I was unhappy to learn recently that the woman who played a central role in my parents’ relationship, and by extension my creation, is an inspiration to both Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Since the woman in question is Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and chief apostle of “ethical selfishness”, perhaps I should not have been surprised. She is someone viewed as anything from the godmother of libertarianism to an enabler of sociopaths.
US philosopher and author Ayn Rand developed objectivism, a school of thought which hails individual rationality and free-market capitalism. Credit: The LIFE Images Collection
In my family home, she was very much the former. When my parents met, my mother was an objectivist, as Rand’s most ardent followers call themselves. She was drawn to the philosophy by its moral code, its emphasis on reason over emotion and its rejection of guilt. My father soon signed on; he has often said that Rand’s prime contention that people deserve to be happy changed his life. Objectivism became a shared passion that eventually led to the marriage that led to, well, me.
I’ve always thought I had one of the better childhoods, and at least some of this was down to Rand. Objectivists, or at least the ones I knew, don’t do indoctrination, but are big on honesty, reliability, encouraging curiosity and letting children make their own choices. It made for a golden combination of security and freedom. This is not to say things were entirely conventional. Out-and-proud atheists were rare in 1970s Queensland, as were “Taxation is theft” bumper stickers.
The hands-off approach meant I didn’t read Rand until my late teens, by which time my mother had parted ways with Rand’s philosophy. I liked many of her ideas: that integrity is important, that people like and need to feel productive, and that those who crave power should be feared and distrusted. I never thought of myself as an objectivist, though; her vision of a society based on undiluted capitalism and rampant individualism seems foolish at best and repulsive at worst.
Something I didn’t understand then was quite how differently others saw Rand. It was, of all things, the cheesy/sleazy 1987 romance Dirty Dancing that opened my eyes, in the scene where Max Cantor’s odious, preppy character justifies himself by brandishing The Fountainhead and saying: “Some people count. Some people don’t.” It left me sputtering with outrage and wondering how anyone could form such a perverted version of the book’s message.
Writer Ayn Rand has influenced both Donald Trump and Elon Musk.Credit: Illustration: Monique Westermann
Now it is no mystery at all. Rand’s heroes are, without exception, egotistical geniuses who triumph over the ignorance and envy of the mob. It’s a short step from there to contempt for that mob. When Trump said in an interview before his first term that he identified with Howard Roark, hero of The Fountainhead, you could only imagine that “some people count” is exactly what he took from it.
As mentioned, I should not have been surprised to find Trump nodding to Rand. Correctly or not, she is said to be a major influence on right-wing thought. While you’d struggle to find a Republican who’d endorse her atheism or support of abortion rights, her antipathy to government regulation was an inspiration for the Tea Party movement that preceded MAGA, and she has been name-checked by Trump-backing tech moguls such as Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, not to mention quoted by Musk in his war on the US government. More than 40 years after her death, Rand’s voice is still heard.
