement for the Great Books approach to education, it was Eric Hoffer.
Among Hoffer's insights about mass movements was that they are an outlet for people whose individual significance is meager in the eyes of the world and -- more important -- in their own eyes. He pointed out that the leaders of the Nazi movement were men whose artistic and intellectual aspirations were wholly frustrated.
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(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Obama’s cause, however, is not the sort that will hold a true believer for long. Let’s say socialized medicine is here to stay. What is the next grand crusade? Protecting socialized medicine? Defending gays in the military and gay marriage? The active phase of his “movement” is too short, the aftermath, too mundane to keep the true believers busy. Besides, it’s falling apart. He supported Arab Spring and the MB’s involvement, and it’s blowing up in his face. And when things blow up in the middle east, the price of gas at the pump ultimately goes up, and people get pissed. He might just sew enough discontent among the middle class to cause an anti-Obama mass movement, and finish like Mussolini, and the active phase of that movement would be stringing up his dispirited ex-true believers wherever they’re found. It won’t be pretty, but it might just have staying power where Obamania will ultimately ebb and fade.
Slaughter, atrocity and mass murder against the regime's 'undesirables'. That's what's next. History is my witness.
I can't seem to reconcile this with the outrageous success the Left has had in buying off the weak via social welfare. The weak seem to be grateful and empowered by the handouts.
The ruling class is adept at directing the hate and resentment of the weak against the good and the productive. That’s how it works.
I need to think through this because it seems important.
This is the first I’ve heard of Hoffer, and I’m under the impression he speaks on behalf of the ruling class that is trying to win over or manipulate the weak, but they can’t do this by sharing the wealth, as per his quote in your post.
Thanks for your post in 13: Both the quote and your explanation of it are mind blowing!
First he has to disarm and silence them. His last attempt failed. They have the tradition of resistance that Hoffer said is important for those who would stand up against totalitarianism. Even someone who stands alone against oppression is in the company of his ancestors in America.
Eric Hoffer’s worth every bit of your time and contemplation. I used his books to instruct and inform our kids.
“Hoffer’s insights may help explain something that many of us have found very puzzling — the offspring of wealthy families spending their lives and their inherited money backing radical movements.”
Ain’t that the truth - history is full of examples from Lenin to Bill Ayres to OWS.
They riot over jury verdicts. They believe they are entitled to more, and this is just crumbs from the table of the reparations they are owed. They feel oppressed because of ever-decreasing-in-severity offenses by ‘the man,’ because sometimes one of their own gets shot by a policeman, because middle-class white women hold their purses close to them as they pass. I’ve lived in poor neighborhoods for years, and never yet met a grateful welfare recipient.
Also, according to Hoffer there has to be some grand mythical vision of the future to motivate mass murder. What’s their grand vision, that would make them willing to do all that? 12th Imam doesn’t work for leftists, and they stopped believing in the ultimate triumph of the proletariat when the modern day proletariats in America turned against them. Their real allies now are the lumpenproletariats, for whom Marx had nothing but contempt. What messianic vision is left? There’s been a black president, black mayors, black governors, corporate executives, etc., but no paradise on earth that can be made up and believed in. It’s all just muddling through for them now.
That also holds true with foreign aid, though oppression may not be quite the word.
I keep copies of The True Believer around to pass along to friends, and my own copy of "Ordeal" is getting pretty dog-eared.
I could easily become a True Believer in The True Believer. Imagine if Hoffer's work had been more generally applied following 9-11. The history of the past decade might have been radically different if Islam had been understood in the context of a Hofferian mass movement.
No one had a better fix on why Germany arose under the Nazis than Hoffer.
Muslims are the same as the Nazis. Same pathological disorders at work, as described by Hoffer. I haven’t yet come across Passionate State of Mind, but I always end up around second-hand books, and sooner or later I’ll find it.
To accept it, they must accept the status of an inferior. That’s why they must hate us, for helping them. They want to immitate the West, the technology, the democracy. But immitation, too, is an admission of inferiority, all as per Hoffer in Ordeal. So they must hate us to regain their pride, or see immitation as a means to the end of conquering the hated West.
The problem is getting his books. So far, other than True Believer....the small collection of his books that I have...are mostly prints from the 1970s. You can’t find anything much today. I would think some foundation would pick up his cause, and market the books for the modern age.
I will say this...once you analyze his history....he was entirely self-taught. He read a minimum of one book per day for his entire life, and probably had a better understanding of history and the movements that came and went....than the vast number of historians that we have around today. I would also say that he had a marginal personal life, and most of his hours were spent either in physical work or reading, with almost no social life or pleasures other than reading.
I’ve heard that his romance with the literati ended abruptly when he came out in favor of American involvement in Vietnam. Lin Yu Tang isn’t in print anymore, either, because he had a fight with Pearl S. Buck and Doubleday dropped him as a result.
I was digging back through to see what threads had mentioned Eric Hoffer and found this one.
I believe that he found Truth and wrote it down for others to find. As to not being able to find his books (which makes me weep to think that someone wants to read this great mind and cannot) - the answer is amazon.com. The books cost about $12 each - which seems like a lot for a book that is less than 200 pages long. I assure you the density is there.
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