The cult of Ayn Rand; and the worship of Narcissistic Populism — Editorial
3rd Edition — updated 28/12/23
Ayn Rand is an extremely popular and influential character, she vocally stood up to the Soviet Union after immigrating to America. She became the poster girl of a particularly hardcore brand of free-market fundamentalism (we’ll explore what this means later ) — a best selling novelist and the advocate of a philosophy she called “the virtue of selfishness”. According to the BBC, “In the 1990s, a survey by the Library of Congress named [Ayn Rand’s novel] ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as the most influential book in the U.S. after the Bible” despite she herself advocating for atheism. Trump and Greenspan among others, hail Rand as their favourite author, or even their mentor. It’s entrenched in society as a cultural icon, and is even taught as part of A-Level politics in the UK.
But who was she? What did she advocate for? Who were her influences? And why has she become so popular within political circles? This work aims to explore these questions. If you aren’t as familiar with her work as Trump or Greenspan are, then the following will contain plot lines from her most famous novels, starting around halfway through this piece.
Originally named Alisa Rosenbaum, Ayn Rand was 12 when she witnessed the Bolsheviks seizing her father’s pharmacy in St. Petersburg, Russia. This; she claimed, lead to her detestation of communism, and advocacy for ideas of minimal governance and regulation. She considered successful independent businessmen, like her father, or the CEO’s of companies, to be the epitome of what a human in today’s society, can achieve. Yet, this allowed her to realize that in an instant it can all be destroyed by state interference, as it did in the case of her father. Which inspired her 1966 book ‘Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal’, where she stated:
Collectivism is the tribal premise of primordial savages who, unable to conceive of individual rights, believed that the tribe is a supreme, omnipotent ruler, that it owns the lives of its members and may sacrifice them whenever it pleases.
She then moved to America in 1926, where she worked in Hollywood, earning money whilst writing four novels. The first two, were initially considered failures. However, ‘We the living’ (1936 and re-released in 1959) and ‘Anthem’ (1938 and re-released in 1946) eventually found success, after the acclaimed and popular novels ‘The Fountainhead’ (1943) and ‘Atlas Shrugged’ (1957).
By this time she had become an established screen writer in Hollywood; allowing her to testify against ‘Communist Activities in Hollywood’ before the ‘House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)’ in 1947.
She was allowed to testify as a “friendly witness”; in what has since been described as a public and televised witch hunt that lead to systematic and constructive blacklisting of several Hollywood artists. She then started writing and publishing 10 ‘self-proclaimed’ philosophical works; from 1961 to 1991; which she said were the basis for the narratives in her Novels, so lets explore how much they had to do with philosophy first.
Let’s start with Objectivism; the title of her self proclaimed philosophy, which is distilled by her as the belief that:
“man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself”
Essentially, the objective of Objectivism is the pursuit of individual happiness/pleasure at no cost to yourself or others.
Epicurus (341BC), the ancient Greek philosopher said something pretty similar. All Epicureans, fundamentally agree that pleasure and pain are the sole forces that set being in motion can be used to produce any kind of action. Both Rand and Epicurus agree that morality for each individual must be the art of procuring for oneself the greatest amount of personal pleasure. And Like Rand, Epicurus also didn’t believe in God.
However, where Rand and Epicurus differ, are in their views surrounding morality. Epicurus argues that any individuals happiness is dependent on the happiness of the society around them; so all of society must more or less collaborate in it, from the small society that surrounds me; my family and friends, to the great society in which I live. My pleasure, in order to lose nothing of its intensity, must maintain all of this as its extension.
Which is why Evolutionist morality, considered a development of Epicureanism, is also its best criticism. It demonstrates the insufficiency of the principle of pure individual egoism, an insufficiency that already appears in Epicurus and the Roman Epicureans.
Which is why Stoicism, became the popular philosophy across Greece and Rome. And whilst enjoying some popularity with the establishment of several Epicurean collectivist communes, it was extremely short lived and the Atheist communes that survived, eventually ended up merging with Stoic philosophy, before eventually becoming Christian Monasteries; where egoism and worship of the self, were stamped out completely with the goal of making it’s residents become more ‘stoic’, ‘sacrificially selfless’ and ‘Christlike’.
This is where this philosophy differs more from Rand’s. Rand perceived morality and altruism as extremely self destructive. Where as both of these philosophies realised the importance of morlaity and altruism by extention. Rand left no room for it.
“From her start, America was torn by the clash of her political system with the altruist morality. Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth — or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.” — Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
Like Epicurus, Rand’s philosophy is also dependent on egotistic individualism; but unlike Rand; Epicurus recognized the importance of the collective; and that the individual is dependant on the collective. Rand however believed that this should be flipped on it’s head; it is actually the collective society that is dependent on an individual, or the individuals. This is a narrative that we see throughout all of her Novels. Even the title of her best selling Novel; ‘Atlas Shrugged’ refers to the Ancient Greek god Atlas, who carries the world on their shoulders, symbolizing her idea that society is held up and dependent on Egotistic Individuals, holding it up.
Objectivism also makes the claim that reality exists completely independently of consciousness, and you can obtain objective knowledge from reality by perceiving it with your senses. Objective vs. Subjective knowledge is a philosophical school of thought in itself; that has culminated in Empirical vs. Theoretical science; both overlap and in essence are dependent on each other. However Rand argues that human perception is objective, rather than subjective in nature.
Which is probably why she was at great odds with an actual philosopher from 1724, but by no means the last Bavarian philosopher in this piece; Kant.
Kant claimed that the entirety of the human experience of reality is subjective, therefore humans will at least have great difficulty in manifesting an objective perception of reality. He used the analogy of Rose Tinted Glasses, essentially stating that human perception is limited by the faculties it uses to perceive it.
A modern example would be, that our eyes and ears are only capable of perceiving/seeing/hearing a fraction of the spectrum of color and sound wavelengths, however when we’re presented with the ones’ we’re unable to perceive, we are unable to sense them at all without other external tools of perception.
Without these, even when reality completely drowns us in these wavelengths (even the radioactive ones), without external help we’re practically unable to perceive this reality at all, unless it makes us sick as radiation can. As Kant said; we view the world through our own rose colored glasses, or colored irises. He also argues that this also extends to all of our other faculties, such as thought, and what knowledge you are conscious of, you can only think about the tiny fraction of reality that you’re capable of perceiving.
However; in the Objectivitist movement, Rand argues, that there is no distinction between appearances or perceptions, and it is possible for human beings to gain a perfect objective perspective on reality. Even if you can’t see it or hear it happening, you can still gain a perspective on it like we have.
What does Objective/Empirical science say? Well apart from the wavelength discoveries; psychology and psychiatry have also provided an Empirical and evidently backed theoretical scientific standpoint, Kant was correct.
Psychology and psychiatry have proven beyond almost any doubt that the reality perceived by every man’s mind is a distortion at best, and a complete illusion (sometimes delusion) at worst, much like a lot of Rand’s fictional works.
Rand presents her perception on how she feels and wants (subjectively through the medium of fiction) these rugged individuals who carry the world on their shoulders to fit into current society, through her fictional Novels. And we’ll explore what she thinks happens when Atlas decides to shrug.
Her works have become so popular, that you could even argue that her work has become the populist perception of how our current society should function.
A society run by success-driven ‘Atlas’ like individuals, that are burdened with pushing the world forward, whilst being held back by the stagnating, conformist, socially cohesive society. Rugged individualist supermen? If you’ve studied philosophy this should sound familiar.
The whole of Rand’s philosophy could be described as Nietzschean (1844–1900). Her idea of the übermensch, or supermen as she puts it, goes right along with the rugged individualistic, and nationalistic, fascist thinking of the 1920s and 1930s. The idea of the Übermensch, is a Nietzschian ideal representing a shift from otherworldly Christian values and manifests the grounded human ideal. The Übermensch is someone who has “crossed over” the bridge from the comfortable “house on the lake” to the mountains of unrest and solitude.
It’s no secret that the Nazi’s misappropriated Nietzsche. A racial version of Nietzsche’s Übermensch became a philosophical foundation for Nazi ideas.
The Nazi notion of the master race also spawned the idea of “inferior humans” (Untermenschen) who should be dominated and enslaved; this term does not originate with Nietzsche, who was critical of both antisemitism and German nationalism. However, the Nietzschean ideals of anti-egalitarianism, Supermen and the will to power, do feature prominently in all three ideological frameworks.
But; like both Neitzsche and the Nazi’s, Rand too advocates for augmenting a philosophy of rugged, uncompromising individualism — in her case, it was contempt for both the state and the lazy, conformist, over politicized world of the regulated democratic state, and it’s corporate boardroom, this was holding back her Ubermenchen, rather than a belief in God (Nietzsche) or Semitism (Nazi’s).
How the nazis hijacked Nietzsche, and how it can happen to anybody — Big Think
Like the Nazi’s, Rand embodied Nietzschen Ubermench characters in her fictional books, people like John Galt, Howard Roarke and Nat Taggart. But how deep did this connection go?
It’s been argued that Rand, changed her name from Alisa Zynoviyivna Rozenbaum to Alice O’Connor to sound more Aryan/less Semitic, and that maybe even her pen name, Ayn Rand, was her attempt to identify with popular American white ‘supremacism’. This wouldn’t have been surprising in 30’s, 40’s and 50’s Segregationist and Anti-Semetic America.
Gregory Hood, “A Sense of Life: Ayn Rand and White Nationalism” | Counter-Currents
On a practical level, the main difference between Rands beliefs and Nazi ideology; is that the Nazis sought to expand the state and their weird version of socialism by name and nationalization.
Rand on the other hand advocated for the elimination of the state and even democratic processes, which she believed would empower her ‘Atlas men’ to create a country of “makers” and, not “moochers”.
She conjures a world where the CEO is the Messiah or King of Kings, the sign of the cross is replaced with the sign of the dollar, and where penis-proxy shrines are erected to be worshiped as the pinnacle of human achievement.
She suggests that her corporate messiah CEOs’ benevolence and intellect would prevent human atrocities. Suggesting, that perhaps these only happen because of overburdening state bureaucracy, social conditioning, and not for individual objectively selfish reasons. The objective is the happiness of the individual at no cost to themselves or others.
Maybe, the German National Socialist party rule failed and fell apart in its objectives; because of its overbearing government nationalization, and its socialist policies.
Maybe, having a crazy, deified, ubermench obsessed, anti-Semitic leader, hell-bent on invading Russia, whilst he was in the middle of invading Europe, had nothing to do with it… This would be the objectivist explanation for what happened.
I mean, what are economic scientists talking about when they say that both the nationalization of private property combined with queer socialist political policy, turned the practically third world, bankrupt and indebted Weimar Republic, into one of the most productive economic powerhouses in the world, within a decade.
https://mises.org/library/why-nazism-was-socialism-and-why-socialism-totalitarian
https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-nazism-and-vs-socialism/
Despite this, her fictional works are very romantic, very entertaining, thought-provoking and her characters can be absolutely charming (apart from the rape, we’ll get to that soon).
Undeniably, just like Epicurus, Neitsche and the Nazi’s, her works became extremely popular and left lots of people fawning and wanting. Which is why Rand then when on to write her philosophical works.
Which as we’ve just discussed, are philosophical idea’s that in some cases have already existed for centuries or even millennia, but are presented by her in a watered down, more amoral, more reductionist fashion.
In my opinion, her ‘philosophical works’ embody the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Dunning-Krugger, essentially describes how a person who knows less about a subject overestimates their own abilities in their understanding of it.
In fact, you could argue that empowering dunning-Kruger is supported by her own philosophy:
On a website dedicated to her: — [https://aynrand.org/.../introduction-to-objectivist.../]
“In Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand offers a new account of objectivity: knowledge does not consist in passively reflecting or copying the facts of reality but in actively processing and identifying them.”
This quote taken directly from her website essentially means, that even if you haven’t reflected, explored or studied facts entrenched in reality, you can present/embody the identity of one, so as you can actively rationalize and project their identity.
Actively processing a reality, in ignorance of objective facts, is fundamentally subjective, and exactly what Kant was talking about. Your projection of the identity of an expert will be limited by your own inexperience of that expertise.
Why do you think Trump was confidently adamant in his projection of being an expert on treating Covid?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dunning-kruger-effect
Let’s take a break from philosophy, politics and psychology for just a second; and before getting to the main event of her novels, let’s explore what influenced her writing. So, what, and who; was Ayn Rand for and against?
And apart from the people we’ve already discussed, who else was an integral inspiration to Ayn Rand?
As I mentioned at the beginning, Rand was an obsessive cinemagoer, she fled to the US in 1926, swiftly making her way to Hollywood. She paid her way through a series of odd jobs, including a stint in the costume department of RKO Pictures, and landed a role as an extra in Cecil B DeMille’s The King of Kings.
Writing was her passion. Broadway plays and movie scripts followed until the breakthrough came with her third novel: The Fountainhead.
Whilst developing the superhero of this novel, Howard Roark. Ayn Rand became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, kidnapping, ransom demands, and then sadistic dismemberment, prior to picking up the ransom money (literally the stuff of horror movies, think Saw but a lot worse) of a 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927, shocked the nation.
Grotesquely, Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman.
https://www.alternet.org/2015/01/how-ayn-rand-became-big-admirer-serial-killer/
Long story short, Hickman agreed to return Marion Parker alive, to her rich father by letter (Perry Parker). A ransom sum was negotiated to be collected.
12 hours before he was due to collect the ransom, he murdered and dismembered Marion Parker. This didn’t stop him from driving to collect the ransom; whilst discarding her limbs around L.A. He kept her head and torso, in the back seat, had her eyelids, stitched or glued open, in a way to make her appear alive. Giving her father enough confidence to allow Hickman to collect the ransom money. Before driving off and then throwing out what remained of Marion’s body from his car in full view of her father. I struggled to write this, let alone comprehend it actually happened.
Murder of Marion Parker — Wikipedia
According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten by Hickman that she modeled, not only Roark, but her first literary creation — Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street — on him.
Hero or Monster: Ayn Rand and William Hickman (dailykos.com)
What did Rand admire so much about the dismembering, violence fetishising child murderer Hickman to inspire several of her characters after him?
Rand writes “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.”
Echoing word for word Rand’s description of character Howard Roark, the main charecter of the Fountainhead: “He was born without the ability to consider others.” Now, we finally explore her two best selling Novels.
Howard Roark is the Protagonist of the Fountainhead. He’s presented as someone fiercely independent, uncompromising yet ethical, unafraid of rejection, and a symbol of Objectivism that loves architecture. Did I mention that he is also fiercely independent and devoted to ‘breaking the mold’ of traditional architectural techniques, and classical designs? Architecture and modernizing buildings away from classical styles is his lifes ambition, think Zaha Hadid.
In the book this unwillingness to conform, ultimately leads to his rejection and alienation from architectural academia; which he’s able to overcome, and still become recognized as the best architect to have ever lived.
However his uncompromising love for his work is the narrative the book centers around. He inspires two other characters Dominique Francon and Peter Keating; to live more authentically. The later begs him to design a building for him; and Roark agrees to do so on the condition that he does not alter the design that he gives him, and he will refuse all affiliation and remuneration for the building design, on that sole condition out of his passion for his Architecture.
“…But you see, I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards — and I set my own standards… If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.”
Keaton, despite eventually backing Roark in the end, is presented as sort of an antagonist in the book; in a similar vein to how Nietzsche describes undermenchen (the opposite to Ubermenchen).
He is a true second-hander. All of his values are held second-hand, stolen and borrowed to fit into society. According to Rand, he derives his sense of value exclusively from his perception of how others perceive him. Despite this he recognizes Roark’s talent and then goes to him advice on architecture over the dean of his university, because he’s a parasite, dependent on the whims of others, he doesn’t want Roarks help to make something independently beautiful like Roark does, he wants Roarks help because Roarks work is what society has deemed to be in fashion.
He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion — prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: ‘This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me’. Then he wonders why he’s unhappy.”
However Keaton was unable to keep up his side of the bargain, and he allowed a committee to make changes to the design and also share in the credit whilst Roark was taking the first holiday he had ever been on.
This clearly made Roark quite angry, as he then proceeds to blow up the building under construction but nobody is killed or injured in the attack.
Keaton and other human “undermenchen” or “parasites” as Rand likes to call them, were detestable, and she strongly believed in creating conditions that increase the productivity of her supermen — the Roarks and William Hickmans, who rule her idealized America. An America where only amoral ubermenchen are capable of becoming leaders.
This is exemplified in Roarks speech as he is put on criminal trial infront of a jury.
“Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways — by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.
“The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.
“The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.
“The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.“The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism.
“No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind’s moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.
After saying this the Jury finds him not Guilty of criminal damage. Which as someone who’s been to law school, I find pretty unbelievable. I’m not saying that juries don’t do this. But like it’s sooo rare and it doesn’t even happen in all cases where a parent kills a pedophile that was abusing their children, like Perry Parker, Marions father might have wanted to do to Hickman.
But I digress, amorality was what allowed Hickman and by extension Roark to commit acts of what could be described as terrorism. ‘Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims.’
Terrorism — Wikipedia
In the book, Roarks entire premise of Selfish Pursuit of Happiness, was his love of architecture, but how easy is this to determine in the life of a non-fictional character?
From an empirical and scientific standpoint. We can’t even determine where the end of pi or a recurrent decimal is.
How can one assume that we can even attempt to determine the core things that can make one perceive pleasure or joy?
Even from a quantum perspective, what we can determine is that sub-atomic particles act in a non-deterministic way, such as they might even know that we’re watching them.
The ‘pursuit of joy’ has an infinite number of possibilities that it is impossible to determine what will actually provide you joy.
This is intrinsic to the notion that people who achieve the goal, that they perceived would bring them happiness, then claim it was the pursuit of that goal that made them happier than the aftermath of achieving it. Ultimately, what if making other people happy is the thing that makes you the happiest?
And what about Hickman, where did he derive the joy that Rand refers too from? Sadism?
Why our pursuit of happiness may be flawed — BBC Future
Granted, there are a few carnal ubiquitous desires, but even these support this claim. After orgasm (if you’re lucky enough to have one during coitus), how many have a crisis of resentment?
Shame After Orgasm: You’re Not Alone & What To Do (thebody.com)
Sometimes, it can be there until your libido creeps up again, and the fun of pursuit masks the memory of the potential disappointment you’ve felt before.
And isn’t the best most rewarding/fulfilling sex you can ever have, is when there’s a mutual exchange of pleasure?
Doesn’t that in itself highlight an intrinsic notion that there is a higher purpose other than bodily self-satisfaction. But rather more a mutually beneficial relationship, biologically hardwired or not.
In addition to this, the whole premise of amorality, especially in her philosophical work, reads like an apologia for narcissistic psychopathy/sociopathy, for someone like Hickman.
Rand’s views on Altruism — Ayn Rand Lexicon (aynrandlexicon.com)
It almost ignores and is desperate to deflect away from the discussion surrounding the extremely basic and historically evident fact that practically all of humanities greatest achievements and advancements have been wrought on the sharing of ideas, ideals and pleasures.
Every scientific discovery, every book that has ever been written, every inspiration ever made, stands on top of the shared body of wisdom and knowledge that came before it.
Your favourite books couldn’t have been written without the collectives of people that invented/developed the language that it was written in. The vaccines and medicines that keep you alive, couldn’t have developed without the review from a collective scientific peers, that can literally span across millennia involving dozens to thousands of inputs from different minds.
Most inspirations come from and are supported by the people closest to you, your parents, teachers, friends. The reality is most, if not all of what makes up you is second hand. Even the way you express originality, was inspired by external events, experiences and the people in them.
Rand’s philosophy can be summed up by the title of one of her best-known books: The Virtue of Selfishness. She argues that all selfishness is a moral good, and all altruism is a moral evil, even “moral cannibalism,” to use her words. To her, those who aren’t like-minded are “parasites,” “lice” and “looters.” They deserve to be raped, killed or exploited.
Rape is a recurring theme in Rands books; In The Fountainhead, Roark rapes Dominique, a journalist. Rand did later justify herself against criticism by saying it was, “rape by engraved invitation.” But her notes from the writing of the novel show that this was not what she meant when writing it.
Dominique is portrayed as having an attraction to Roark but is prevented from pursuing her attraction due to his lack of success and exclusion from society. In the book Dominique is also an independent thinker and eventually recognises that humanity is dependent on free thinkers like Roark, and eventually marries him after getting divorced from Keaton.
Roark like Hickman, had “a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that he was unique and deserving of special treatment”. These are characteristic’s seen with people diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. [https://thenarcissisticlife.com/the-narcissists-charm/].
“For the narcissist, sexual abuse is used to control behaviour, elevate their feelings of superiority, re-enact their fantasies (not yours), and paralyze you.” [https://psychcentral.com/pro/exhausted-woman/2015/06/the-stages-of-narcissistic-sexual-abuse#1].
Then, in her play Night of January 16th, Bjorn Faulkner rapes Karen Andre.
In Atlas Shrugged; Rand writes that “a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.” So according to Rand, if you value yourself, you should take sex from others for the sake of valuing yourself.
Yes, Ayn Rand probably had some real emotional hang-ups and if you are interested in them, read Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.
As demonstrated in her writings, sex can be weaponized by those in power to achieve a beneficial end, removing the consensual nature of sex. The “parasites,” “lice”, “looters” and people that aren’t reaching their full individualist potential, are there to be used for whatever purpose by her supermen. Just ‘grab them by the pussy’ as some would say.
This is a similar sort of rationale to what is being described as ‘in-cell culture (short for involuntary celibate). Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by entitlement, resentment and hatred, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism and the endorsement of violence against women and sexually active people.[Wikipedia].
Rand might argue that the altruistic shackles of society, its laws, regulations and social contracts are what is preventing these men from reaching their highest potential.
‘According to a study published in Violence Against Women, there seems to be a strong link between certain narcissistic characteristics and the likelihood that someone will commit rape.’ Or maybe even glamorise it in their writings.
[https://www.mic.com/articles/139521/male-narcissists-are-more-likely-to-commit-sexual-assault-says-study].
It’s easy to fall in love with narcissists. They are entertaining and exciting. People gravitate toward them and are invigorated by their energy. You’re proud to bask in their glow. These are people who need to be the centre of attention, and they make sure they always are.
And Rands protagonists fit the mould. But with Rand, there’s something more pathological at work. She’s out to make the world more narcissist-friendly so that people her hero William Hickman can reach their full potential, not held back by the morality of the “weak,” whom Rand despised.
The notion that you could remake an entire society into an entitled, brutal, cold, quasi-medieval new world; a world where her super businessmen could get away with genocide, murder or rape to fulfill their dreams, fetishes and passions. Ultimately, you can see many comparisons between Rand’s ideas and the idea of Hitler’s “brutal youth.”
Sure, later she wrote works that attempted to cover up and soften the deep similarities to Nazi doctrine and so, created apologias for it. How could she not after the defeat of Hitler, especially as she herself was Jewish?
Eventually, Rand’s morality was a perfect fit for the age of the celebrity billionaire. And people like Ford, Eddison and Rockerfeller were already being admired for their successes in both pre and post-WW2 America.
In her best-selling 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.
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 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 dehumanized and described variously as “parasites”, “lice”, “leeches”, “savages”, “refuse”, “inanimate objects”, “imitations of living beings”. Who cares if the Ubermenschen take risks with these creatures? These savages aren’t human; why do they need regulation and protection?
The Nazis also found that the dehumanizing Jews made it easier to kill them:
“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from Jews who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing from Jews that deal, not in goods but in favours — when you see that Jews get richer by graft and by pull than work, and your laws don’t protect you from them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed”
The quote above is from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; except I replaced the word ‘men’ with ‘Jews’ and now it reads like Hitler’s autobiography; the book called Mein Kampf (German for My Struggle or was it Atlas’s Struggle, I forget) which paved the way to widespread fascism throughout Germany and beyond.
Dehumanizing people is the first step towards their elimination. And Rand takes every opportunity to reduce human beings to insects, like ‘louses’, ‘parasites’ and ‘leeches’. Hitler reduced the Jewish identity to rats and cockroaches; it’s easier to hate and even kill another person if you don’t view them as human. And Rand makes a good attempt at reducing anyone who isn’t a superman to being less than human.
Rand obviously wasn’t a Nazi, but she is definitely a proto-fascist. Objectivism, empowers the idea of; the ends, justify the means, no matter how brutal or repugnant. From throwing Jews into gas chambers to create a pure Aryan Breed, or sending intellectuals to Gulags in Siberia, if your objective is threatened by parasitic forces, then under Objectivism you are empowered to remove them by any means.
Whittaker Chambers famously wrote in the National Review, “Just as her operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, so ulcerous leftists are Nietzsche’s ‘last men’, both deformed in a way to create an illusory narcissistic ideal that critique from these people is fastidious… [In her vision] resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible, and even if you present objective scientific realities that highlight the hypocrisy or fallibility. A Randian is empowered to project the idea that they’re an even greater expert and to use that illusionary position to shut down dissent. Dissent from her revelation so final and no matter how objective in nature, can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, according to Rand, reason itself enjoins them. From every page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding, “To a gas chamber — go!”
The irony is that her idea of objectivism is selfish subjectivism in sheep’s clothing.
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, they deserved it for being too weak, too conformist and too lacking in identity.
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 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.
Kant may argue that all these people are a product of how they perceive their experiences. Rand may argue that these people are products of their weakness in their inability to reject these views in order to be accepted by society. And thanks to empirical science we now know that Kant had a point. Which is the essence of philosophy. The pursuit and love of the expansion of our body of knowledge/wisdom.
But Rands ideas and school of thought seem to disregard empirical and validated reason and knowledge, presenting fiction as a non-questionable substitute, in a sort of hypocrisy of her claim to value both objectively verifiable logic and reason.
It feels like she is seeking to push an agenda, not present a rational, scientific and empirical viewpoint open to critique.
I think this is why she preferred to present the identity that she is a philosopher because the social sciences have proven a lot of her ideas wrong. And peer review would have made her irrelevant pretty quickly.
Granted there are some experiments that on the face of it gave some credence to some of her ideas, the study of minority and majority influence in social psychology, for example, but ultimately after several decades of research and findings within this school of research, the conclusion is closer to the notion that their ideas are pretty dangerous.
And from this standpoint, it’s hard to come to any rational conclusion as to why her ideas are so popular, unless we explore the notion that her ideas empower a fetishism for selfishness, that people that score highly on the Narcissistic Personality Index might be susceptible too.
And what happens when societies popular ideals become Randian. “In the 1990s, a survey by the Library of Congress named [Ayn Rand’s novel] Atlas Shrugged as the most influential book in the U.S., after the Bible.” What happens when the people in charge believe that they’re Randian supermen?
Former Central Bank chief Alan Greenspan, whose relationship with Rand dated back to the 1950s, did some parasite-bashing of his own. In response to a 1958 New York Times book review slamming Atlas Shrugged, Greenspan, defending his mentor, published a letter to the editor that ends: “Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should. Alan Greenspan.”
From my own subjective standpoint, the irony isn’t lost on me here. This makes me ask myself; didn’t the journalist use his free-thinking, independent mind to produce/make a critique that was shunned by society using, in the pursuit of the objective, of writing an objective and rational review? Was Greenspan's success not state-sponsored, and based on parasitic trade deals with other countries? The irony isn’t lost on me here.
But as Kant said, human beings aren’t capable of being rational because we all perceive things through our own experiences.
It doesn’t end there, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, is also so committed a Randian, he was famous for giving every new member of his staff a copy of Rand’s gargantuan novel, Atlas Shrugged (along with Freidrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom).
Britain’s small-staters have also devised their own ways of worshipping at the shrine of Ayn. Communities secretary Sajid Javid reads the courtroom scene in Rand’s The Fountainhead twice a year and has done so throughout his adult life.
So despite the objective controversy and irrational views, Rand still holds extremely high esteem within popular culture and especially among political circles.
If the popular view is that societies drug addicts, extremists, and those dependent on social security are all parasitic, leaches, that are imitations of human beings, wouldn’t a War on Drugs, a War on Terror & a War on Poverty be a great way of getting rid of them?
And ultimately how successful have these initiatives been? Have they ended up lessening or exacerbating the problem?
As I mentioned before Roark embodies a lot of characteristics in a narcissist, but then again so does the antagonist Keating.
Like Rand’s depictions of Keating; Narcissistic traits also correlate positively with such characteristics as vanity, conforming to societal norms for peer gratification, materialism, attention-seeking, and successful expectations for the future. And at a narcissists core, they depend on how society views them in order to feel gratified.
Where Rand makes it seem that Roark's narcissistic characteristics have to lead to being outcasted by society in the fountainhead, in reality, this isn’t the case. In 2006, college students scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) increased by 30% over the average scores obtained for those in the original sample who were evaluated from 1979 to 1985. Those with more qualifications and better career options with possible Narcissistic traits like individualism, a lack of empathy and altruism have been on the sharp increase since then.
Authors Twenge and Campbell (2009) reported that research indicates that all the major characteristics that define narcissism increased significantly in the U.S. between the 1950’s and the 1990’s with the increase accelerating since 2002. These traits include assertiveness, extroversion, dominance, self-esteem and individualistic focus.
Other narcissistic tendencies exhibited by Keating, include vanity, taking more resources than their share while leaving inadequate amounts for others, and valuing money, fame and image above family (Twenge & Campbell, 2009). https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Increasing-Narcissism-in-College-Students
And if the popular majority of people are influenced by narcissistic Randian philosophy, what does this mean for democracy?
Republican faithful like GOP Congressman Paul Ryan read Ayn Rand and declare, with pride, “Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism.”
Indeed. Except that Rand also despised democracy, writing that, “Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom.”
[https://www.alternet.org/2015/01/how-ayn-rand-became-big-admirer-serial-killer/]
Rand despised democracy almost as much as altruism, writing that, “Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom.” To her, the ideal system is a Feudal one, where a narcissistic sociopath can take power by any means necessary, and subjugate everyone below them to their whim.
But if the democratic consensus is not to be altruistic, but individualistic, will we get candidates that win elections on the promise of building borders, isolationism and grandiose personalities?
The failure of Randian ideals is encapsulated perfectly when examining the recent global COVID responses. Let alone the War on Terror, the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty.
Trump's erogenous claims of his expertise in defeating covid whilst he was president of the country with the highest covid death toll in the world, is ironic, to say the least. Whilst also pandering to deregulation, individualism and populist Randian policies.
Then being humiliated by the Chinese government’s COVID response by every conceivable measure, the objectively lower death toll, the growing economy, the first country to export a vaccine globally and a return to near normality within a year; a huge objectively demonstrative and measurable blow to Rands notion that states with less government oversight fare better.
This was such a big blow to popular Randian ideals, that Randians resorted to subjective (irony again) delusions and fiction to rationalize these events so as not to upset their own devotion to her works. The Chinese must have been lying about the numbers, but the objectively obvious fact that Trump was lying to them about being an expert flew over their heads.
Rand herself pandered, conformed and begged for attention during the anti-communist cold war era, even appearing in court to testify against Hollywood celebrities, she didn’t or barely knew, and claimed to be an expert on communism, despite leaving Russia at the age of 21.
With Rand, I’m starting to think her characters are all fragments of expressions of her own narcissistic personality disorder in fictional books.
But they are just that, idealistic characters who have no basis in real life but have huge appeal to people with narcissistic traits. Because they allow narcissists to project the less desirable aspects of their own thinking onto others. Rands writing allows them to think of themselves as the superman and everyone else as a leecher.
This is why Rand can recommend no governing body for the paper doll characters in her works of fiction, I suggested Feudalism, because entitlement due to divine right, isn’t far off from entitlement due to viewing yourself as an exceptional human being.
She suggests no laws regarding commerce because as the author, she herself is the narcissist in control, gas-lighting plausible illusions, guiding her heroes to seemingly ethical business transactions, painting the perception that they epitomize the best of humanity.
Perhaps, Rand and her followers have never realized this because they are lulled into a false realization that real people are one-dimensional characters — and that their ideas about human beings operate are more caricatures than real-life understandings about how real-life people work.
Perhaps, the increase in popularity of Rands combined collection of literary works becoming the second most popular to the bible; is why the former president of the worlds most powerful country was a nationalistic, xenophobic, rapist, celebrity CEO businessman, the character of a Reality TV show, that ended up becoming objectively one of the worst presidents in US history. Whom started off his term with a country that was objectively the best (or one of) prepared for a pandemic but ended up managing it worse than almost every country.
This article is published under Creative Commons and is an editorial that uses the work and research of several authors, most of these works are cited, but some may be missing, please get in touch if you would like to be credited here for your work.
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/10/new-age-ayn-rand-conquered-trump-white-house-silicon-valley]