Hoffer thinks that the key to a *good* mass movement - one that benefits the world instead of hurting it - is for the movement's fanatical phase to be very short.pic.twitter.com/Ctaj7f8wO7
Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology, science and more. @UNC professor. @NYTimes columnist. My newsletter is @insight: http://www.theinsight.org
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Hoffer thinks that the key to a *good* mass movement - one that benefits the world instead of hurting it - is for the movement's fanatical phase to be very short.pic.twitter.com/Ctaj7f8wO7
And Hoffer thinks the key to having fanaticism be brief and temporary is for a movement to have a concrete, more-or-less realizable objective instead of eternal striving toward the creation of an impossible utopia.pic.twitter.com/P4ngeqNpCB
Hoffer thinks that a Hitler or Stalin might rise to power in America, but would probably be deposed fairly quickly.pic.twitter.com/WN1k9uhOED
Hoffer also offers, in passing, a plug for...Vladimir Lenin?pic.twitter.com/8Tpu3RjVZL
Remember: Hoffer doesn't think mass movements and revolutions are bad; he thinks they're necessary! But that because they're necessarily carried out by fanatics and bitter losers, they're very dangerous things, and should be brief and to-the-point.pic.twitter.com/IMAcDTRPdg
Anyway, "The True Believer" is just the mostly unsupported ranting of one guy. But it has many interesting ideas that might help to understand current events! You can order it here: https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915/ref=mp_s_a_1_1 … (end)
That book is the “assume a spherical cow” of social movement sociology! Aka debunked by decades of actual empirical sociology research. It makes for a fun reading, I guess, as long as you don’t actually take it seriously. 
What are some examples of points that were debunked?
The whole who joins movements part. Not at all found in actual research. None of the typologies hold. Practically the whole book. It’s just a eloquent guy ranting. Maybe you could say there are some insights of sorts into perhaps cults, kind of? Not movements.
I'd love to check out some of the debunking papers! Can you link me to a paper or two on the topic of who joins movements?
Later! Decades of social movements studies basically showing this to be mostly nonsense or very narrowly applied but not really to movements. I’m currently in Hong Kong studying an actual movement and the police are about to fire teargas into a pretty rational crowd. Gotta go. 
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