Comparing Hoffer's Non-Believer To The Non-Believer

Hoffer gives example of Hitler who was financed by wives of some of Germany’s great industrialist because they were simply bored. A movement will attract those who dislike having to be responsible for their lives. Young Nazis wished to free themselves from the burden of making decisions and slowly constructing an adult existence as their parents had done. Much more alluring were the simple promises of glory in the Third Reich. They were shocked when as losers of the war they were expected to feel responsibility for what had happened, because in their minds it was precisely responsibility that they had given up amid the order and pageantry of the new regime.
Hoffer then compare the non-believer and the true believer. To the non-believer, the …show more content…
He explains the choices to leave or to stay. Such kind of colonizer on one hand enjoys the privilege of his status and on the other hand feels sorry for the colonized. Memmi explains that such a colonizer “may openly protest, or sign a petition, or join a group which is not automatically hostile toward the colonized. This already suffices for him to recognize that he has simply changed difficulties and discomfort. It is not easy to escape mentally from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual relationships.” (Memmi 1991 p20) The colonizer is a prisoner to his cause. What he is actually renouncing is part of himself, and what he slowly becomes as soon as he accepts a life in a colony. He participates in and benefits from those privileges which he half-heartedly denounces. This kind of a colonizer lead a life of hypocrisy and is never at peace with himself or herself.
On the other hand, a colonizer who accepts travels “the whole length of the road leading from colonial to colonialist. A colonialist is, after all, only a colonizer who agrees to be