Eric Hoffer: on mass movements

Faith is a two-edged sword. It can move people to do virtuous and compassionate acts as well as monstrously evil. However, we tend to focus solely on the good it can do and ignore its tendency towards cruelty and hate. Are the processes that lead to good actions the same as those that lead to evil?

Eric Hoffer on the subject of faith:


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Mass movements use irrationality to shut out the intellect, to turn people into predictable, mindless machines. Both Stalin and Hitler used blind faith as a device for mechanizing souls.


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We hear a lot about the dehumanizing effects of the machine. Actually, the large-scale dehumanization of the Stalin-Hitler era was the work of ideological machines. In Russia the doctrinaire appliances work better than the mechanical.


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The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despo9t who wants to turn them into puppets.

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience; a readiness to attempt the impossible; a bias for simple solutions--to cut the knot rather than unravel it; the viewing of compromise as surrender; the tendency to manipulate people and 'experiment with blood.' Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.-- Eric Hoffer --
from Reflections on the Human Condition


This is an interesting list of qualities characteristic of those demanding absolute faith.
1. a demand for absolute obedience;

2. a readiness to attempt the impossible;

3. a bias for simple solutions--to cut the knot rather than unravel it;

4. the viewing of compromise as surrender;

5. the tendency to manipulate people and 'experiment with blood.'



Are there "leaders" today who insist on the above from their supporters or have they all disappeared with the twentieth century?