I read the excerpt.
"Hoffer's experiences at this historical fulcrum provided the basis for his seminal work The True Believer, published in 1951. "A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises," he wrote, "but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence." The true believer was at his core an ineffectual man with no capacity for self-fulfillment. Only the drama provided by a mass movement gave him purpose. "Faith in a holy cause," Hoffer wrote, "is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves."
I couldn't have said it better myself!