Hoffer continues the book by expanding on what is needed for the success of any given mass movement in Part 3: United Action and Self-Sacrifice. Due to the length and depth of this chapter, I will be splitting it into two parts. Hoffer writes:

“The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice. When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice.”

Hoffer continues to thoroughly explain how self-sacrifice and unification can be achieved in order to meet the threshold required of a strong mass movement. He goes through several different factors that promote self-sacrifice as well as covering different unifying agents that solidify the mass movement. Self-sacrifice and unification are not always a bad thing but, as Hoffer will explain, they are not always good things either. Unification can unify, but it can also blind people to the more sinister motives of the people within the group. Self-sacrifice can be noble, but it can also promote the abandonment of the self for a cause that will eventually destroy the self. Mass movements often care little for the individual and is willing to sacrifice the individual for the holy cause.

This part will cover self-sacrifice. There are many factors that promote self-sacrifice. One of these factors is identification with a collective whole. Identifying with a collective may provide the individual with a sense of meaning, for a time, but bits and pieces of that individual will begin to fade as the collective supersedes the individual identity. Hoffer writes:

“To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctiveness… In every act, however trivial, the individual must by some ritual associate himself with the congregation, the tribe, the party, etcetera.”

We see this today all the time. We see it in covert political yard signs listing out empty slogans to signify that “this house is part of this team.” We see it in Zoom meetings where people state their pronouns in their name box or when they introduce themselves. These are examples of ritual associations with a larger group. We see it on both sides of the political spectrum, but we are definitely seeing it happen more habitually on one side today. Wokeism demands collective behavior. Any signs of individuality must be crushed for the sake of the collective good as defined by the woke.

The next factor leading to self-sacrifice is make-believe. Hoffer writes:

“In the practice of mass movements, make-believe plays perhaps a more enduring role than any other factor. When faith and the power to persuade or coerce are gone, make-believe lingers on.”

Hoffer uses the example of Hitler dressing up his soldiers, officers, and followers in uniforms to make them feel like they are performing in a “grandiose, heroic and bloody opera.” Dressing in formal uniform is too on-the-nose for today’s social media culture but forcing people and companies to wear the metaphorical uniform of the rigid ideology in power is the main tool of the religion of wokeism today. For what the woke lack in compelling arguments they make up for in their ability to intimidate and bully people and businesses, including some for largest corporations in the world, into at least publicly showing their fealty to the holy cause. These brow-beating tactics are not only successful in getting large groups of people to repeat the pre-approved lines given by theirs friends and allies in the media, but also forces them to buy into their political narratives. These narratives do not persuade anyone with the ability to look at the world critically, but they do force them to play make-believe quite successfully.

The next factor is the depreciation of the present. Hoffer writes:

“As its inception a mass movement seems to champion the present against the past… the people [are] called upon to attack the past in order to liberate the present.”

I often say (a saying which I heard many people say), “our greatest privilege as a society is our ability to judge those of the past by our standards in the present.” The quote above from Hoffer perfectly exemplifies that sentiment. Attacking the past is a way to relate it to an imperfect present which makes it easier to promise a perfect future. Hoffer continues:

“All mass movements deprecate the present by depicting it as a mean preliminary to a glorious future; a mere doormat on the threshold of the millennium. To a religious movement the present is a place of exile, a vale of tears leading to the heavenly kingdom; to a social revolution it is a mean way station on the road to Utopia; to a nationalist movement it is an ignoble episode preceding the final triumph.”

This is not only a factor in creating self-sacrifice for the woke, but also the exact roadmap they use to promise utopia. It is a continuous process of denigrating those of the past, relating those people to others in the present, and promising to oust all evil moving into the future. They use this process to slander their enemies and force everyone else into conformity. We must sacrifice our individuality in order to strengthen the collective to open the gates of utopia.

The next factor in the promotion of self-sacrifice is summed up in the phrase, “things which are not”. Hoffer writes:

“One of the rules that emerges from a consideration of the factors that promote self-sacrifice is that we are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be.”

This factor is already more geared toward those of a progressive mindset, as opposed to a conservative mindset where openness to change is not valued as high. The woke have shown their willingness to sacrifice anything and anyone for their vision of utopia. They sacrifice the cities and neighborhoods of those they claim to fight for if the violence can be spun in their favor. They cancel their own advocates if the sacrifice will please the mob. They also create hierarchies of victim groups so everyone knows which group should be sacrificed for the sake of the others above it in the hierarchy. Wokeism will sacrifice “everything that is” for “things which are not.”

Doctrine is also a major factor in promoting self-sacrifice. Hoffer writes:

“All active mass movements strive, therefore, 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.”

Wokeism operates as a religion and, therefore, has its own religious doctrine. Their “fact-proof screen” is embedded in the popular, nonsensical saying, “my truth.” My truth implies it is based on truths learned from experience, but nothing could be further from the objective truth. The woke sacrifice the self to the assignment of collective experience of a large, diverse group. This is how they are able to pass and truly believe in the idea of white privilege. The concept of white privilege is based on the notion that subjective experience is largely the same for all racial groups in America and the Western world. This is meant to be a given, not an assumption. There are many other unfalsifiable truths in woke doctrine that lack any strong evidence, but as Hoffer writes in this section, “the effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude.” The woke doctrine, with a ton of help from activists in media and education, spreads so rapidly because of the convictions of those who carry it. This is how the facts of yesterday – such as “men are men” and “women are women” – are pushed aside for the new facts of today – “gender is a social construct” and “biological sex is meaningless.”

The next factor is fanaticism. Hoffer writes:

“The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure… The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by appeal to his reason or moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted. His passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached.”

Hoffer makes it pretty clear that fanatics can be pulled in any radical direction. Obviously, this includes wokeism, but the part I find interesting is how fanatics on both sides of any issue act very similarly. The radical Right and the radical Left are basically the same people in terms of the strength of their convictions and even their actions. Both have convictions strongly grounded in hate and resentment. Both resort to violence as a primary preference to opposition. And both have similar, if not the exact same, beliefs in power structures, race, and moral supremacy. There have even been several recorded examples of people moving from one radical end to the other. Someone like Christian Picciolini – a former neo-Nazi turned Leftist – comes to mind as a non-violent fanatic primed for conversion between extremes. Now, if I had to guess who is converting more extremists right now, I would put my money on the radical Left. There is no real incentive to be on the radical Right, for the exception of being an unbearable douche, but being on the radical Left has its perks. You get to let off steam by flipping cars and busting windows, you get free stuff from your local looted Target, the mainstream media and an army of blue checkmarks on Twitter defend everything you do, and you get bailed out of jail by future vice presidents. I guess it pays (more) to be a woke radical.

The next and final factor in promoting self-sacrifice is mass movements and armies. Hoffer writes:

“The similarities [between mass movements and armies] are many: both mass movements and armies are collective bodies; both strip the individual of his separateness and distinctiveness; both demand self-sacrifice, unquestioning obedience and singlehearted allegiance; both make extensive use of make-belief to promote daring and untied action; and both can serve as a refuge for the frustrated who cannot endure an autonomous existence.”

Hoffer’s characterization of an army may not be true for all armies, but it still stands to reason that mass movements can be militarized, in some capacity, to meet their goals. ANTIFA and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization are examples of militant wings of the woke Left. Hoffer continues:

“But the differences are fundamental: an army does not come to fulfill a need for a new way of life; it is not a road to salvation. It can be used as a stick in the hand of a coercer to impose a new way of life and force it down unwilling throats. But the army is mainly an instrument devised for the preservation or expansion of an established order – old or new. It is a temporary instrument that can be assembled and taken apart at will. The mass movement, on the other hand, seems an instrument of eternity, and those who join it do so for life. The ex-soldier is a veteran, even a hero; the ex-true believer is a renegade. The army is an instrument for bolstering, protecting and expanding the present. The mass movement comes to destroy the present. Its preoccupation is with the future, and it derives its vigor and drive from this preoccupation. When a mass movement begins to be preoccupied with the present, it means that is has arrived. It ceases then to be a movement and becomes an institutionalized organization – an established church, a government or an army.”

These differences are fundamental but are rather comparable at the same time. Mass movements attempt, or at least advertise to, create a bond for life among its members. Soldiers in an army have the same bond, but it tends to be more long lasting. Members of a mass movement tend to turn on each other when the mass movement becomes turbulent. An army protects the present while a mass movement discards the present for the future. The major divergence wokeism has from Hoffer’s characterization on the mass movement-army comparison is the parasitic nature of the woke ideology. There is no point at which the movement part of wokeism stalls and becomes an “institutionalized organization.” There is no end in sight until the host – western culture – dies. The only encouraging part about the parasitic relationship is the parasite dies with the host… which is guess is not super encouraging.

Wokeism must demand self-sacrifice because that is what pulls the self away from its individuality and in towards the collective cause. When we cease to be individuals – with all our individual flaws, talents, and experiences – we will cease to be a free society. We will just end up being a divided civilization, much like Europe in Hoffer’s time, with competing mass movements ready to destroy each other.

Thank you for reading, but due to the length of this piece, I need to split it into parts. The next part will be coming shortly. Also, I plan on releasing these in the Engineering Politics Locals Community a week or so before I republish them on Medium. This way the members of this community get to see it first. I really appreciate your support because this type of content takes some time and a lot of thought to produce. I will also do a podcast covering this material shortly after it is completed. Thanks again!