The True Believer Eric Hoffer Summary

Foreign and domestic policies are not linear, rather the policies are connected in a circle, with each policy reinforcing the values of another. Domestic American terrorism in the prison and detention systems and governmental reforms are influenced by the mobilization and ethnocentrism abroad. The militarization internationally is justified by the domestic handling of the same cultural issues within the United State borders. The United States has strangely used a near Catch-22 to handle dilemmas. The United States has allowed perspective to become reality, whether with oneself or regarding issues abroad, specifically in the Middle East. Terrorism is the use or threat of fear for political or economical gain. An internal characteristic of terrorism is how dependent it is of perspective, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To understand “terrorism,” a focus must be applied to the history, what drove an organization to commit such acts. Respectively, the Middle East has been a hotbed for the key word “terrorism,” especially because of 9/11. Subsequently, Muslims have been stigmatized by the United States as terrorists. The consequences spawned because of 9/11 require a look to the past to understand the present.

Social movements are not spontaneous events, and they must build towards their goals over time on a series of phases and preconditions. Successful social movements rely on a number of micro and macro factors including efficient organizational structures, the ability to mobilize human and material resources, as well as effective leadership and rapid diffusion of ideas. As it will be shown, the presence of mobilizing structures, movement frames as well as suitable political opportunities combined with reactionary incentives during the Civil Rights Movement helped culminate both short and long term societal changes.

Therefore, it is understandable that movement scholars tend to write from a rather activist stance. There is nothing wrong with this per se, however, as historians, we should critically assess in how far this positioning might limit our scholarship. At times, Payne tends to overemphasize the unity and the solidarity among the organizers and the local population and fails to mention the tensions among direct democratic groups like SNCC. Every social movement is made up of people, united under what they perceive as an urgent need to bring about change. This unity tends to suppress theoretical and practical differences for some time and can thus create a tremendous amount of communality and solidarity among its members. However, as history has shown over and over again, as soon as the external threat either diminishes or proves resistant to change, movements tend to disunite. This is what Baker and other activists wanted to prevent by modeling their training around local long-term strategies and individual

Domestic terrorism has played a major part in shaping the societies of the United States. The ideologies of individuals can become radicalized. This can lead to a movement. This movement involves the infliction of fear upon the communities, in attempt to make it a better world. It is critical to examine the events created by one man’s extreme ideologies in effort to better understand.

political and social circumstances; that is, terrorism involves variables that can be measured on a criminological scale. The measurable by-product can be examined through psychological factors that vacillate with political circumstances. Ross's conclusions lead to two practical considerations.

There are movements today that seems to be having an extraordinary impact on the social changes that they wish to promote to change, but how much is that driven by authentic activism with a strong tie to specific values that those movements hold? Author Malcolm Gladwell discusses and analyzes how, in the past, the movements that emerged were composed of people who had personal connections with either what the movement was seeking to achieve or the people within that movement. Today it seems as though movements have no noticeable impact and are very loosely tied together due to advances in technology and how we use it. At the time that Malcolm Gladwell’s wrote his article, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, it seems like

Eric Hoffer wrote ?The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements? in early 1950 when he offered insight about the current cultural phenomenon surrounding public movements. In his book, Hoffer discusses about the appeal of mass movements, the potential converts, united action and self-sacrifice, and finally the beginning and end of mass movements. This discussion draws upon examples from religious, social, and nationalistic movements.

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, by Eric Hoffer is a book about human nature. When Hoffer start his life as a young age he was blinded until later in his teen’s year before he could see. He did not attend high school, neither college, but read many books and got inspired by reading from Montaigne to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. As life goes on, Hoffer worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco for over a decade and made living by writing books. “The True Believer” which drives in the mind of why people do things by a holy cause or do things sometimes bizzes or have some beneficial to society. The leads to spirituals hunger and changing the old selves to a new selves that is going to be even more delightful or collision course.

Social movements shed light to social issues present in communities and harvest social change in political, religious, educational, health, government, and other institutional matters. Social movements give individuals a clear outlet to concerns about the rights and well-being of themselves and others, mostly through public protest and conversation, in order to promote social justice and democracy. Throughout history, humans naturally ended up starting movements to simply improve their way of life and movements have continually aided in a remarkable change in communities. In the essay “From Civil Rights to Megachurches,” Charles Duhigg explains the three critical steps that initiative successful social movements. Social movements must

Political movements are organized in order to achieve a common goal. Masses of people come together, and they all learn how

Within social movement literature, frames play a major role in impacting how movement actors translate their goals and beliefs into collective action. Specifically, frames shape the parameters of action and the strategic choices underlying these actions. Additionally, “framing processes have taken center stage in an attempt to understand the emergence and development of social change efforts” (Croteau & Hicks, 2003: 252). For sociologists, frames act as “schemata of interpretation” which render things or situations meaningful (Goffman, 1974: 21). Political scientists attribute this concept to collective action, where frames “simplify and condense aspects of the ‘world out there,’ with the end intention of mobilizing “potential adherents and constituents” (Benford & Snow, 1988: 198). In its simplest form, “movements may try to remake the world in their own image” (Clemens in McAdam et al, 1996: 213). Therefore, to get supporters involved in collective action, organizers must shape their frames in an attractive manner.

Bob, Clifford. “The Quest for International Allies.” The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts. Ed. Goodwin, Jeff, and Jasper, James M.. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 353-61. Print.

For years since the gradual progression of terrorism in the 90s rationalist approaches such as Realism and Liberalism had seemed fitting to understand the war on terror and provided what was thought at the time as a clear understand for how terrorism is carried out and perhaps the behavior of terrorists themselves. However in the end of the Cold War the traditional IR scholars had a rude awaken regarding how they had predicted the outcome of the Cold war. They had unfortunately failed to predict its ending.

Kegley and Raymond stated: “The shape of the world’s future will be determined not only by changes in the objective conditions of world politics, but also by the meanings people ascribe to these conditions.” Terrorism is presently a major factor in international relations and has impacted the world to change in many significant ways. Terrorism is a political ideology that has been problematic in defining definitely because of its various interpretations around the world, as well as the fact that it is constantly evolving. Since the terrorist events of 9/11, the lives of many have been changed forever. A small group of individuals, which are a mere fraction of the population of the world, have managed to impact and shape the way international and domestic relations are looked at and handled. People question how secure and safe they feel due to uncertainty of public safety because of events such as 9/11. The war on terrorism in the 21st century has certainly and inevitably changed the landscape for global politics. However, the relationship between terrorism and global politics is troublesome and in ways problematic to describe accurately. Both terrorism and global politics individually are complicated phenomenon. It is erroneous to propose that one is responsible for the other or vice versa, but they are inextricably and inevitably linked. In the study of international relations, there are multiple theories and theoretical perspectives. In this essay, realism and liberalism

According to Eller (2006, pp.237), Vejas Gabriel Liulevicious recorded in a lecture series “Utopia and Terror in the Twentieth Century” (2003) identified the following four elements of mass movement: