Words of wisdom from 60 years ago by Eric Hoffer.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

DH has gotten lots of right wing emails from acquaintances. He's tired of it. The latest one showed a fancy prison that Obama supposedly got built when he was a Senator. I looked it up on snopes.com and it's a prison in Austria.

I also looked up some relevant quotes from THE TRUE BELIEVER, by Eric Hoffer, published in 1951. It is a psychological analysis of people who join mass movements. I sent these back to DH and I hope he sends them to the folks who distribute right wing bullshit.



"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his religion, his nation, his race or his holy cause.

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.
When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

"This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.

"Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensible of unifying agents.

"Common hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements.

"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

"It seems that like the ideal deity, the devil is One. The ideal devil is omnipotent and omnipresent. Every difficulty and failure within a movement is the work of the devil, and every success is a triumph over his evil plotting.

"Finally, the ideal devil is a foreigner. To qualify as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry. Hitler found it easy to brand the German Jews as foreigners."

----Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951.

[On the Road]

1. I Love Eric Hoffer

and The True Believer can easily be applied to the teabaggers.

He applied his insights, however, to both sides of the political spectrum. He was independent and leaned toward libertarianism. Eisenhower was a big fan.

[frylock]

2. true believer could have been written yesterday..

an incredible read.

[PurityOfEssence]

3. Not so fast, there; he also said that FDR "was our No. 1 disaster."

Hey, I like the guy, too, and "The True Believer" was a great lightning rod for me when I was 20, but don't forget the rest of his irascability: he was as beholden to his own prejudices and cranky beliefs as academics tend to be, much as he disliked them.

Here's the full quote:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was our No. 1 disaster. Before he took office, Americans in trouble got themselves out of the hole. Now they blame the system and everybody else. FDR started this welfare mess. This tremendous burden. President Eisenhower, on the other hand, was occupied with keeping things from happening. Eisenhower sat on his ass and we were a thousand times better off.

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20069990,00.html