From Hoffer's "The True Believer"... Kind of Rings a Bell... - Granite Grok

From Hoffer’s “The True Believer”… Kind of Rings a Bell…

Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer

Does the following make you think of a certain big eared person?  Or a certain Mann?  The Gaystapos?  The Left? Odd that they all claim the mantle of science and tolerance when neither are true.  Hoffer helps explain why.  All emphasis mine.

All active mass movements strive…to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ. … To rely on the evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.

It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. Strength of faith… manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move. And it is the certitude of his infallible doctrine that renders the true believer impervious to the uncertainties, surprises and the unpleasant realities of the world around him.

Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is

The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth…

It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in

The devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts and not their minds…. “It is the heart which is conscious of God, not the reason.” Rudolph Hess, when swearing in the entire Nazi party in 1934, exhorted his hearers: “Do not seek Adolph Hitler with your brains; all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts.”…

If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine. When some part of a doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate and obscure it. Simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness.

–Hoffer, Eric (2011-05-10). The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics) (pp. 80-81). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

This last part really rings of the Warm Mongers, doesn’t it?

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