The true believer : thoughts on the nature of mass movements /
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises examining mass movements--from Christianity in its infancy to the national uprisings of modern times. His analysis of the psychology of mass movements is a brilliant and frightening study of the mind of the fan...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Harper Perennial Modern Classics,
[2002]
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| Edition: | First Perennial Modern Classics edition. |
| Series: | Perennial classic.
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| Subjects: |
Table of Contents:
- Part 1. The appeal of mass movements
- The desire for change
- The desire for substitutes
- The interchangeability of mass movements
- Part 2. The potential converts
- The role of the undesirables in human affairs
- The poor. The new poor ; The abjectly poor ; The free poor ; The creative poor ; The unified poor
- Misfits
- The inordinately selfish
- The ambitious facing unlimited opportunities
- Minorities
- The bored
- The sinners
- Part 3. United action and self-sacrifice
- Preface
- Factors promoting self-sacrifice. Identification with a collective whole ; Make-believe ; Deprecation of the present ; "Things which are not" ; Doctrine ; Fanaticism ; Mass movements and armies
- Unifying agents. Hatred ; Imitation ; Persuasion and coercion ; Leadership ; Action ; Suspicion ; The effects of unification
- Part 4. Beginning and end
- Men of words
- The fanatics
- The practical men of action
- Good and bad mass movements. The unattractiveness and sterility of the active phase ; Some factors which determine the length of the active phase ; Useful mass movements.
