🔖 The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer

Bookmarked The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer (Perennial Classics)

A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer -- the first and most famous of his books -- was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.

The famous bestseller with “concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement” (Wall St. Journal) by Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Eric Hoffer, The True Believer is a landmark in the field of social psychology, and even more relevant today than ever before in history. Called a “brilliant and original inquiry” and “a genuine contribution to our social thought” by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The True Believer is mandatory reading for anyone interested in the machinations by which an individual becomes a fanatic.

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The GOP narrative is very much focused on "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" and anti-victimhood, yet mobilizes its base by sharing messages that white males are oppressed and persecuted, christians are oppressed and persecuted, and gun owners are oppressed and persecuted.

— Susan Fowler (@susanthesquark) March 24, 2018

Messages of oppression and persecution are really dangerous, especially when they are being used for political ends. This is why.

— Susan Fowler (@susanthesquark) March 24, 2018

Hoffer's book The True Believer addresses this really well (one of my favorite books).

— Susan Fowler (@susanthesquark) March 24, 2018