Psychology of Outrageous Anti-Rand Polemics

[Guest Anya]

I have some moderate acquaintence with Objectivist-influenced psychological theories, but there is something that has been bothering me the last few months.

Quite frequently, if one finds an article about Ayn Rand in some media outlet you will see all sorts of shrill and absolutely insane claims made about her. I've heard the same sort of things at University - one guy from New York I was trying to talk to asked me what Objectivism was, and after I made a brief explanation he went on to tell me that Ayn Rand was behind modern depopulation movements so that "the elite could have more for themselves". I tried to explain that this made no economic sense, given Rand's views on division of labor and capital formation, but it was too late for this gentlemen.

I've seen 'documentaries' and conspiracy yarns (often from the Lyndon LaRouche camp) that portray her as some sort of sadist and a cartoon caricature of a 'social Darwinist' (a nebulius anti-concept invented to attack anything smacking of inegalitarianism). Anyone who actually reads Rand will find zero support for any of this. Her actual language is highly reminescent of eudaemonism and liberalism, even if someone disagreed with her individualism and various epistemic views the things they say about here are beyond possibility of even being mistakes; they're witless slander that no one who has ever read Rand could actually believe.

[Samson Corwell]

What a bizarre theory.

[Selene]

I have some moderate acquaintence with Objectivist-influenced psychological theories, but there is something that has been bothering me the last few months.

Quite frequently, if one finds an article about Ayn Rand in some media outlet you will see all sorts of shrill and absolutely insane claims made about her. I've heard the same sort of things at University - one guy from New York I was trying to talk to asked me what Objectivism was, and after I made a brief explanation he went on to tell me that Ayn Rand was behind modern depopulation movements so that "the elite could have more for themselves". I tried to explain that this made no economic sense, given Rand's views on division of labor and capital formation, but it was too late for this gentlemen.

I've seen 'documentaries' and conspiracy yarns (often from the Lyndon LaRouche camp) that portray her as some sort of sadist and a cartoon caricature of a 'social Darwinist' (a nebulius anti-concept invented to attack anything smacking of inegalitarianism). Anyone who actually reads Rand will find zero support for any of this. Her actual language is highly reminescent of eudaemonism and liberalism, even if someone disagreed with her individualism and various epistemic views the things they say about here are beyond possibility of even being mistakes; they're witless slander that no one who has ever read Rand could actually believe.

Anya, welcome to OL.

Have you ever read Rules For Radicals, by Saul Alinsky? This is precisely following the marxist pradigm as in 1) identifying the target; and; 2) destroying it through constant savage attacks whether there is any truth about them, or, not.

Sarah Palin is another example.

It would be interesting to re-communicate wtih that gentleman and strike up a conversation with him about Margaret Sanger, who was a eugenisit, a racist, a statist and a progressive.

A...

[Jerry Biggers]

Welcome to Objectivist Living, Anya!

Your observations on how Rand is "explained" or "refuted", by most of the MSM ("Mainstream Media") to their readers and/or viewers is correct. They attack primarily by the use of two fallacious methods:1) by using ad hominem attacks on her personality (mostly distorted or exaggerated) and claiming that that that alone makes her writing irrelevant; and 20 the "straw man" fallacy: constructing a caricature of her philosophy bearing little or no resemblance to what she actually wrote and advocated. - and then tearing hat down.

We often see these two tactics used in political campaigns, leaving the voters to guess which charges are true and which are false. The same methods are often used to criticize belief systems that one disagrees with. Ultimately, most people see through such deceit, although some are taken in..All that is necessary for the inquiring person is to read what she wrote: the disparity between what she actually said, and what her critics have reported, will be quite clear. The goal of her critics is to smear her reputation so thoroughly that no one will read her.

Below is an excerpt from the first book (outside of her own) positively describing her philosophy, Who Is Ayn Rand? (1962) by two people who were then her closest associates, Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden.. In this excerpt from the chapter, "The Moral Revolution in Atlas Shrugged," Nathaniel Branden discusses the reception that greeted Atlas Shrugged when it was published in 1957.

It is hard to say which is the more eloquent proof of its signal relevance to the crucial issues of our age: the widespread admiration and enthusiasm it has inspired – or the hysteria of the attacks unleashed against it. The nature of those attacks is an instructive index of the current intellectual condition of our culture.

Rand’s antagonists have unfailingly elected to pay her what is, perhaps, the greatest tribute one can offer to a thinker whom one opposes: they have all felt obliged to misrepresent her ideas in order to attack them.

No one has dared publicly to name the essential ideas of Atlas Shrugged and to attempt to refute them. No one has been willing to declare: “Ayn Rand holds that man must choose his own values and actions exclusively by reason, that man has the right to exist for his own sake, that no one has the right to seek values from others by physical force – and I consider such ideas wrong, evil, and socially dangerous.”

Rand’s opponents have found it preferable to debate with strawmen, to equate her philosophy with that of Spencer or Nietzsche or Spinoza or Hobbes and thus expose themselves to the charge of philosophic illiteracy – rather than identify and publicly argue against that for which Rand actually stands.

Were they discussing the ideas of an author whose work was not known to the general public, their motive would appear obvious. But it is a rather grotesque spectacle to witness men seemingly going through the motions of concealing from the public the ideas of an author whose readers number in the millions.

When one considers the careful precision with which Rand defines her terms and presents her ideas, and the painstaking manner in which each concept is concretized and illustrated – one will search in vain for a non-psychiatric explanation of the way in which her philosophy has been reported by antagonists. Allegedly describing her concept of rational self-interest, they report that Ayn Rand extols disregard for the rights of others, brutality, rapacity, doing whatever one feels like doing and general animal self-indulgence. This, evidently, is the only meaning they are able to give to the concept of self-interest. One can only conclude that this is how they conceive their own self-interest, which they altruistically and self-sacrificially renounce. Such a viewpoint tells one a great deal about the man who holds it – but nothing about the philosophy of Rand.

Note that the same analysis could easily have been written today, because after 55 years, the tactics used by Rand's critics are practically identical. As I have mentioned before on this forum, the ironic thing is that the nature of the critics' attacks have not resulted in a decrease of interest in her philosophy, but have increased it! Atlas Shrugged is selling more books now than when it was published!

[Guest Anya]

Allegedly describing her concept of rational self-interest, they report that Ayn Rand extols disregard for the rights of others, brutality, rapacity, doing whatever one feels like doing and general animal self-indulgence. This, evidently, is the only meaning they are able to give to the concept of self-interest. One can only conclude that this is how they conceive their own self-interest, which they altruistically and self-sacrificially renounce. Such a viewpoint tells one a great deal about the man who holds it – but nothing about the philosophy of Rand.

Note that the same analysis could easily have been written today, because after 55 years, the tactics used by Rand's critics are practically identical. As I have mentioned before on this forum, the ironic thing is that the nature of the critics' attacks have not resulted in a decrease of interest in her philosophy, but have increased it! Atlas Shrugged is selling more books now than when it was published!

One thing that's always struck me is how lazy people are when arguing against egoism, even in its Ragnar Redbeard (might is right) variants. As 1 Corinthians says, "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not." A person could believe in an egoism that did not preclude violent acts but that does not entail that he would randomly engage in them. After all, many people believe suicide can be justified without killing themselves. For the anti-egoist to leap straight from 'the person is amoral' to 'therefor, the person will behave according to my caricature of immorality' is a leap of logic that bugs me about most discussions on egoism and nihlism both.