How do we explain the phenomenon of millions of people willingly supporting as their head of state a person clearly unfit for leadership on a national scale?
This question has baffled many who cannot understand why or how people would throw their support behind someone who is a liar, misogynist, racist, sexist, or possesses other anti-social traits. Quite a few countries around the world, some of them prominent in global affairs, are presently under the spell of rough-talking charlatans who have seemingly bewitched a great number of people into voting them into power and are now sowing dismay, destabilization, and even death among their people.
Yet they still have their fanatical supporters, some of whom are social media influencers or government officials whose numerous followers hang on their every word as if it were gospel, even if proven to be exaggerated, misleading, or fake news.
Connected to this circumstance is the spike in sales of certain books. Lately, the Amazon sales of George Orwell’s 1984 reached the top position, while also soaring to the top of the charts are Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
The resurgence in interest in these modern classics have been ascribed to the Trump Bump, as people seeking to understand the new president who presents a 180-degree contrast to the highly literate Barack Obama. What these books have in common is that they deal with fictional dystopias, dysfunctional governments, and fanatical followers. People read them looking for answers on how to face the new situations challenging their way of life and, in the case of the Philippines, their very existence (anyone can get mistaken for a drug user or pusher and summarily executed).
Another quiet but enduring classic may have the answers.
Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer is a non-fiction work published in 1951, after the ravages of two world wars waged by tyrants and autocrats. The book deals with the dynamics of mass movements and what drives the minds of fanatics.
Mass movements, says Hoffer, begin with a desire for change by the “frustrated” who “predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements,” joining them of their own accord because they have lost confidence in existing societal structures and culture.
While a charismatic leader certainly helps foster the growth of a mass movement, for that leader to be successful the seeds of discontent must already be planted in the hearts of a people.
The potential converts to mass movements, says Hoffer, are often the “new poor.” They are those “whose poverty is relatively recent…who throb with the ferment of frustration. The memory of better things is as fire in their veins.”
This brings to mind the predominantly white supporters of Trump who long for a return to what Trump called “the old days,” when someone with only a high school degree could attain the American Dream while working on a manufacturing line, and who cannot accept that the world has drastically changed since then.
Also likely to be full of frustration are “the inordinately selfish”. As Hoffer observes, “The fiercest fanatics are often selfish people who were forced, by innate shortcomings or external circumstances, to lose faith in their own selves.”
To cope with their low self-esteem, the selfish attach themselves to the service of a cause they deem worthy. “And though it be a faith of love and humility they adopt, they can be neither loving nor humble.” This sounds terribly like some popular Filipino influencers who allow bullying on their cyberpulpits.
Hoffer adds that mass movements aggressively promote the use of doctrines that elevate faith over reason and serve as “fact-proof screens between the faithful and the realities of the world.” This sounds very much like “alternative facts” and the ill-considered Philippine drug war recently criticized by former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria, who implemented a similar action only to realize it was a mistake.
There are good and bad mass movements, and the duration of a movement’s active phase depends on whether or not there is a “concrete, limited objective”—“there is a natural point of termination once the struggle with the enemy is over or the process of reorganization is nearing completion.” This sort of “useful” mass movement shakes up moribund and decaying structures to bring about renascence and renovation, as in the case of Japan after World War II.
However, when there is no firm objective, Hoffer says “the active phase is without an automatic end.” Examples of such an amorphous goal would be establishing a certain religion above others, as the ISIL caliphate seeks to impose Islam or the Trump supporters’ desire for the country to “return to Christian values,’ threatening the separation of church and state.
In the cases of Trump’s America and Duterte’s Philippines, have specific objectives and limits been set? Or are nebulous generalities for a brighter future for a select group of people being bandied about?
If the latter, then we the people and the world might have to endure this frightening dystopic reality for longer than is good for us. And this prospect is extremely frustrating.
Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @jensdecember