The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements is a 1951 social psychology book by American writer Eric Hoffer that discusses the psychological causes of fanaticism.
The book analyzes and attempts to explain the motives of the various types of personalities that give rise to mass movements; why and how mass movements start, progress and end; and the similarities between them, whether religious, political, radical or reactionary. Hoffer argues that even when their stated goals or values differ mass movements are interchangeable, that adherents will often flip from one movement to another, and that the motivations for mass movements are interchangeable. Thus, religious, nationalist and social movements, whether radical or reactionary, tend to attract the same type of followers, behave in the same way and use the same tactics and rhetorical tools. As examples, the book often refers to Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, Christianity, Protestantism, and Islam.
The tricky thing about beliefs is that they are so often instrumental to authoritarian uses. Altermeyer's _The Authoritarians_[0] documents some of the mentalities that take hold - although it's primarily focused on the "right wing" of authoritarianism, it also describes how a "left wing authoritarian" also exists but is less prevalent.
For my part, I've realized that at any moment of my life I will have some limited view of the world as a belief structure. I can intentionally cultivate beliefs that seem more logical(e.g. by writing down and rehearsing proverbs) but this ultimately just moves around the lens with which I view things; it doesn't "progress" my thinking to a higher state, because there isn't one. The worst thing that could happen is not believing "wrong things," but getting stuck in a state in which I can't move around my lens any more. If my lens is not moving, then it's like I am no longer politically alive, I am a rock that someone else throws.
She seems to be mixing apples and oranges. She talks about occupying classrooms and being in militant demonstrations and says she's now all grown up and doesn't do that now. This is very normal - young people are impatient, passionate, tempestuous, etc. Older organizers generally are not doing that stuff as much.
Then she associates this with changes in political positions. This is something else, it may be connected for people like her, but not others. There are plenty of people in their fifties with "radical" positions who are writing essays, organizing voter drives, walking picket lines, volunteering at a community radio station and so forth. They are in it for the long haul, and usually getting more done. Going to a demonstration and yelling at a cop might give someone an adrenaline rush. However, long-term efforts to work with others on seemingly minor changes to attain a broader goal is usually what gets more done.
She seems to think there is some connection between wanting the NDP elected, or for US cabinet officials to not be former Wall Street CEOs, to young people ranting and raving in the street. There isn't. She has little to say about the left - she was not part of it, then she became a Fox News caricature of what an organizer is (scratch that, she probably thought of herself as an "activist", not an organizer), then is unhappy and renounces it all. She was never really on the left at all. They're really scraping the bottom of the barrel for this "God that failed" stuff nowadays. "I was a teenage agitator"
Sure, "people in their fifties" (and of all other ages) are doing a variety of things to promote social justice. But I don't think it is helpful to put down Aurora's effort -- including yelling at the police at protests. Besides, "getting things done" is not always an innocent or simple approach. And having nuanced views does (slowly) shape the world.
I don't think she intends to give up and renounce it all (in fact it sounds like she's looking for new spaces to take action. She (quite candidly) relates her struggle mixing maturing political views with the clichey activist scene in Montreal -- which as she correctly points out (I too live in Montreal) is like any subculture, ripe with dogmatism.
Just because she doesn't fall into your category of left doesn't mean she isn't a part of it. That is the very problem.
Did we read the same article? She's not condemning all left-wing activism. From the article:
> My current political worldview falls under the umbrella of leftism [...] What I feel compelled to criticize is only one very specific political phenomenon, one particular incarnation of radical leftist, anti-oppressive politics.
Furthermore she points to concrete political action as the way out. Again, from the article:
> Treat the pursuit of the best kind of society as an engineering problem. Think about specific, concrete proposals. Would they actually work?
BTW, I'm very familiar with the kind of cultish activism that can consume the lives of young people -- indeed from her description, it seems to have hardly changed since I was a student in Montreal. McGill is perhaps at an unusual nexus, because many students there are from comfortable backgrounds in English Canada, but are suddenly ensconced in a province with a different activist tradition, that's far more left-wing.
The book analyzes and attempts to explain the motives of the various types of personalities that give rise to mass movements; why and how mass movements start, progress and end; and the similarities between them, whether religious, political, radical or reactionary. Hoffer argues that even when their stated goals or values differ mass movements are interchangeable, that adherents will often flip from one movement to another, and that the motivations for mass movements are interchangeable. Thus, religious, nationalist and social movements, whether radical or reactionary, tend to attract the same type of followers, behave in the same way and use the same tactics and rhetorical tools. As examples, the book often refers to Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, Christianity, Protestantism, and Islam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer