She is still subverting American minds.
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Ayn Rand was born in Russia. I was born in Poland. Me and Ayn have this in common, we both came from countries with socialist roots. When I first heard about Ayn Rand's philosophy, it was when I was reading a book about the Right Wing of America's politics, "The Right Nation". I found it surprising and suspicious that the modern right wing/libertarian groups consider Rand to be a founder of their ideology. It is usually the case with immigrants that they try to be MORE American than Americans in order to mask their insecurity. This seems to be case with Rand. In addition, she also was deeply influenced but what she saw in Russia as a young girl and the Bolshevik influence stayed very much with her.
I've read Atlas Shrugged. I have to say, it's an inspiring read. But everything about this book is coming from a mind that deep down inside, believes in the POWER OF THE PEOPLE, THE MASSES, THE PROLETARIAT.
(This may read like a book report, but after you read this, you'll never think of Ayn Rand the same way.)
The main characters in the novel are all the movers and shakers, the big industrialists. The world around them is falling apart and people are craving the riches that the entrepreneurs have earned with their hard work. The government too wants to eat the rich, and it does, but it is not competent enough to run all the industries that were created by the capitalists. As the world continues to crumble, the industrialists realize that their work has not been appreciated and they decide to go on strike. At the end of the novel, the leader of the strike, John Galt, delivers a message to the people on TV. The message is the outline of a new moral foundation for society, where everyone works for themselves only, and everyone reaps the benefits of only their own work.
That final moment in the novel is when Ayn Rand's true mind comes through. When John Galt delivers a message, to the PEOPLE, that's when the whole thing starts to look blatantly socialist. Why would the industrialists care about the PEOPLE. That whole scene reminds me of communist slogans. Communists were really big on slogans that tried to inspire people to work for a greater good. Capitalists don't deliver messages to the PEOPLE, they don't need to. Ayn Rand was not a capitalist, she was a socialist.
Another clue in Atlas Shrugged is the reoccurrence of the dollar sign. There are cigarettes with dollar signs, there are dollar signs made of gold. It reminds me of how the Germans put Swastikas all over the place. Its the same kind of emblem worship that is indicative of a socialist society. Capitalists societies don't need to have emblems, no hammer-and-sickles, no swastikas, no encompassing ideologies to worship.
Ayn Rand would've have made a great propaganda writer for the communists, if she had stayed in Russia. Instead she became a great novelist in America. Ayn Rand brought communism with her and she channeled it in such a form that people mistakenly took her for a capitalist. Since socialism has been so repressed in America, everyone was really starving for something like the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, something that combines the nuts and gears of American capitalism with the all the banner waving, slogan-loving, emblem-worship, parading, fist in the air, "power of the people" preaching", that socialists and communists love so much.