[Bear with me for I am going to take this somewhere. This is the first half of a discussion of Eric Hoffer's "True Believer" which deftly analyzes the nature and course of mass movements. I will, initially, focus on the "mass movement" that is Islamic fanaticism and how Hoffer's principles apply to understanding what makes a "true believer." This will continue, but to a lesser degree, in the second half. However, with your patience, I will come back to these thoughts in a future piece about the black community and it leadership - more specifically, its lack thereof - in the form of a book review. So, without further a do, Part One]

One of the truly remarkable thinkers and writers of the 20^th Century was Eric Hoffer. His family immigrated from the Alsace region of eastern France in the late 1900s. Eric was born in New York City in 1905. His mother died when he was 5 and he was blinded in an accident when he was 7 years old.. His sight was unexpectedly - some say "miraculously" - restored at age 15. He became a voracious, lifelong reader. His father subsequently died when Hoffer was 20.

Orphaned and alone, he became a vagabond observer of mankind and a self-styled philosopher. He made his way across the country, working all sorts of manual labor jobs including gold miner and dishwasher. He ended up on the streets of Los Angeles' notorious "Skid Road" in the about 1940 and finally settled in San Francisco in 1943. I imagine that was a pretty tough existence even more than the homeless life is today. After Pearl Harbor, he became a longshoreman on the docks which he remained for nearly 20 years. He would work his shifts, scribbling his ideas into dozens of notebooks during work breaks. At the end of the his work days, he would head to the San Francisco Public Library where he continued his love affair with books and personal inquiry.

What is remarkable about the story of Eric Hoffer, an orphan just one generation removed from the Franco-German pinball that was the Alsace-Loraine region, was not that he survived the backbreaking labor on the mean streets of a very rough city. The really remarkable aspect of the life of Eric Hoffer was that in the course of his life, he thought, analyzed, and observed his fellow humans - without any formal education - and formulated truths about his mankind that are still studied and quoted a half-century later. As best we can tell, he never attended any school, even as a child. Despite (some might say "because of") this academic vacuum, he wrote and published - several seminal books. The first and most acclaimed of these works was the aphoristic "True Believer" published in 1951. Others include "The Passionate State of Mind" (1955), "The Ordeal Of Change." (1963) and "The Temper of Our Times" (1967).

But it was about "True Believer" that renowned historian Arthur Schlesinger said "This brilliant and original inquiry ... is a genuine contribution to our social thought." In the book, Hoffer characterized the "true believer" as one who holds so strongly to a cause that the person is willing to unthinkingly die for it.

I suspect he was thinking, primarily, about the recently concluded World War II. Perhaps, specifically, he was thinking of the Nazi regime. But his words resonate clearly today when we think of suicide bombers who strap C-4 vests on to blow up whomever or, clearly, the tragedy that is 09/11/2001. He wrote:

"Passionate hatred can give meaning to an empty life. Thus, people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new context not only be dedicating themselves to a holy cause but by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunity for both."

Remember this is not someone commenting on the roots of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East or New York or London. This is a voice from 1951, warning us and waiting to be reheard. Also from "True Believer" we hear these warnings:

"The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustration in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived." [emphasis mine]

He then references, as he seldom does, another author in saying:

"What Stresemann said of he Germans is true of the frustrated in general: 'They pray not only for daily bread, but also for daily illusion.' The rule seems to be that those who find difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led."

People with empty lives seek out the "Big Lie" whether it comes from a Hitler or a Stalin or an ayatollah or an iman. Hate is much more palatable when directed not within but without. No logic is required. With the anger and hate of the true believer, there is no room for analysis, self-doubt or reason. With the Islamic radical "the miraculous" that their leaders allow to "seep through" the irrefutable, crushing, inescapable reality of their desolate lives is clear. The "miraculous" is a place with Allah where they will be rewarded. For the bomb-wielding "True Believer," it is enough.

Once again, as so many times in the dark history of our world, there is a mass movement suicidally-committed to eliminate a perceived enemy. It has happened periodically for time immemorial. Does Hoffer have any advice about how to fight or neutralize the "true believer." Thankfully, he does. According to Hoffer, you can only fight a fanatical mass movement by substituting another, more powerful movement. He says:

"The problem of stopping a mass movement is often a matter of substituting one movement for another. A social revolution can be stopped by promoting a religious or nationalist movement. Thus, in countries where Catholicism has recaptured its mass movement in spirit, it counteracts the spread of communism. In Japan, it was nationalism that canalized all movements of social protests...In pre-war Italy and Germany practical businessmen acted in an entirely "logical" manner when they encouraged a Fascist and a Nazi government in order to stop communism."

Obviously, there can be dangers when you substitute one movement for another. The businessmen in Italy and Germany who chose the Nazi movement over the communist movement lived to regret that decision.

The remainder of this essay will be my thoughts only. Obviously, mass movements can be arrested. The attempts of the West to use the carrot of the "beauty and gifts of democracy" are taking a page from the "True Believer." This gambit might have succeeded were this conflict arising in the great glory that was American democracy in the mid-20th century. We stood as a beacon against the oppression of the Iron Curtain. Our Presidents were statesmen and stood for freedom and exalted the individual - his intellect, enterprize and ingenuity. Even in the early 1960s when the country was torn apart by racial tension, the undeniable and inextinguishable light of nonviolent and righteous protests would have shown the jihadist, even in his hopelessness and destitution, that there could be a brighter tomorrow. Even for the most oppressed people in our American democracy, there was always hope which, eventually, was realized.

But, when confronted with the view of democracy as it exists today in America - "The Great Satan" - has little power to sway, much less persuade. Conspicuous consumption, national hedonism, and a decadence and immorality that would make ancient Romans blush has no attraction for the fanatic consumed with visions of Allah and the ethereal bliss that is promised in their scripture.

Once, our beautiful democracy - "the last, best hope of mankind" - could stand resolutely against any mass movement - religious, economic, or otherwise - it now seems beyond impotent. To the "true believer," there are only images of us as depicted on the hundreds of satellite channels with the endless stream of degrading and debauching "reality shows." This can have no possible appeal for the zealot bent on its destruction in the name of his holy war. When our Presidents vary from demagogic adulterers to incompetent (if well-meaning) fools and the people who vote them into office are more concerned about who gets to bury a dead stripper's corpse or why a disturbed, washed-up singer shaves her head than what we, as a people, can do to solve our countries real problems (poverty, educational collapse, health care inequities, etc.), who can blame them for not being dissuaded in thei quest to destroy our "shining city on a hill?"

They see what we show them and we show them much of our very worst. And their leaders add the spice and the side dishes.

[To be continued...]