Eric Hoffer regards all mass movements as characterized not by their doctrines but by the fanaticism with which their adherents—the “true believers”—embrace both united action and self-sacrifice. He explains that this book deals with the “active, revivalist phase,” when the frustrated fanatic drives the movement (xii).

Mass movements attract people who crave immediate and dramatic change. These tend to be deeply frustrated people who are not so destitute as to think themselves weak and incapable of exercising power, nor so brutalized as to be without hope. In fact, they must have a blind faith in the future.

Mass movements offer the frustrated a holy cause as a substitute for their purposeless lives. The frustrated “crave to be rid of an unwanted self” and thus develop a “passion for self-renunciation” (12). They become fanatical about selflessness.