Rand Cult
In response to Sunday's post about cults, a reader sent along this link to a lengthy essay about the Ayn Rand cult. It's written by the foremost libertarian thinker of the 20th century, Murray Rothbard. Fascinating stuff, if you're interested in Ayn Rand and the history of modern ideas. A few excerpts:
Just as Communists are often instructed not to read anti-Communist literature, the Rand cult went further to disseminate what was virtually an Index of Permitted Books. Since most neophyte Randians were both young and relatively ignorant, a careful channeling of their reading insured that they would remain ignorant of non- or anti-Randian ideas or arguments permanently (except as they were taken up briefly, brusquely, and in a highly distorted and hectoring fashion in Randian publications). . .
Rand cultists were required to sign a loyalty oath to Rand; essential to the loyalty oath was a declaration that the signer would henceforth never read any future works of the apostate and arch-heretic Branden. After the split, any Rand cultist seen carrying a book or writing by [former Objectivist partner Nathaniel] Branden was promptly excommunicated. Close relatives of Branden were expected to ”“ and did ”“ break with him completely. . .
Another method was to keep the members, as far as possible, in a state of fevered emotion through continual re-readings of Atlas [Shrugged]. Shortly after Atlas was published, one high-ranking cult leader chided me for only having read Atlas once. "It's about time for you to start reading it again," he admonished. "I have already read Atlas thirty-five times."
The rereading of Atlas was also important to the cult because the wooden, posturing, and one-dimensional heroes and heroines were explicitly supposed to serve as role models for every Randian. Just as every Christian is supposed to aim at the imitation of Christ in his own daily life, so every Randian was supposed to aim at the imitation of John Galt (Rand's hero of heroes in Atlas.) He was always supposed to ask himself in every situation "What would John Galt have done?" . . .
