Excellent Eric Hoffer (Author of The True Believer) Quotes on Mass Movements and Cults

“The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.”

“When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement, and not solely for one with a particular doctrine or program. In pre-Hitlerian Germany it was often a toss up whether a restless youth would join the Communists or the Nazis.”

“Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”

“The unavoidable conclusion seems to be that when the individual faces torture or annihilation, he cannot rely on the resources of his own individuality. His only source of strength is in not being himself but part of something mighty, glorious, and indestructible.”

“We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, “to be free from freedom.”

“Common hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements. To share a common hatred, with an enemy even, is to infect him with a feeling of kinship, and thus sap his powers of resistance.”

“Many of the basic luxuries we take for granted today like two-day weekends, eight-hour workdays, and basic occupational health and safety, were won by leftist worker’s rights movements.”

“Morally authoritarian movements are attractive to ugly, miserable, talentless people.”

"Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation. Unlike those anywhere else, the masses in America have never despaired of the present and are not willing to sacrifice it for a new life and a new world."

“The media is the right arm of anarchy.”

Hoffer's quote provides a framework for thinking about how mass movements are constructed. Mass movements can take many forms, including political parties or movements that are supported by large segments of a population. Ideologies like communism, fascism, and liberalism often advocate for the creation of mass movements.