I know this is long, but it's worth reading. Here's another excerpt from Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, which I just transcribed while listening to it on .50 speed. Times like these, I wish I had more hard copies of things. I digress.

There is much commentary I could give on the parallels between Hoffer's observations regarding the unifying power and application of hatred, and what we see coming from Far-Left Orthodoxy today. Most of the parallels are self-evident, others require more thought. However, I'd like your thoughts first. What do you make of Hoffer's observations here? Does it apply to today? If so, does it also imply our inevitable loss, as Far-Left Orthodoxy is much more tangibly connected to the visceral concept of hatred and resentment, than those who oppose it are? What about the notion that "unreasonable hatred" often stems from "self-contempt?" I'm also fascinated by Hoffer's take on hatred being most effective when mass movements find a way to make fellow citizens into "foreigners" (or evil "colonizers," perhaps?)

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

Chapter 14: Unifying Agents

Hatred

Section 65
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls and individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his wheel and fortune, frees him from jealousies and self seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle, quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. Hines suggest that what Christian love cannot do is affected by a common hatred. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a Devil. Usually, the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered "No. We should have then, to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one. F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist Movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied "It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can't, because we haven't got any Jews."

It is perhaps true that the insight and shrewdness that the men who know how to set a mass movement in motion or how to keep one going, manifest themselves as much in knowing how to pick an enemy, as in knowing what doctrine to embrace and what program to adopt. The theoreticians of the Kremlin hardly waited for the guns of the Second World War to cool before they picked the Democratic west, and particularly America, as the chosen enemy. It is doubtful whether any gesture of goodwill or any concession from our side will reduce the volume and venom of vilification against us emanating from the Kremlin.

One of Chiang Kai-shek's most serious shortcoming was his failure to find an appropriate new Devil once the Japanese enemy vanished from the scene at the end of the war. The ambitious but simple-minded general was perhaps too conceited to realize it was not he, but the Japanese Devil who generated the enthusiasm, the unity, and the readiness for self sacrifice of the Chinese masses.

Section 66
Common hatred unites the most heterogenous 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. Hitler used anti-Semitism not only to unify his Germans, but also to sap the resoluteness of Jew-hating Poland, Romania, Hungary, and finally, even France. He made a similar use of anti-Communism.

Section 67
It seems that, like the ideal deity, the ideal Devil is one. We have it from Hitler, the foremost authority on Devils, that the genius of a great leader consists in concentrating all hatred on a single foe, making "even adversaries far removed from one another seem to belong to a single category."

When Hitler picked the Jew as his Devil, he peopled practically the whole world outside Germany with Jews, or those who worked for them. "Behind England, stands Israel. And behind France, and behind the United States. Stalin, too adheres to the monotheistic principle when picking a Devil Formerly this Devil was a Fascist. Now, he is an American plutocrat. Again, like an ideal deity, the ideal Devil is omnipotent and omnipresent. When Hitler was asked if he was not attributing rather too much importance to the Jews, he exclaimed "No, no, no! It is impossible to exaggerate the formidable quality of the Jew as an enemy!"

Every difficulty and failure within the movement is the work of the Devil, and every success is a triumph over his evil plotting. Finally, it seems the ideal Devil is 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. The Russian revolutionary agitators emphasized the foreign origin: Varangians, Tartars, Western, of the Russian aristocracy. In the French Revolution, the aristocrats were seen as "descendants of barbaris Germans, while French commoners were descendants of civilized Galls and Romans." In the Puritan Revolution, the royalist "were labeled Normans," descendants of a group of foreign invaders.

Section 68
We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate. It is understandable that we should look for others to side with us when we have a just grievance and crave to retaliate against those who wronged us. The puzzling thing is that when our hatred does not spring from a visible grievance and does not seem justified, the desire for allies become more pressing. It is chiefly the unreasonable hatreds that drive us to merge with those who hate as we do. And it is this kind of hatred that serves as one of the most cementing agents. Whence come these unreasonable hatreds, and why their unifying effect? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt, and other shortcomings of the self. Self-contempt is here transmuted into hated of others, and there is a most determined and persistent effort to mask the switch. Obviously, the most effective way of doing this is to find others, as many as possible, who hate as we do. Here, more than anywhere else, we need general consent. And much of our proselytizing consists, perhaps, in infecting others not with our brand of faith, but with our particular brand of unreasonable hatred. Even in the case of a just grievance, our hatred comes less from a wrong done to us, than from the consciousness of our helplessness, inadequacy, and cowardice. In other words, from self-contempt.

When we feel superior to our tormentors, we are likely to despise them, even pity them, but not hate them. That the relation between grievance between grievance and hatred is not simple and direct is also seen from the fact that the released hatred is not always directed against those who wronged us. Often, when we are wronged by one person, we turn our hatred on a wholly unrelated person or group. Russians, bullied by Stalin's secret police are easily inflamed against "Capitalist warmongers." Germans, aggrieved by the Versailles Treaty avenged themselves by exterminating Jews. Zulus oppressed by Boers, butchered Hindus. White trash, exploited by Dixiecrats, lynch blacks. Self-contempt produces in man "the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable. For he conceivers a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults"

Section 69
That hatred springs more from self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a guilty conscience. There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person, than by doing him a grave injustice. That others have a just grievance against us is a more potent reason from hating them, than that we have a just grievance against them. We do not make people humble and meek when we show them their guilt, and cause them to be ashamed of themselves. We are more likely to stir their arrogance and rouse in them a reckless aggressiveness. Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us. There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act, and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.

Section 70
To wrong those we hate, is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.

Section 71
The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against, are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them, or else leave the door open to self-contempt.

There's a lot to unpack there, I know. I'd love to hear your feedback and analysis in the comments!