Portrait of a Fanatic[1] There are two distinct types of anarchists: Fanatics and Idealists. The Fanatic may or may not consider himself an anarchist; he easily lies to himself and can change his political stripes with as little effort as a chameleon changes colors. Of course, a chameleon remains a chameleon no matter its pigmentation, and so too does the aim and end of the fanatic remain constant no matter his stripes. In contrast to the idealist who is perpetually creating, the fanatic is perpetually destroying and seeks above all else to eradicate the present. [2] Who is the fanatic? There is a chilling passage in Plato's Republic in which Socrates, having distinguished the philosophical soul from all others and having theorized on its proper education, observes, If the nature we set down for the philosopher chances on a suitable course of learning, it will necessarily grow and come to every kind of virtue; but if it isn’t sown, planted, and nourished in what’s suitable, it will come to all the opposite, unless one of the gods chances to assist it.1 [3] We see in the fanatic the terrible portrait of a potentially great soul gone awry. As Eric Hoffer tells us, The man who wants to write a great book, paint a great painting, create an architectural masterpiece, become a great scientist, and knows that never in all eternity will he be able to realize this, his innermost desire, can find no peace in a stable social order—old or new. He sees his life as irrevocably spoiled and the world perpetually out of joint. He feels at home only in a state of chaos. ... Only when engaged in change does he have a sense of freedom and the feeling that he is growing and developing. It is because he can never be reconciled with his self that he fears finality and a fixed order of things. Marat, Robespierre, Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler are outstanding examples of fanatics.2 [4] Whereas the idealist is a person with one foot in our world and one foot in the ether, the fanatic has nothing invested in the earthly life that has so terribly let him down. He lives only for the world of abstractions where he does not belong: By destroying the present he hopes to transform the earth into the ether and to at long last claim mastery over the ethereal. [5] He is, of course, condemned to failure. The cruel curse of the fanatic is that he is just gifted enough to realize how truly mediocre he is. His only talent is to destroy. This is why the fanatic can find no peace in the present: Whatever he creates in the ashes of his anarchy is worthy only of further destruction.
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