Many participants in Antifa function as what we might call “useful idiots.” This dynamic was studied decades ago by Eric Hoffer, an autodidact longshoreman who closely examined the psychology of mass movements. In 1951, Hoffer published The True Believer, an exploration of the types of individuals drawn to political and social movements—much like those we see active today. I have cited Hoffer’s work on this platform before (see A Fact-Proof Screen: Black Lives Matter and Hoffer’s True Believer). His insights have profoundly shaped my thinking. Readers should get this book and study it.
In The True Believer, Hoffer argues that people often join mass movements not because they deeply understand the ideology, but because they are dissatisfied with their lives, searching for identity, longing for belonging, and for meaning in their lives. Such individuals—“true believers”—are willing to give themselves over to collective causes, often with self-sacrifice and, sometimes, lethal zeal. In doing so, they become instruments of elites who channel their energy and conviction toward broader agendas. While Hoffer did not use the phrase “useful idiot,” the concept flows naturally from his analysis.
What makes Hoffer’s work powerful is that he avoids simplistic moral judgments. Instead, he identifies the psychological needs that make mass movements attractive, showing how alienated people who might otherwise feel lost may suddenly acquire purpose when absorbed into a collective struggle. Hoffer himself valued rational judgment and individuality, and his writing reflects a concern for those who surrender their individuality to the pull of group identity.
Applying Hoffer’s insights to the present, we can see how movements such as Antifa and the contemporary trans movement recruit individuals who are socially alienated and psychologically adrift. As I have explained on this platform, this and other irrationalities correlates with traits linked to cluster B personality and other psychiatric disorders, which helps explain why such individuals so readily become ardent foot soldiers for causes that disrupt social stability (see Never Again, and Yet Again: How Medicine Abandoned Science for Gender Ideology; Explaining the Rise in Mental Illness in the West; Transitioning Disordered Personalities into Valid Identities; RDS and the Demand for Affirmation; Living at the Borderline—You are Free to Repeat After Me; From Delusion to Illusion: Disordering Bodies for Disordered Minds; Is Pathological Demand Avoidance Real or Just Another Case of the Medicalization of Oppression?)
In this way, disordered and emotionally dysregulated individuals are mobilized in service of the managed decline of the American Republic—and, more broadly, the West. They despise America and the West precisely because they do not feel they belong, and they displace their feelings of isolation onto those they see as marginalizing them. Their rhetoric, supplied by elites and their functionaries—academics, pundits, and teachers—reflects this bitterness. Indeed, they are told they don’t belong and to lash out against those who mistreat them. The same people who tell them this also identify the source of their troubles: the Christian, the conservative, the white man. This is why you hear disordered personalities chanting postmodernist jargon within the familiar “oppressor–victim” framework. All this is fed by critical race theory, queer theory, and related critical theories. Academic gloss gives these ideologies the feel of legitimacy.
For this reason, Antifa and its Transtifa wing should be designated as domestic terrorist organizations. Such a step would allow investigations to uncover the networks of influence behind these movements, tracing connections between grassroots activists and the elite actors and institutions that shape and direct their energy. Once exposed, those actors must be held accountable and their organizations dismantled. Without such structures, the true believers who orbit them lose their organizing center and fall into disarray.
At the core of Hoffer’s argument lies the recognition that without a mass movement, many “true believers” are simply failed individuals—disconnected, dissatisfied, and without direction. Stripped of their cause, some may find their way into normal and productive lives, often with the help of therapy (though psychology itself must be reformed to eliminate ideological corruption). It is these manufactured movements that offer disordered people a sense of meaning, even when they cannot fully articulate the ideology they are defending. This dynamic explains the intensity with which they propagate beliefs—regardless of rational coherence—and helps us confront the enduring problem of the true believer.
The trans movement, in particular, is irrational on its face. Its central doctrine claims that gender is a spectrum and that an individual’s “gender identity” can diverge from biological sex. What little in this doctrine is not wholly irrational is contradicted by science. Yet the irrationality itself serves a rational purpose for elites, who deploy it to destabilize cultural norms and consolidate power. As Michael Parenti has observed, this is the “rational use of irrationalism”—a hallmark of authoritarian and fascist systems. (See Why the Woke Hate the West; The Terrorist Embodies the Ideology in Reality; Totalitarian Monopoly Capitalism: Fascism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.)
freedom and reason 