Ayn Rand's Nightmare

The common narrative surrounding this Russian-American author is that she was hags to witches. Fleeing a horrible life in the emerging communist dystopia of Soviet Russia, she girlbossed herself up from scratch in the sacred land of the free, United States of Opportunities.

“You came to America when you were about 20 or 21 years old?”

“That's right”

“You did earn your living in in the early years in Hollywood and a variety of ways I suppose?”

“Oh I had a bad struggle yes mhm. I had to hold odd jobs and I even wait on tables […] It was the years of the depression you know and was very difficult I held all kind of jobs which were very very boring but I was able to write […] I think the only good is later it gives you a certain self-confidence if you can overcome it and rise above it but as such I don't think hardships are good”

But that's not the whole truth.

[Pumpkin Demon by Winniethemoog plays, enter title card, etc]

Introduction

Ayn Rand was… a writer, arguably. She was in her peak in the early 1900’s and went viral for her hit singles “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” (Atlas Shrugs)

She was the front figure of girl-boss libertarianism. Instead of getting the message out not just through academic books, like most of her colleagues, she expanded the strategy towards dystopian fiction.

She was like George Orwell, but if he didn’t slay. She was more on the nose with the allegories, and writing from a right-wing perspective.

For example, In Atlas Shrugged from 1957, the big scary nightmare is that… The train companies are being snatched by the government and it becomes illegal to own more than ONE company at a time.

Very relatable to the average working person in 2024, I personally own 13 companies and 5 private train lines, I would be DEVASTATED.

Credit to Orowen for wasting his time watching the movie adaptations so that we don’t have to.

Ayn Rand claimed that her authorship had no influence from her own life…

“Were you influenced At All by the Russian Revolution in this respect and living in a Soviet Society?”

“Not at all”1

But show don’t tell!

Initially I was just doing a small school project on her book Anthem from 1937, which is still up on my channel even though it has my old name in it… but that video had to be under 13 minutes, and the more I read Ayn Rand the more I wanted to rip my hair out.

At school, I have to be a good boy and play nice. On YouTube, I can satisfy the debauchery and perversion that inhabits the back of my brain’s deeply infested environment, and release them of their scholarly prison of decorum & academic integrity.

So, if you have decided to tune into this, apologies in advance. I’m about to do some academic masochism thinly veiled as a “deep dive” into an author who I disagree with in almost everything.

In my quest to dig up her body and make sure she stays dead, I read selected works, watched movie adaptions of her books several times, an excruciating amount of television interviews, and most importantly the only biography of her that is considered critical enough to be recommended by my teacher.

So, let’s murder Ayn Rand.

1: The Rich Kid

The first claim I want to challenge, is that Ayn Rand’s upbringing had no influence on her beliefs or her writing.

To figure this out, I read “Goddess of the Market” by Jennifer Burns. In it, we get a much more a nuanced look into Ayn Rand’s life.

It all begins the moment the Russian revolution showed up at the doorstep of Ayn Rand’s father’s pharmacy.

[Unhhhh: God said hiiii]

Jokes aside, it’s very dramatic. Quote.

"It was a wintry day in 1918 when the Red Guard pounded on the door of [Zinovy’s] chemistry shop. […]

Zinovy could at least be thankful the mad whirl of revolution had taken only his property, not his life. But his oldest daughter, [Ayn Rand], twelve at the time, burned with indignation. The shop was her father’s; he had worked for it, studied long hours at university, dispensed valued advice and medicines to his customers. Now in an instant it was gone, taken to benefit nameless, faceless peasants, strangers who could offer her father nothing in return. The soldiers had come in boots, carrying guns, making clear that resistance would mean death.

Yet they had spoken the language of fairness and equality, their goal to build a better society for all. Watching, listening, absorbing, [Ayn Rand] knew one thing for certain: those who invoked such lofty ideals were not to be trusted. Talk about helping others was only a thin cover for force and power. It was a lesson she would never forget."2

So let’s unpack this.

Ayn Rand was born into the Rosenbaums, a Jewish family in 1905, in a country that was then called The Russian Empire. Wow, I can’t believe we’re dead-naming Russia.

During the reign of the Czar, especially around the 1880's, the majority of Russian Jews were suffering under a wave of antisemitic laws and oppression. Between 1897 and 1915, over a million Jews left Russia, most of them for the US.

So yeah, the Rosenbaums were marginalized by being Jewish, but we can’t let that blind us from the Rosenbaums privilege of economic wealth. The Rosenbaums were to the Russian Jews what Caitlin Jenner is to the trans community.

Ayn Rand's father had a degree in chemistry and he ran his own private pharmacy. Her mother, Anna, was educated, and came from a rich family.

There’s this part in the book where Burns really hits the nail on just how rich they were. Quote.

"By any standard, Russian or Jewish, the Rosenbaums were an elite and privileged family. [Ayn Rand]’s maternal grandparents were so wealthy, […] when their grandmother needed a tissue she summoned a servant with a button on the wall"3

Ayn Rand grew up with a cook, a governess, a nurse, and tutors.

She was a rich kid.

So, let's get back to when she was 12 and her dad’s pharmacy got taken by the Soviet government.

When Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged about train companies being taken over by the government, whether conscious or subconscious, this sounds a lot like when the government took over her dad’s business. She may claim that her life had no impact on her writing, but I think we should let her writing speak for itself. Put another pin in that.

Ayn Rand’s father had to face his biggest nightmare.

Previously he had only sold medication to those who could afford it. Now, he had to serve those who needed the meds, but couldn’t afford it.

[Posh British accent]

Could you imagine such a thing?! Providing the poor with medicaments for their ailments? And inviting their dirty bodies onto the trains? Proper citizens like me, I can’t take the train any more, I might risk these hoi pollois touching me, corrupting my innocence!

Tell me, how is an upstanding citizen such as myself to form an identity, when one cannot rely on the natural hierarchy in which we all form our sense of reality?

Tell me, if it be what they claim, that we are all superb, what keeps one from logically concluding that no one is?

[Back to normal accent]

I'm not gonna sugar coat that were major issues with the new government in Soviet Russia, and that their methods were violent and oppressive.

The life of the Rosenbaums as Jews, were in danger, that’s true.

BUT, Ayn Rand’s dad had skills in chemistry that were useful to and needed by the Soviet government. He was allowed to continue his work, he just... couldn't earn a fortune off of it, as he did in the past.

A pharmacist was no longer an upper class job.

The family had to downgrade on luxuries. No vacations, no house helpers. No silver spoons, no crystal glass. Truly devastating. (/s)

But then it got worse. In 1921, as a revolt against the government, Ayn Rand's father decided to stop working. It’s not that he was forced to work, it just meant he didn't get a salary.

While I can understand the thought behind this decision, it did mean that the family of five had to rely on the mother's sparse income from being a teacher. Ayn Rand’s mother, Anna, had already tried to convince him to flee, like so many other people did. But as we all know, men don't have the best record of listening to women. Smh.

I mention this because Rand thought of her dad as… a role model. And I think it's important to keep that in mind later when we discuss her trad-wife fantasies and her portrayal of men.

Is this where the rags to riches starts? She's poor, right? And that means she'll have to work hard to save up for an education, right?

Pulling herself up by her bootstraps?

No no no. We have to remember, that after the revolution in Soviet Russia, education was now free.

And that meant she could snatch a full bachelor's degree in History... BEFORE leaving Russia.

Oh yeah, about that.

"As she listened to her beloved eldest daughter shouting with despair behind her bedroom door, Anna (Ayn Rand’s mom) knew she must get [Rand] out of Russia.

It took months to lay the groundwork. The first step was English lessons. Next, [her mom and sisters] began a new round of fervent Communist activity intended to prove the family’s loyalty to the Revolution, even as Anna began securing the permits for [Rand]’s escape.”

This is basically a rich kid shouting to her mom “please I wanna go to the US so baaaad, please moom. I don’t wanna be heeerreee. I have the whole world to see (Pinoccio Reference)” and her mom being like “okay darling, let me just orchestrate an immigration and re-structure my entire life JUST to get you out of here. If I can’t convince my husband, at least I can save my offspring”

I must wonder though, if Ayn Rand’s mom did all this for her daughter, because she herself wanted to migrate, but couldn't convince her husband, OR, if she was so done with Rand, that she was like “Please!”

My sympathy runs dry when the scope of The Rosenbaums network of rich people becomes clear:

“The Rosenbaums claimed that [Rand] intended to study American movies and return to help launch the Russian film industry. This lie was made plausible by her enrolment at the film institute and the fact that her relatives owned a theater.”

[You OWN everything!]

[Atlas Sighs]

“All of Anna’s Chicago relatives, the Portnoy, Lipski, Satrin, and Goldberg families, pledged their support."

On several points in the immigration, Rand had help from her rich family.

She got to Latvia with a huge amount of help from her mom. She stayed with relatives in the countryside and got on a train though Berlin and Paris where more family connections secured her a safe journey. From The Netherlands she got on an ocean liner to New York, where she would be met with yet another set of family friends. They would get her to Chicago, where finally she would stay with yet another set of relatives.

She didn’t start with nothing.

It all worked out pretty well for Ms. Rand, until she had to actually interact with the Chicago relatives she lived with.

It turned out that your spoiled rich kid who has never gotten a NO in her life, getting sent off to a different country, is still a spoiled rich kid who has never gotten a NO in her life.

Her Chicago relatives quickly realized that Ayn Rand was awful to be around, and sent her off to Hollywood with a train ticket and 100$ in cash. Good luck have fun!

For context, that’s about 2000 in today's money.

When she came to Hollywood and visited the De Mille Studio, she was just lucky that movie magnate Cecil B. De Mille himself happened to be there that day and noticed her pick-me girl energy.

If you’re younger than, idk, 75, You have probably never heard of this guy.

Cecil B. De Mille was one of the first Hollywood directors, ever. He owned a studio from 1913, where he directed The Squaw Man, which according to Wikipedia is “one of the first feature films to be shot in what is now Hollywood.“

He was fascinated by her story and hired her as an extra, and later she got a job as junior writer in his studio.

She wasn't rags to riches. She was a rich kid with a bit of luck and stubbornness. Her mother was the one who orchestrated the immigration, and hadn't it been for the financial support and housing from the Chicago relatives, she wouldn't even have gotten to Hollywood.

She described herself as rags to riches. Someone who got out of it by being stubborn, idealistic, and intelligent. She bases her whole political ideology on this “just stop being poor and get it together” philosophy.

But the impression I get from Jennifer Burns is that she wasn't necessarily intelligent.

She was stubborn, for sure. But someone who describes themselves as intelligent, personally I would never assume to be. People who are truly intelligent, they know to keep themselves humble and SHOW it instead of telling it. It’s like when guys on Grindr say HUNG, and don’t give measurements. Like, yeah, and I’m the pope of Rome… like, what? That statement doesn’t mean anything.

To me, she was educated with a big set of general knowledge, but she was ignorant of her privileged upbringing influencing her personal bias.

But this is all a primer, because it’s not just HER… The impact she had was due to her writing. So, lets read her to filth.

2: Anthem

As mentioned earlier, Rand was most known for her two most popular books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

For an in-depth analysis of Atlas Shrugged, as I mentioned, orowen did an excellent take on the movie adaptation.

I attempted to listen to the audio-book of The Fountainhead, but I had to stop 20 chapters in… I was just finding myself, dozing off, my braincells draining after getting to that point.

The chapters I read were very on the nose about architectural style as a metaphor for ideology, which is a very creative choice for metaphor, but the architect-scene in the book is just so dated.

Modernist architecture seen as something “crazy” and “revolutionary” is a sentiment of the past. I don’t think it holds up today.

I'm more interested in this little snack piece of hers. 100 pages, written "for fun" between the bigger ones.

It’s like… you know when someone is out of breath, upset, and all their deepest fears and anxieties resurface in a somewhat blown out of proportion way? Y'know???

That's what Anthem is a little bit like. A quick little novella from 1938, daring to ask the question...

"What if the word, I, was illegal?"

The book is written as a fictional diary of the main character, Prometheus. [Atlas rolls eyes at how edgy this is]

Let me be clear. Nothing wrong with using Greek Mythology for naming characters. I myself am legally named Atlas. But the extent to which Libertarians WORSHIP the myth of Prometheus, is a little cringe.

The plot-line revolves around him growing up in a post-apocalyptic, authoritarian, oligarchy.

Oligarchy comes from Greek αρχία arkhía, meaning “to rule” and ὀλίγος olígos… “few”.

It’s a power structure where power is in the hands of a handful, like times in European history where the government was controlled by groups of aristocrats. Or a company, where decisions are taken on a board of boot lickers. Or, on a smaller scale, a Minecraft server where new moderators are chosen by the current admins…

[whispers] Shyyyy, that’s a different video.

[Cut to comic book stuff]

(Insert small note about the awful comic book dub on youtube)

Anthem was made into a comic in 2018 and there’s a dub available on “The Atlas Society”… ugh, I know. I’m not gonna link it other than as a citation because I don’t want to support them with ad money, and on top of that the dubbing is uhhhh…

The first chapters of Anthem deal with his upbringing, feeling like an outcast in a society that criminalizes individuality. Where everyone's life path from birth to death is decided by those in power. A society permeated with a cultist religious worship of overworking yourself for the sake of everyone else. Glorifying the act of completely throwing your own needs away for the sake of "the greater good"… Sound familiar?

If you thought... "Communism be like" you've caught exactly what Ayn Rand probably would have wanted you think about this book... let's put a pin in that for now.

Prometheus lives somewhat accepting of the circumstances, until it is decided for him, that he is not going to become the scholar he had hoped to become. He is selected to become a street sweeper, which starts the cracking of the egg for him, so to speak.

When he finds an abandoned metro tunnel, it becomes his safe space to experiment with society's rules. He re-invents electricity as “The Light” and naively hopes to reform the system from within. Surely, if the governing body for science sees his brilliant new invention, they’ll change the world for the better. Right? Right?

His hope bursts when he finally gets to show the highest governing body of science his invention. They are afraid of it and dismiss him completely.

He realizes that the system he fought and suffered for, will never accept him into society on his terms. He flees the authoritarian civilization, into the wilderness to establish a new society, along with his girlfriend Gaia, whomst he picked up along this story.

They find an old house on top of a hill, presumably a Mansion built by some rich person before the apocalypse. Along with it are books, in which Prometheus find language he has never before been taught, which then brings him to the big reveal of the book.

The great ideological epiphany of Anthem.

“And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.'”

Bit:

Struggling with self-worth? Get a God-complex.

I wanna dive a little deeper though. Is it really about socialism?

While I was reading this book, there was a word... lurking right under the surface....

3: Cristo-Fascism

To analyse the political fantasy world of Anthem, I wanna look at these specific elements that I think less resembles socialism, and rather resembles Christian fascism.

Love, and language

The linguistic aspect of the book is not just banning a singular first person pronoun “I”.

Anthem-speak, if you will, consists of a list of words in the book, that are “changed out” on purpose, along with the definition of existing words that are obfuscated.

I made a list of all of them, it's not a long book.

We can look at a word like “love”, about which Ayn Rand was very outspoken about in her time.

[Insert Television Interview Clip]

In Anthem-speak, love is used as this sort of “Love for our brothers” kind of love.

The idea that love means putting ALL your needs below those of your “partner”, in this case, putting all your needs below “The Greater Good” is misguided. This kind of love treats love as a reward. Something you have to suffer to be worthy of. This is not communism. This is closer to the Christian idea of piety. That in order to deserve the love of God, you must deprave yourself of pleasure, you must undermine your needs for God.

This is not love. This is masochism.

You’d think that with Ayn Rand’s awareness of this skewered view of love, she’d suggest something else. And she does, kind of. In this television interview from 19XX, where she explains what love means to her.

[Ayn Rand: “You love people not for what you do for them, or what they do for you. You love them for their values, their virtues, which they have achieved in their own character. You don't love causelessly. You don't love everybody indiscriminately. You love only those who deserve it.”]

[Mike Wallace: “And then if a man is weak, or a woman is weak, then she is beyond, he is beyond love?]

[Ayn Rand: “He certainly does not deserve it, he certainly is beyond. He can always correct it. Man has free will. If a man wants love he should correct his weaknesses, or his flaws, and he may deserve it.”]

(Sigh). If you’re nodding along with the idea that love is a business deal, there might be some things I suggest you reflect on.

The kind of love that Rand presents is closer to what the classical Athenians regarded as marital love.

Demosthenes said

“we have courtesans for pleasure, and concubines for the daily service of our bodies, but wives for the production of legitimate offspring and to have reliable guardian of our household property.”4

The purpose of the love in the Athenian marriage was not just the mechanical purpose of creating offspring and having a guardian of the man’s property. It’s purpose was also tied to the concept of a Dowry. In classical Athens, if the woman was of a high enough economic background, she came with a sum of money, a dowry. The dowry was to be given to the husband at the marriage, with the condition that he take care of her. This was codified in Athenian laws. Did he not take proper care of her, he could be tried in court.

Love in Athenian marriage, a business deal. You give me money, I protect you and take care of you.

This is not love. This is dependency.

Understanding your relationships to other people as a constant cost-benefit analysis where every action has to be weighted on an arbitrary scale is, I think, detrimental.

However.

If you’re feeling like you keep giving and giving and giving, and get nothing in return, you may be better off without that person.

These two statements can co-exist.

In my humble experience, love is something you choose. The feeling of attraction and lust is not a choice. You can’t directly choose who to be attracted to. But, you choose what friends, lovers and partners you keep around. You choose who to have in your circles, not for the sole reason of wanting something in return, no.

I choose to be around people, because I like them, and trying to rationalise it would undermine that feelings are conceptual and cultural, not just brain chemistry. And YES, sometimes I do things for people without expecting anything in return, because that is what being human means to me.

I may be aromantic, but I know that love is NOT a business deal, even for me.

And if that makes me gay, well… blame my boyfriends

Tangent over, back to language.

The nursing home is called “Home of the Useless” to send a clear message. When a person can no longer physically do the job assigned to them by the people in power, they are useless. Redundant. They have no worth outside of their ability to labour.

The prison is called “Palace of Corrective Detention” in an effort to minimize the physical torture and oppression that takes place within.

Breaking the law is called a “transgression” in official Anthem-speak, but in everyday speak they call it “sin” …

Could this be more on the nose?

You’re telling me, that in this universe, I can commit a “sin” and go to “The Palace” to be “corrected”

The first part about the retirement home, is definitely tasting a little bit like capitalism. However, it can also be read in a Christian way. In this reading, The Home of the Useless is not a literal, but a psychological element. Reducing the individual to their function as “Servant of God” is a very Cristo-Fascism thing to do.

We also can't get around what the book is most notorious for... Or should we say, I can't get around it?

All the 1st person singular pronouns, that being “I”, “mine”, “myself”, and so on, are replaced with 1st person plural pronouns, that being “we” “our” and “ourself”.

Possessive pronouns like “his” and “hers” get replaced by plural “theirs” which…Accidental they/them representation. Not in the way I expected, and definitely not the way it's needed. But go off I guess. (Shrug)

Idk about you, but I grew up with a mother who used this kind of language constantly. She would say “WE need to do...” and “we should do” when she was actually just referring to what SHE wanted to do. She wanted to say “I”, but to cope with her crippling fear of rejection, she would try to make us think like a hive mind.

I haven’t been able to find a term for this, so I get to name it!

I would like to dub it motive-projection.

Social projection is when humans expect others to be similar to ourselves. Motive-projection is more specifically when someone uses the teeny tiny linguistic trick of saying “we”, at best, to enable team-work, and at worst, as a manipulation tactic.

The same linguistic technique is sometimes used in Christian-flavoured oppression.

When Christians say things like like “Us Christians” or “It's God's will” “We're all children of God”

[FIND TV EXAMPLES]

...it's a part of the ostracism that missionary Christianity relies on to stay afloat. The feeling of being part of an in-group.

This segue-ways me neatly into the second element I’d like to discuss.

Social & Cultural Norms

“We were born with a curse. It has always driven us to thoughts which are forbidden. It has always given us wishes which men may not wish.

We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be alike.”

The culture in Anthem is what we might dub a monoculture. There’s a cultural hegemony influenced by the political system.

For people who are fun and touch grass, unlike me…

A cultural hegemony is when one set of cultural ideas dominates a big and diverse group of people, like a country or a city, or the world, even. In an oppressive system, the cultural hegemony can be a part of the oppression. It’s not always about which culture has the highest number of supporters, it’s about which culture holds the dominating power.

The important thing to understand about this concept, is that systemic oppression and oppressive culture are two sides of the same coin. Culture can be a weapon in the war for power. That’s why some people talk of a “Culture War”

In Anthem you’re punished for sticking out. Wanting things beyond the need of the ruling Councils. This creates a culture of fear and shame. Prometheus claims to have a “curse” he is born with, that makes him have “thoughts that are forbidden.

The idea that people who merely have thoughts that are against the cultural hegemony, are unclean, sick, possessed, cursed.

That REEKS of Christian culture of shame.

One of the ways the Councils reinforce this is by using the public sphere as a tool for propaganda:

“Over the portals of the Palace of the World Council, there are words cut in the marble which we are required to ourselves whenever we are tempted.

'We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, One, indivisible and forever.“

Have you ever seen a catholic church?

[Images of churches with inscriptions over the gate]

Political and Educational System

To explain the world of Anthem, I want you to take a step out of the very idea of a country and a government.

Structurally, it's somewhat easy to explain. The governing body is made up of a set of Councils, with the World Council at the very top of the hierarchy. The World Council has the final say in decisions of all other councils. Under that are various councils that specialize in specific areas of government. Most notable are The Council of Vocation and The Council of Scholars.

The election process for these councils is marketed as democratic, but REALLY is a closed circuit.

To become a candidate for the World Council, you must have an education from The House of Leaders.

Whether you get that is decided by The Council of Vocation.

And how do you get into the Council of Vocation, you might ask?

You guessed it! You have to get an education from The House of Leaders.

So essentially you have a closed circuit political system where social mobility is completely impossible. A strict hierarchy reinforced by the entire political system.

But before you rightfully yell “that's like the US today!!” I wanna take you around the corner for a fifth element I wanna discuss.

Technology

Prometheus writes from about 30-40 years after what they call “The Great Rebirth” It's an event described like this:

“We must never speak of the times before the Great Rebirth, else we are sentenced to three years in the Palace of Corrective Detention. It is only the Old Ones who whisper about it in the evenings, in the Home of the Useless. They whisper many strange things, of the towers which rose to the sky, in those Unmentionable Times, and of the wagons which moved without horses, and of the lights which burned without flame. But those times were evil. And those times passed away, when men saw the Great Truth”

“All of the great modern inventions come from the Home of the Scholars, such as the newest one, which was found only a hundred years ago, of how to make candles from wax and string; also, how to make glass, which is put in our windows to protect us from the rain.“

During the Great Rebirth we can assume there was some sort of revolution or apocalypse, or both. Most notable here is the relationship to technology, a sort of “retvrn” to European feudal age technology. It's kind of funny that it's called “rebirth” because little time period known as “The Renaissance” was also called that, but I'm gonna assume that's just a funny coincidence.

Nevertheless, when it comes to the relationship to technological advancement, Ayn Rand could not be more on the nose.

First, the “but those times were evil” is very direct. Tech is evil! Bad bad bad! The devil in the machine!

Second, when Prometheus brings his invention (electricity) to the council we get this very drawn out scene that just amounts to … “IDEAS BAD”

I could not take it seriously when one of the sceptical council members say

“Should it be what they claim of it,” said Harmony 9-2642, “then it would bring ruin to the Department of Candles. The Candle is a great boon to mankind, as approved by all men. Therefore it cannot be destroyed by the whim of one.”

[Atlas looks at the camera in silence]

[Atlas pours a drink]

I agree with Rand that this type of argument is lazy and easy to dismiss. But… I think most would. This is not a position unique to well… anything. This has been said about both technology, ideology, culture, you name it.

2000s: If green energy takes over, what about all the coal miners?5

1900s: If the city’s industry takes over, what about all the youths that can no longer work in the fields?6

1700s: If we dedicate forest areas for protecting, what about all the forest farmers?7

We adapt, just like humans always do. But that’s not a deeply profound point to make here. Mind you, this is supposed to be a highly climactic moment of Anthem, defining the evil of the Council-system in this book’s world… and that’s all Ayn Rand has to say before Prometheus escapes to the wilderness and builds his new world with his trophy-wife, Gaia.

(Sub-conclusion of Anthem)

With these elements in mind, the abusive ideas of love, the culture of shame, language being used as an oppressive force, the oligarchy dressed up as democracy, the conservative view on technological advancement, this is not altruism. This is fascism.

What Anthem really is, is a distilled version of the unnecessarily long novels she was famous for. Generally I am a supporter of expanding and explaining, but in this case, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged could have easily been around 300 pages.

In my opinion, there’s not much to analyse in terms of the ideological implications of the most notable works, We The Living, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

I’m not even gonna bother with We The Living. Watching the movie and reading the summary of the book, it being a self insert almost copy of her own upbringing is so on the nose that it’s annoying.

The Fountainhead was probably interesting for it’s time, but 800 pages about an architect-scene where the modernist architecture we see all over the place in the current world is considered radical and edgy, just doesn’t hold up.

Atlas Shrugged is supposed to be a dystopia, but the big scary nightmare is that train companies become public and you’re only allowed to own one company at a time? That screams rich kid who’s mad that her dad can’t make a fortune off of pharmaceuticals anymore. You’re trying to tell me that public transport and free healthcare is a dystopia? C’mon…

What I’m much more interested in, in these works, is how abundantly clear it is, that Ayn Rand has a painfully obscured and kind of sad view of love and gender. With her self-identifying as a “male-chauvinist, proudly”, the time has come to piss on her grave.

4: Queerness & gender

So first of all, the naming system…

You’re telling me that Prometheus goes into a place outside of society’s norms, realizes his true potential, flees and changes his name.

I mean, there’s the obvious reference to Ayn Rand’s own immigration, she herself changing from her Russian birth name.

But like, come on. I can’t stop thinking about how that’s exactly how it felt for me when I was realizing I was trans.

Halt! Stop right here before we get it twisted!

Let me make it clear, Ayn Rand is not canon queer media.

The type of queerness that Ayn Rand represents, in my opinion, is more so that of a woman who uses masculinity as a tool to gain some footing in a world that keeps women away from power. Put a pin in that.

I am going to a queer reading of Ayn Rand’s works because I enjoy a challenge, and it would make her turn in her grave.

When I was exploring my sexuality, I went to a non-alcoholic queer hangout event in the big city, and that was my metro tunnel. We were in a space that was kind of outside the norm, where I could play around with pronouns and names.

I tried to eventually come out to my parents, just like Prometheus attempting to convince the scientists. Changing the system from within, hoping my parents would accept me if I showed them my true self, and “convinced” them to accept trans people.

Yet, I had to eventually flee in 2019 when I moved out and cut contact. In 2020, I changed my name from the one given at birth, to Atlas, a gender neutral name that fit me better. I moved in with my Gaia, one of my boyfriends, in 2021 and I have been building that new “world” ever since.

I’m reading this as a trans allegory for fun and no one can stop me.

And then there’s Prometheus’ “buddy”, International-4-8818

I mean, the homo eroticism.

“International 4-8818 are different. They are a tall strong youth and their eyes are like fireflies, for there is laughter in their eyes. We cannot look upon International 4-8818 and not smile in answer. […] International 4-8818 and we are friends. This is an evil thing to say, for it is a great transgression, the great Transgression of Preference, to love any among men better than the others […] So International 4-8818 and we have never spoken of it. But we know. We know, when we look into each other’s eyes. And when we look this without words, we both know other things also, strange things for which there are no words, and these things frighten us.”

Fellas, is it gay to look into the eyes of a fellow man and feel things that you feel ashamed of?

I know logically, that this is yet another example of Ayn Rand attempting to write a metaphor for how she feels about the so called “altruism”.

But I have to really stretch my imagination to see that metaphor.

When I read it the first 10 times, it comes off as a queer man unaware of his attraction to another man. Aware that such attraction is a taboo, but lacking the vocabulary to explain it.

To understand why her writing about men & love comes off as homo-erotic, we must investigate how her works treat gender, regardless of her own stance on her own.

[Ayn Rand: “In regards to feminism, I am a male chauvinist, proudly]

Let’s start with how she describes women.

In Anthem, the only woman is Gaea, born Liberty 5-3000, nicknamed The Golden One. The meet-cute is very salacious indeed! One day when he’s working, he spots her working in the field next to him and he notes Gaea’s skinny figure, dark eyes and most importantly the hair.

“[Gaea’s] hair was golden as the sun; their hair flew in the wind, shining and wild, as if it defied men to restrain it. They threw seeds from their hand as if they deigned to fling a scornful gift, and the earth was a beggar under their feet.”8

Uhhhh…

"Your eyes," they said, "are not like the eyes of any among men."

And suddenly, without cause for the thought which came to us, we felt cold, cold to our stomach.

"How old are you?" we asked.

They understood our thought, for they lowered their eyes for the first time.

"Seventeen," they whispered.

Uhhhhhhhh………………

“we were punished when the Council of Vocations came to give us our life Mandates which tell those who reach their fifteenth year what their work is to be for the rest of their days”

“Street Sweeper”

“Thus have we lived each day of four years, until two springs ago when our crime happened”

So, that makes him 19 and her 17 when he meets her… and then he is 21 when he’s writing, and she’d be 19 in the last passage:

“Then here, on this mountaintop, with the world below me and nothing above me but the sun, I shall live my own truth. Gaea is pregnant with my child.”

I suddenly feel the urge to burn this book!

The question is, who is the self-insert for Ayn Rand here? If we assume it’s Gaea, it’s a fucked up trad-wife fantasy… if Prometheus is the self insert, still yikes, but also, is there something you want to tell me, Rand?

With this being the first book I read, I didn’t have much hope for the rest. In The Fountainhead, which technically passes the bechdel test (Clip of two rich women talking about firing her cook), the love interest of the main character Howard Roarke, is Dominique Francon. What’s important to know about Roarke is that he’s a self-taught architect, who no doubt has self-insert energy.

[Clip from Ayn Rand about not wanting to study literature]

Dominique is the daughter of Guy Francon, who Roarke works for at the point where she’s introduced. In the book she’s described as being so skinny that she, quote “made the correct proportions of a normal being appear heavy and awkward beside her.”9

She’s described as a cold and stoic woman, very akin to a neo-brutalist building. She’s not like the other girls. She writes architectural columns (pun intended) even though she allegedly doesn’t care for architecture, she just wants to stir the pot in her father’s world. She’s a clever and confident femme fatale making Roarke feel stupid.

D: "Don't say that I'm beautiful and exquisite and like no one you've ever met before and that you're very much afraid that you're going to fall in love with me. You'll say it eventually, but let's postpone it. Apart from that, I think we'll get along very nicely."

D: “You know, I told Ralston tonight what I really thought of his capitol, but he wouldn't believe me. He only beamed and said that I was a very nice little girl."

R: "Well, aren't you?"

D: "What?"

R: "A very nice little girl."

D: "No. Not today.”

Dagny Taggert from Atlas Shrugged is yet another woman of steel, not as femme fatale as Dominique, but Dagny is more heavy on the girl-boss capitalist, and yet another emotionally repressed character.

“She had always avoided personal reactions, but she was forced to break her rule when she saw the expression on Taggart's face. She burst out laughing”10

Dagny is essentially written as someone I can’t think of as anything else than „train autistic“

“Dagny Taggart was nine years old when she decided that she would run the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad some day. She stated it to herself when she stood alone between the rails, looking at the two straight lines of steel that went off into the distance and met in a single point.”11

“I was nine years old when I decided I wanted to be a writer”12

”What she felt was an arrogant pleasure at the way the track cut through the woods: it did not belong in the midst of ancient trees, among green branches that hung down to meet green brush and the lonely spears of wild flowers—but there it was.”

“She never tried to explain why she liked the railroad. Whatever it was that others felt, she knew that this was one emotion for which they had no equivalent and no response. She felt the same emotion in school, in classes of mathematics, the only lessons she liked. She felt the excitement of solving problems, the insolent delight of taking up a challenge and disposing of it without effort, the eagerness to meet another, harder test. She felt, at the same time, a growing respect for the adversary, for a science that was so clean, so strict, so luminously rational.”13

Kira (We The Living)

“We the Living is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write. It is not an autobiography in the literal, but only in the intellectual, sense. The plot is invented; the background is not. As a writer of the Romantic school, I would never be willing to transcribe a “real life” story, which would amount to evading the most important and most difficult part of creative writing: the construction of a plot. Besides, it would bore me to death. My view of what a good autobiography should be is contained in the title that Louis H. Sullivan gave to the story of his life: The Autobiography of an Idea. It is only in this sense that We the Living is my autobiography and that Kira, the heroine, is me. I was born in Russia, I was educated under the Soviets, I have seen the conditions of existence that I describe. The particulars of Kira’s story were not mine; I did not study engineering, as she did—I studied history; I did not want to build bridges —I wanted to write; her physical appearance bears no resemblance to mine, neither does her family. The specific events of Kira’s life were not mine; her ideas, her convictions, her values were and are.”

“A young Soviet official admired the line that the silhouette of her body made against the light square of a broken window. A fat lady in a fur coat was indignant that the girl’s defiant posture somehow suggested a cabaret dancer perched among champagne glasses, but a dancer with a face of such severe, arrogant calm, that the lady wondered whether she was really thinking of a cabaret table or a pedestal.”

So… all the women are more or less self inserts, either femme fatale girl-bosses, or whatever twisted libertarian trad-wife fantasy Gaea represents. So, it’s no surprise that the men match this.

Prometheus (Anthem)

Boddice ripper vibes?

Howard Roark (The Fountainhead)

“HOWARD ROARK laughed. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone--flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. The stone glowed, wet with sunrays. The lake below was only a thin steel ring that cut the rocks in half. The rocks went on into the depth, unchanged. They began and ended in the sky. So that the world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on nothing, anchored to the feet of the man on the cliff. His body leaned back against the sky. It was a body of long straight lines and angles, each curve broken into planes. He stood, rigid, his hands hanging at his sides, palms out. He felt his shoulder blades drawn tight together, the curve of his neck, and the weight of the blood in his hands. He felt the wind behind him, in the hollow of his spine. The wind waved his hair against the sky. His hair was neither blond nor red, but the exact color of ripe orange rind. He laughed at the thing which had happened to him that morning and at the things which now lay ahead.”

CONCLUSION

So, Ayn Rand attempted in her authorship to build up an anti-communist body of work. Yet, because she failed to scrutinize her own bias, and dive deeper into the flavours that made the USSR a communist regime, we get this surface level thinking of “communism is when people tell me to do things” … which makes sense, considering she championed against what she called “altruism”.

She even claimed that she wasn’t a libertarian. She called it “objectivism” which was her way taking rich kid egoism and dressing it up in academic terms.

This is why her authorship, especially Anthem, ended up being so generic. Even if she talked in political language, or even in academic & philosophical meanderings, trying to use her works for such will produce ridiculous results.

At the end of the day Ayn Rand’s works were simply a rich kid who had never gotten a NO in her life, unable to come to terms with living in a society where her family’s wealth came at the expense of poor people. Using heaps of mental gymnastics and an academic education to dress it up as if it wasn’t self-insert libertarian fan-fiction.

So let’s start treating it like that. Thank you.

Alright, that’s it. We have buried Ayn Rand. Now, stay dead.

[Phone rings, but Atlas is not taking it, looking straight into the camera]

[Atlas, without flinching takes the phone]

“Goodbye”

[And slams the phone]

Idea 1:

[Atlas takes a lighter out, and we cut to credits]

Idea 2:

[Atlas takes a hammer out, and we cut to credits]

[Sounds of destruction]

Bibliography

1917: Russia’s Two Revolutions, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-tICpleWLI.
Anthem: The Graphic Novel. Accessed 7 December 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYfDxkn-8YI.
Ayn Rand - The Mike Wallace Interview, 1959. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJyShzXob8I.
B. DeMille, Cecil, and Donald DeMille. The Autobiography Of Cecil DeMille. Prentice-Hall, 1959.
Burns, Jennifer. Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Oxford: Oxford university press, 2009.
California, California State Parks, State of. ‘CECIL B. DeMILLE STUDIO BARN’. CA State Parks. Accessed 17 January 2024. https://www.parks.ca.gov/.
Carey, C. Trials from Classical Athens, 1997.
Rand, Ayn. Anthem. 10th Printing, 1988., 1937.
Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead, 1943.
Rand, Aynd. Atlas Shrugged, 1957.
Wayne, Gary. ‘DeMille Studio Museum’. Accessed 17 January 2024. https://www.seeing-stars.com/Museums/StudioMuseum.shtml.
Wayne, Gary. ‘Paramount Studios’, 2024. https://www.seeing-stars.com/Studios/ParamountStudios.shtml.

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