Mass movements recruit interchangeably across causes, because what the convert seeks is the surrender of self rather than the specific doctrine.
Hoffer's 1951 argument, written by a longshoreman without academic training. Its striking claim is interchangeability: converts move between movements more readily than they move to indifference.
In practice
- A recruit who has just left one demanding movement is the easiest person in the room for the next one to sign.
- A person who leaves one absolutist commitment often arrives at another within a year, and describes the second as the correction of the first.
- Standing
- Distinct from Hoffer's Law, which concerns imitation.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change