Cult of Ayn Rand & the Worship of Fascist Supermen
Friday February 24, 2006
Objectivism and Libertarianism owe a great deal to the writings of Ayn Rand and both are typically associated with belief in expansive degrees of personal liberty. It is arguable, though, that Ayn Rand's writings exhibit a disturbing fascination of and interest in more fascist attitudes towards humanity and human social relations.
Johann Hari writes:
She explained her philosophy at first through pot-boilers like ‘The Fountainhead’. One of her heroes boasts that he is the polar opposite of Robin Hood: “He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. I’m the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich, or to be more exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.” If you want a sign of Rand’s quiet victory, close your eyes and realise this could be Dick Cheney in one of his more candid moments, explaining the logic behind his massive tax cuts for the wealthy.
Rand’s morality was a perfect fit for the age of the celebrity billionaire. She conjures a world where the CEO is Messiah, where the sign of the Cross is replaced with the sign of the dollar, and where hideous penis-proxies like Trump Towers are the pinnacle of human achievement. In her novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’, the world’s billionaires – the Ted Turners and Donald Trumps – go on strike in protest against the “insane regulations” and “exorbitant tax” handed down from Washington D.C. The country quickly regresses into anarchy, with businesses collapsing, food distribution networks falling apart, and America becoming a wasteland – until finally the grateful populace welcomes back their economic Overlords and promises to never again pester them with wild notions like taxation or regulation.
And:
Whittaker Chambers famously wrote in the National Review, “Just as her operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, so her ulcerous leftists are Nietzsche’s ‘last men’, both deformed in a way to sicken the fastidious recluse of Sils Marnia… [In her vision] resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and , in fact, reason itself enjoins them. From almost every page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding, “To a gas chamber – go!”” [...]
While Rand is (rightly) appalled when the state kills people, she considers businessmen taking risks with the lives of ordinary people or government bureaucrats to be actually heroic. In ‘Atlas Shrugged’, the heroic Nat Taggart “murdered a state legislator who attempted to revoke a charter granted to him” and (ho, ho) “he had no trouble with legislators from then on.” And that’s not all: “He threw down three flights of stairs a distinguished gentleman who offered him a loan from the government.” Anybody who tries to impose regulations to protect ordinary workers is “a louse”. This is partly because she really does seem to see the rich as more deserving of life than the poor. She refers to the rich as “really alive”, while ordinary people are described variously as “savages”, “refuse”, “inanimate objects”, “imitations of living beings”. Who cares if the Ubermenschen take risks with these creatures? Who needs regulation?
The Nazis found the dehumanizing Jews made it easier to kill them; dehumanizing others is often the first step in their elimination:
Indeed, her contempt for ordinary people extends so far that when a railway worker in ‘Atlas Shrugged’ decides to punish the wicked socialist government by making a train crash happen, Rand implies the passengers had it coming. She runs through the politics of the train crash victims, implying they were accessories to the socialist government that is being justly punished: “The man in Bedroom A, Car No One, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that everything is achieved collectively, that it’s the masses that count, not men… The woman in Roomette 10, Car No 3, was an elderly school teacher who who spent her life turning class after class of helpless schoolchildren into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil, that they must not assert their personalities, but do as others were doing.” And so endlessly on, through over a dozen deserving victims. “There was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas,” she notes – so let them burn.
Elizaberry writes:
[I]n the end what Ms. Rand describes are aliens. They are not honestly human. The "bad guys" are so relentlessly incompetent and wrong in every choice. The heroes, despite their insistent on the rational/objective/concrete, experience an almost psychic bond symptomized with heart palpitations, swooning, a reeling of the mind; very romantic, this idealist meets idealist. [...]
I'm afraid her recommendations of no government oversight work only with CHARACTERS, not people. She can recommend no governing body for these paperdolls because they are firmly in her control. She can suggest no laws regarding commerce, because as the author, SHE herself is the law guiding her heroes to ethical business transactions.
Perhaps Rand and her followers have never realized this because they don't realize that real people aren't characters — their ideas about human beings are more caricatures than real-life understandings about how real-life people work.
Read More:
Comments
What a shame that About.com’s ‘philosphy’ specialist(s) allow only a two sentence synopsis (one more critique than explanation)of Objectivism. Yet then put forth quotes and links to all sorts of negative commentary —commentary which is often just plain dishonest.
Whittaker Chambers’s big lie about her ideas being fascist simply demonstrated that he never even read her works. Yet Johanne Hari accepts it at face value and proceeds to further misrepresent her views even lying about events in her novels (no railway worker deliberately set out to cause the train crash in the tunnel) Chris Wolf has a personal, disturbed axe-to-grind, yet is listed as a source. Of course of the many good sources available out there, none are listed.
In short, About.com’s handling of Objectivism is disgusting, distorted and dishonest in the same degree as Anti-Semitic and White Power web sites.
This is an incredibly dishonest smear job.
It is full of blatant mis-statements and outright lies. I have read, for over 20 years, probably everything Ayn Rand ever published: I know her philosophy, fiction, and commentary very well.
Shame on you!
From RnBramwell >What a shame that About.com’s ‘philosphy’ specialist(s) allow only a two sentence synopsis (one more critique than explanation)of Objectivism. Yet then put forth quotes and links to all sorts of negative commentary —commentary which is often just plain dishonest.This is an incredibly dishonest smear job.
It is full of blatant mis-statements and outright lies.
I’ll try this again since it cut my last entry off.
RnBramwell and Chip Joyce, you do realize that through out this section there are numerous links to the Ayn Rand Institute’s web site, right? You must also realize that this would allow anyone interested in the views of Objectivists or fans of Ayn Rand to go and find what they really have to say on the subject, right? That being the case, how can you claim that Austin is operating a smear campaign against or being dishonest about Rand and Objectivism? If he is lying about it, one can easily find out the truth by clicking on almost any link here.
That being said, it seems to me that your comments here are not only irrational but also suggest a desperation on your part to stifle criticism of a cherished belief. In short, you come off looking more like the typical Christian apologist than one who may claim to hold reason, logic and truth in such high esteem, as most Objectivists would.
I am glad I finally got to read the review.It is so true!She did not [ and Peikoff does not]allow dissent:dissenters are immoral.She had a personality disorder she projected as the heroic man.See Walker’s”The Aun Raand Cult.”
Now, I see Atlas as a mystery novel without the selfishness.
I only have time for the most blatant lie here…
The train crash did not occur because “someone wanted to punish” the socialist government. It occurred because the socialist government refused to allow the railroad to have enough trains good enough to prevent the train crash, and a socialist government official insisted the train go forward anyway.
The only response I can give is to laugh, long and loud. I’m so tired of these people who try to critique Rand’s books (which they’ve obviously not read) and philosophy (which they’ve obviously not studied) by misrepresenting them as well as Rand herself. There is plenty of room for rational debate concerning Rand, her writings, and Objectivism, so why sink to such a low form of attack? Basic insecurity?
Interesting, have you actually read Ayn Rand? There are good arguments to be made against Rand, but these aren’t them. Elizaberry’s quote is valid, Rand’s antagonists are often exaggeratedly inept, but some argue that was done intentionally in order to extend arguments of socialists to conclusions she considered illogical. Rand does not have a problem with dissent, only dissent that involves telling others what to do.
Rand herself has admitted that her fiction is largely a depiction of her idealized versions of heroes (laissez-faire business successes), and it stands to reason that her villains are somewhat one dimensional also. I haven’t quite made the “fascist” connection, myself, but I’m not always the brightest candle on the cake.
Look at today’s government for an example of creeping Fascism. The government taking control of banks and the automobile industry, while leaving token ownership in private hands. We are seeing fascism grow before our eyes – with Obama as the Fascist Superman, and I am sure Ms. Rand would not have approved.
Ineresting interp. The characters are like Supermen. Larger than life. I was a devoted fan and member of her club. I got all her letters fortnightly for years, all through college. I read Atlas six times and had her quotations on my wall. Then I found out she was an atheist. I freaked but made excuses for her enen so. Reality check: Wall street corporate capitalists are not supermen. They are greedy bastards who’ve destroyed our economy anbd taken our jobs to China. Wake-up people! They are worse than the measly regulators who have not even managed to regulate them in the slightest. We need to rise up against them before all our freedoms are completely gone.
What specifically is the evidence for “disturbing fascination of and interest in more fascist attitudes towards humanity and human social relations”?
What is wrong with a legend of “a man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich”? The it is explicit that it’s the THIEVING poor who stole from the PRODUCTIVE rich. That is justice: it is returning stolen property.
There is zero evidence any critic here actually read Ayn Rand. Quoting the most hostile review ever of Ayn Rand’s–written by a person who literally admitted to not reading Atlas Shrugged–is irresponsible at best.
Elizaberry just makes arbitrary assertions.
In the end this is a pathetic website.
That’s in the material I quoted.
And what specifically is the evidence for this?
Intellectually Dishonest
Ayn Rand is such a person as her book describes. I’ve met and live amongst these people who you claim do not exist. But I can’t reason a man out of a position he hasn’t reasoned himself into.
Roark: your comment is incoherent and does not appear related to anything anyone else has said.
You wouldn’t be libertarian or objectivist, would you? That would be consistent…
So if you admit that Ayn Rand was an athiest isn’t that at least one strike against atheism?
The organized church has done horrible things but Jesus never did any of the horrible things. So I don’t see why he is resented by athiests.
No, because nothing she did was in the name of atheism.
Feel free to point to any atheists who resent Jesus. And feel free to explain why you think Ayn Rand is equivalent to Jesus for atheists.
What specifically is the evidence for “disturbing fascination of and interest in more fascist attitudes towards humanity and human social relations”?
That’s in the material I quoted.
Yes, in material by people who’ve obviously never read Rand’s books or studied her philosophy. You won’t find any “fascist attitudes” in Rand’s writings.
In the end this is a pathetic website.
And what specifically is the evidence for this?
The evidence is the material you quote, as has been clearly explained.
The quoted material above describes exactly the attitudes and statements in question. You’re welcome to address them directly, if you can.
You mean, the material you can’t or won’t address directly but which you insist must be al wrong? Right, very pathetic.
Good summing up of this bitter old loony – tune, the web, specifically Youtube is crawling with Randroids these days.
You should have seen the hullabaloo that was raised when old thunderf00t suggested that people were better off being cooperative and that government – operated traffic lights were a good thing.