Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.

The line reframes “fair play” as an inward ethical discipline rather than an external demand for equitable treatment. Instead of measuring fairness by how others behave, it locates it in personal accountability: refusing to make scapegoats of people, institutions, or circumstances for one’s own defects, failures, or unhappiness. In Hoffer’s broader preoccupation with mass movements and resentment, the thought also implies that blaming others is a psychological shortcut that fuels grievance and self-deception. “Fair play,” here, becomes a check on victimhood narratives and a call to self-scrutiny—an insistence that moral balance begins with owning what is “wrong with us.”