Hoffer thinks that a Hitler or Stalin might rise to power in America, but would probably be deposed fairly quickly.pic.twitter.com/WN1k9uhOED
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 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?
seconded! i love this topic. i would guess that "who joins movements" changes as the movement evolves. early social movements might attract radicals when the cause itself is radical, but for any movement to succeed it eventually has to win over the less radical majority
Also, he was thinking about militant mass movements of the early 20th century, which might look very different from a modern protest movement like the Hong Kong protests or BLM...maybe the Nazis or Bolsheviks were a lot more cult-like than protest movements.
Okay calm now. I’m sure he got them wrong too. In their own time, those were also mass movements. He’s someone who’d look at women’s march today and say look at all these hysterical women. If you’re a recent serf or bedraggled sailor in Czar’s military? Perfectly rational choice.
"He’s someone who’d look at women’s march today and say look at all these hysterical women." <-- Really? He didn't seem to ascribe "hysteria" to anyone in his book.
Of course not. Projecting his thinking forward as example. Large movements aren’t what he describes them to be. We have less empirical grounding for past but studies back to 1871 (Paris commune) show social networks mobilizing etc. Just like today. See: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2096251
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