52 Comments

• 1. AAARGH  |  May 30th, 2011 at 7:24 pm

  Mark, that douchy Ken Burns music at the beginning almost made me go postal. Was there a rich hippie from Boulder shatting out perfect odorless diamonds in the studio when that was playing? Jeebus, that place is nauseating. So sad it is what passes for “left” in the US.

• 2. Erik Victory  |  May 30th, 2011 at 7:57 pm

  This is terrific. I fucking hate Ayn Rand.

• 3. vortexgods  |  May 30th, 2011 at 9:04 pm

  Ken Levine used Ayn Rand (an Ayn Rand figure, Andrew Ryan) as the heavy in the game Bioshock. His explanation? “All of her heroes sound like supervillains.”

  Alan Moore explained how he saw Ayn Rand in an interview about his comic series, Watchmen, “White supremacist dreams of a master race.” He used her as a basis for the hero of that series, Rorschach. Actually, he was based more on one of her disciples, Steve Ditko, creator of Spider-man. He was a crazy homeless man who didn’t compromise on his extremely flawed, and extremely black and white view of the world. He was the most compelling character in the story, much as Andrew Ryan was in Bioshock.

  Why? I’ll quote The Big Lebowski here, “Whatever you may think of the tenets of National Socialism, at least its an ethos.”

  Followers of Rand are allowed to be deadly earnest and deadly serious. Followers of her “leftish” equivalent, Jon Stewart? Why, they’d be laughed at at all the hip parties.

  When communism died, the kind of grim, humorless Marxism seemed to die with it, at least in the US. And one needs to be grim and humorless.

  Because what’s being done to us all? It ain’t funny.

• 4. RanDomino  |  May 30th, 2011 at 10:11 pm

  Very good. The point about how to fight back is right on- as was indicated by the book “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” which was written as a similar analysis of the Nazis, you can’t fight them intellectually. They operate on a subconscious basis, power and sexuality. They can only be undermined, humiliated, and broken- but not reasoned with.

• 5. Jamie  |  May 31st, 2011 at 12:19 am

  Megadeth are a thrash metal band, not a death metal band. A very important distinction to metal loving pedants everywhere.

• 6. Chris E  |  May 31st, 2011 at 2:11 am

  Johann Hari has an excellent article on Rand on the back of reviewing a couple of biographies on her, which include her ultimate denoument – when her lover fell in love with someone else.

• 7. Matt  |  May 31st, 2011 at 4:21 am

  I love hearing it every time you do any public speaking. Lucid and with actual values… We need more! I’d like to see you do a debate with a moronic screaming sociopath who thinks they’re smart…

  I never read any Ayn Rand. I read a lot of Nietzsche a few years ago and I love the insight into being and the mind, etc… but I would never suggest him as a way to live.

  Anyways, these interviews on TV and the radio are some of the best stuff you do.

• 8. Dean Sayers  |  May 31st, 2011 at 7:16 am

  Mark,

  Glad to hear you refer to Rand’s ideas as “Marxism flipped on its head.” I’ve argued for a long time that she simply tried to create an extreme “anti-communism” and that was just about all that she used to shape her ideology.

  Objectivism is to Communism as Satanism is to Christianity. The negative versions can’t exist without their positive counterparts…

• 9. Alan  |  May 31st, 2011 at 7:57 am

  I read her books when I was a teen and ended up with a volume entitled: “The Virtue of Selfishness.” And Alan Greenspan digs this crap? Clarence Thomas? The Supreme Court justice who worked for Reagan and was nominated by GHW Bush?

  Rand radiates Nietzsche, Hitler’s love. Not strange, maybe, how this is linked to our corporatist state in America that has successfully towed evangelicals into its meme. Mussolini defined “fascism” as exactly what we have in our now hard-right country. It’s only fitting that Rand would become the guru and philosopher of the corporate usurpation of America. I didn’t see this coming when I was in the grips of Christian Right hypnosis.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar0_zA6xTco

• 10. SkinnersHorse  |  May 31st, 2011 at 8:16 am

  Great interview. I never really noticed the Nietzsche connection but it’s painfully clear now. As a big fan of his, it always hurts to see how his work has been treated by his ‘heirs’.

  Nietzsche produced a wryly humourous, ethically complex and deliberately self-contradictory canon – all too often reduced to dogmatic nonsense about ‘survival of the fittest’ by dispossessed middlebrows and angry nerds. Rand is just the worst of a bad bunch.

  And seriously shocking that anyone pays any attention at all to her. Anyone know of a country outside the US where she is taken seriously?

• 11. Ratko Mladic  |  May 31st, 2011 at 11:01 am

  Ayn Rand?

  ‘AYN RAND’?

  Does no one have a sense of humor any more?

  Just torques my jaws.

• 12. swummyfooshes  |  May 31st, 2011 at 11:11 am

  boulder colorado definitely sucks cock, that intro music and narration was fucking god awful. on the contrary ames was great

• 13. Victorvalley Villain  |  May 31st, 2011 at 11:17 am

  I would actually like to give Megadeath a shot at running the country. They can’t have worse politics than Bush and Obama.

• 14. Thomzas  |  May 31st, 2011 at 11:39 am

  Ayn Rand is just Nietzsche for idiots.

  This is Bertrand Russell’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s doctrine..

  “If men will read my works, a certain number of them will come to share my desires as regards the organization of society; these men, inspired by the energy and determination which my philosophy will give them, can preserve and restore aristocracy, whith themselves as aristocrats or (like me) sycophants of aristocracy. In this way they will achieve a fuller life than they can have as servants of the people.”

  Sound familiar?

  What about this?

  “There is another element in Nietzsche, which is closely akin to the objection urged by “rugged individualists” against trade-unions… We ought therefore to oppose every kind of union among the individually feeble, for fear lest their combined power should outweigh that of the individually strong.”

  Yep. She’s just an airport novel version.

• 15. Tupac Shakur  |  May 31st, 2011 at 1:21 pm

  Don’t dis the sistah like that, or me and the posse takes the next Amtrak from Nu Zeelun. “Biggie remember when I use to let you sleep on the couch – And beg the bitch to let you sleep in the house – Now it’s all about Versace – You copied my style – Five shots couldn’t drop me – I took it and smiled”

  Even that punkassed bitch Rand could appreciate that.

  Mwisho wa mawasiliano. Mimi niko nje ya hapa.

• 16. T.B.  |  May 31st, 2011 at 2:13 pm

  Ayn Rand was narcissitic and her novels were garbage. It’s hard to believe an institute has been dedicated to spreading her ideas! Just goes to show you that licking the heels of right-wing elite will get you notoriety and $$$. I’d get more knowledge from reading the Sunday Funny Comics than from one of her books.

  I give my respect to the naturalist, Theodore Dreiser. He was great writer who’s notoriety was quelched due his leftist beliefs. In his book Sister Carrie (1900), he wrote a passage that exemplified that period of time and stands true even today. This passage refers to Hurstwood, one of the main characters, who is trying to make it big in New York City. It is almost poetic with an emotional impact.

  “There is a more subtle result of such a situation as this, which, though not always taken into account, produces the tragedies of the world. The great create an atmosphere which reacts badly upon the small. This atmosphere is easily and quickly felt. Walk among the magnificent residences, the splendid equipages, the gilded shops, restaurants, resorts of all kinds; scent the flowers, the silks, the wines; drink of the laughter springing from the soul of luxurious content, of the glances which gleam like light from defiant spears; feel the quality of the smiles which cut like glistening swords and of strides born of place, and you shall know of what is the atmosphere of the high and mighty. Little use to argue that of such is not the kingdom of greatness, but so long as the world is attracted by this and the human heart views this as the one desirable realm which it must attain, so long, to that heart, will this remain the realm of greatness. So long, also, will the atmosphere of this realm work its desperate results in the soul of man. It is like a chemical reagent. One day of it, like one drop of the other, will so affect and discolour the views, the aims, the desire of the mind, that it will thereafter remain forever dyed. A day of it to the untried mind is like opium to the untried body. A craving is set up which, if gratified, shall eternally result in dreams and death. Aye! dreams unfulfilled–gnawing, luring, idle phantoms which beckon and lead, beckon and lead, until death and dissolution dissolve their power and restore us blind to nature’s heart.”

• 17. captain america  |  May 31st, 2011 at 8:29 pm

  i was an english teacher for the peace corps in a ukrainian high school from 2002 to 2004. my students absolutely loved “anthem.” i divided it into four parts for them, but after part two, they were begging me to please just give them the whole thing because they were that into it. just saying.

  then again, we are talking about ukrainians here, or “khokhlie” in the parlance of our times. so it’s not like they count

• 18. Mason C  |  May 31st, 2011 at 10:13 pm

  A top notch interview, even if the host wasn’t too prepared. He was swept along anyway and probably learned something.

  Where can we find the details of her early life in Russia? The Hari article talks about her family being “bourgeois” and “losing everything,” but didn’t mention serious loot. Seen not as an aggrieved immigrant but a dispossessed aristocrat, her behavior and followers make a lot more sense. She was the alpha-bootlicker, desperate for someone filthy rich to restore her cushy gig, but she had to settle for Social Security and Medicare. Now her marginal horde is on the same mission without understanding why.

  WIN Dept: finding out how passe she is in Russia.

• 19. maus  |  June 1st, 2011 at 2:25 pm

  @18: “She was the alpha-bootlicker, desperate for someone filthy rich to restore her cushy gig”

  Welfare to the very end!

  Hell, since sex for her wasn’t affection but a constant validation of her philosophical superiority, even fucking was showering her with undeserved praise.

• 20. captain america  |  June 1st, 2011 at 5:45 pm

  thank you censor for acknowledging my sad existence i will forever be grateful

• 21. captain america  |  June 1st, 2011 at 9:21 pm

  that works.

• 22. tt  |  June 1st, 2011 at 10:07 pm

  offtopic: I wish you would have edited the comments again, the stupidity exhibited here is disgusting and irrational, not to mention subjective.

  What is the point of having comments when you allow totally irrational parasites to slip past what I assume is a rational censorship policy?

  The decent thing would be to either leave the comments only to a select few–a sort of Galt’s Gulch for rational commenters such as myself– or if you can control my fascistfetish, then post my comments in whatever fashion you like.

• 23. Victorvalley Villain  |  June 1st, 2011 at 10:24 pm

  Ukrainians? How do they work?

  http://www.vvdailypress.com/articles/connections-27288-global-victorville.html

• 24. Chas  |  June 2nd, 2011 at 2:31 pm

  There is and always has been a primeval frontier type of lawlessness, or rather law-unto-oneself in Russia, that American Wild West fiction is only a very dim reflection of. The audacious banditry of Razin, Pugachev, Yermak, Shamil, and many others like them swept up vast territories and some, at their peak, would threaten even the throne. This is part of their folklore to this day. Some ethnic Russians from Siberia will still smash your head in for calling them a Russian rather than a Sibiriac. Ukes, whether Uniaty from Galich or Obrusevshy variety from the Left Bank of the Dneiper who otherwise hate each others guts, both pay homage to the mythic, unruly Zaporozhian Sech cossacks. To some these were and are heroes, to others traitorous, blood-thirsty cut-throats out only for their own gain and glory. This remained the basic instinct behind Ayn Rand, whatever else she claimed to be, a Zionist Jew at times or whatever caught her limited attention span at the moment

• 25. tt  |  June 2nd, 2011 at 6:53 pm

  its easy. stop posting comments if you dont like the way our esteemed exiled moderator improves and rationalizes the retarded comments.

  seriously, the fact that some people keep coming back here and posting comments that need vast improvement only proves what fucking retards we commenters can be.

  unless you edit them in a twisted way these retarded inbreds make themselves look like pathetic loners who live in their parents’ garage, though it does make the exile look like geniuses.

  Has my struggle vs the imaginary orwellian gnomes inhabiting my mind tainted my taint? Cant beat off, so should i just scrub my taint with bathing salts?

  every disagreeing voice on the internet is funded by banksters, i wish i could stop being so damn paranoid!

• 26. Strelnikov  |  June 2nd, 2011 at 9:05 pm

  On Rand being a Fascist I would say that her Fascism would have the Blackshirts working for corporations and not within the government (which would be tiny.) In truth, Rand is that thing to be most feared, the Right Anarchist (the watered-down version is called a Libertarian in the US or a Liberal in Britain.)

  Ames, you should have brought up that Rand drove her husband, bit actor Frank O’Connor to drink because she was fucking Nathaniel Branden from 1950-something to 1968. O’Connor drank himself to death over that heartless bitch.

  I read her shitty books in college and could not stop laughing at them – they were like Hitler Youth propaganda with all the anti-Semetic slurs replaced with anti-communist verbiage, coupled to these bizarre rape fantasies and love of brute force. She needed years on the couch, not Branden, Peikoff, a Scientology-like “Objectivism” movement, and two competing “Institutes” spreading her warped gospel.

• 27. The Imaginer  |  June 2nd, 2011 at 10:59 pm

  @VvV

  Fuckin’ miracles…

• 28. Viktor  |  June 3rd, 2011 at 3:59 am

  Great talk as usual Mark.

  Hate to be pedantic but it’s slightly off the mark to equate apergers/autism with lack of empathy. I think even severe autistics have more empathy than Rand.

• 29. Yam Digger  |  June 3rd, 2011 at 10:06 am

  The gods make mad those whom they are about to destroy.

• 30. Yam Digger  |  June 3rd, 2011 at 10:47 am

  What’s really sad about the Tea Party (bowel) Movement is that it’s supported by barely educated, barely literate working people in crappy jobs who don’t have the first clue that they’re fighting against they’re own best interest.

  As the song goes: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone”.

  Or as I would put it: “Those who are never satisfied with the good leadership they have, end up serving a cruel master.”

• 31. David  |  June 4th, 2011 at 3:28 am

  I disagree with Mark with regard to fascism. What they do have in common is they are both ideologies of adolescent jerks. However fascism emphasizes martial prowess, submission to the fascist state at the same time as a dominant attitude towards pariah groups, and so on. You don’t have to be anybody special. Whereas objectivists hardly believe in a state at all except perhaps in the form of the the power of the private firms run by objectivist supermen and in objectivism you basically have to be at least believe you’re some kind of superman. The fascists could actually organize a state; the objectivists will never be able to because they’re a bunch of deluded idiots who cannot cooperate for more than a couple months.

• 32. John  |  June 4th, 2011 at 9:05 am

  I was told to come on the comments section and claim that Ames is lying by my Objectivist comrades. Rand, the serial killer, was a monster. She didn’t like Leonard Piekoff at all.

• 33. Феликс Эдмундович Дзержинский  |  June 4th, 2011 at 11:02 am

  @25 tt: “. . . seriously, the fact that some people keep coming back here and posting comments that need vast improvement only proves what fucking retards we commenters can be.”

  Очень хорошо. Я люблю отсасывать пять членов подряд, и в задницу. Ох, в задницу, супер, не правда ли? Ну, я просто хуйсос который обслуживает мою Госпожу Айна Рэнда.

  Приятного апетита!

• 34. Sean Strang  |  June 4th, 2011 at 6:21 pm

  Nice interview, Mr. Ames. As someone who grew up in a suburban milieu of metalheads and punks, lived in Moscow ten years ago and used to read the Exile religiously at the Starlite Diner, I feel like you’re an old friend from a past life.

  Having said all that, I find your garden variety leftist analysis disappointing, as usual. I don’t care much for Ayn Rand either, but that’s not why I’m writing. What I wanted to discuss is a different kind of far right ideology, which you seem to be completely unaware of or at least uninterested in discussing. I’m talking about the ideology at the root of the fascist extremism of the 1930’s, and which is returning in our time: mystical/racialist/nationalist rightism, which began with people like Helena Blavatsky (an even stranger Russian noblewoman than Rand), was influenced by Nietzsche, embraced by Nazi ideologues, given intellectual weight by Mircea Eliade and Julius Evola, and has occasionally erupted into the American consciousness via strange characters like Charles Manson.

  I just wanted to point out this cultural blindspot of yours, because while you focus your ire on dull plutocrats like the Koch brothers, the real architects of the new order are working less visibly to overthrow the entire ideological foundation of this age. This is one area where Christian fundamentalists are very perceptive; they pay attention to powerful spiritual forces which secularists often totally miss. When these forces erupt again, as I have no doubt they soon will, you will have at least been warned that such alien, powerful undercurrents exist in millions of American minds.

  What cosmopolitan, secular leftists who speak so cynically of “flyover states” can’t ever seem to grasp is the lasting power of culture, tribe and spirituality in human affairs. By attempting to reduce politics to cynical economic power games, you are ignoring the most powerful drivers of human history. It’s impossible to understand the influence of people like Moses, Jesus, Mohammed or Hitler via Marxist or neoliberal analysis. Similarly, neoliberals find al Qaeda’s global appeal incomprehensible; they laughably attempt to blame it on poverty, despite the fact that bin Laden was rich and the 9-11 hijackers were mostly middle class. Nor do our so-called leaders seem to understand why Western people are starting to resist the invasion of their lands by people of other tribes and cultures in the guise of economic progress.

  The right is becoming militant because they are waking up to the fact that their culture is under attack by a monstrous combination of cultural leftism, economic globalism and Islamic extremism which is destroying the middle class world you and I grew up with. Personally I fear it may be too late for much of Western civilization; the seeds of our cultural collapse were planted long ago and will soon bear their bitter fruit in Holy Wars and open tribal conflict as economic conditions worsen.

  So let me just say in closing that I appreciate your writing and your level of culture, but I’m challenging you to broaden you understanding of politics, culture and civilization beyond your cynical, materialistic, modernist lens. Your time in Russia should have at least made you aware of how insane and untenable modern multicultural America really is. The future is likely to be quite shocking if you don’t take your blinders off and look more deeply at the root of the problems facing America today.

• 35. Sean Strange  |  June 4th, 2011 at 8:29 pm

  Ignore everything I wrote in my last post. That was one of my other personalities writing, and the bastard’s a real troll.

• 36. Scratch  |  June 5th, 2011 at 3:22 am

  Its embarrassing that Americans need to latch onto Rand for anything, other than a decent case study in puerile rejection. I seen a decent documentary recently (same guys that did Century Of Self)that explicitly links Rand(through Greenspan) to your current bind. Greenspan was a logical positivist(equally absurd, as he used to try and convince his friends he did not exist…we still don’t believe you Mr Greenspan!) and was introduced to Rand in the hope she could talk him out of it…being the creepy motherfucker she was, he was small potatoes for her.
  It’s all too pathetic when there are people are sacrificing god given common sense for the musings of a twisted old hag. WAKE UP AMERICA! YOUR’E DINNERS’ GETTING COLD!

• 37. Cernunnos  |  June 5th, 2011 at 8:11 am

  @ 5

  Indeed. Megadeth are hardly death metal. It could perhaps be forgiven if it was one of the thrash bands that helped make way for death metal, like Slayer, Dark Angel, Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, Hellhammer, or Celtic Frost, but Megadeth is the other end of the thrash spectrum occupied by Metallica, Anthrax, Testament, etc.

  Death metal = Death, Morbid Angel, Carcass, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Obituary, Entombed, Dismember, Suffocation, Immolation, etc. Megadeth sounds hardly anything like those bands.

• 38. CensusLouie  |  June 5th, 2011 at 10:45 am

  Ha ha, that picture says it all. Show me an adult aged Ayn Rand fan and I will show you one fugly (white) motherfucker.

• 39. Sean Strange  |  June 5th, 2011 at 11:42 am

  Mark Ames, your criticisms of Randian capitalists are on the mark, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to the ideological horrors at one end of the political spectrum.

  The great enemies of all creative minds are banality and totalitarianism. Unfortunately, in America today these twin evils are as rampant on the “PC left” as they are on the “religious right”. Between this hellish hammer and anvil, our cultural vitality is being crushed, our minds imprisoned, and our Orwellian future assured. Creative destruction of this monstrous status quo is therefore the first obligation of all free thinkers. “Left” and “right” are no longer useful distinctions in the current environment!

• 40. DrunktankDan  |  June 6th, 2011 at 2:58 am

  The peasants are gathering on Ames’ front lawn, pitchforks in hand. “We NEED new content!” they demand. “We NEED to know where to direct our anger!”. Let’s get some more War Nerd in this bitch. Or Yasha. Or Ames. I volunteer my freetime as a researcher. Lemme know.

• 41. Teskulon  |  June 6th, 2011 at 6:18 am

  ‘“Left” and “right” are no longer useful distinctions in the current environment!’

  But then how will we know who pays for who? I keep it simple:

  Koch pays for the right, Soros for the left, and Carlos Slim for everyone not to mention Carlos Slim and his 74 billion dollar net worth.

• 42. Victorvalley Villain  |  June 7th, 2011 at 9:40 am

  Redefine the enemy!

• 43. Mason C  |  June 7th, 2011 at 4:07 pm

  In case there’s any lingering doubt:
  http://www.chesskb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/chess-politics/2771/Ayn-Rand-s-Letter-to-Boris-Spassky-Bobby-Fisher

• 44. .  |  June 8th, 2011 at 5:18 pm

  i’m a libertard who is gonna pretend like i hate rand too (in reality i wank off to pictures of her–just look at that stunning woman!) but then i’m gonna say that you all sound like a bunch of hicks with your “libertard” slang because it really does hurt me because i am a libertard. see we know that all rand worshipping libertarians are dumbshit libertards, but we don’t want to face the truth.

  

• 45. Fosdyke  |  July 4th, 2011 at 10:33 am

  The recent retard-propaganda campaign defending Rand as soon as the teabaggers retards started carrying signs like cult zombies about John Galt has been surprisingly retarded and inbred-fueled.

  Why are you so afraid of inbred retards?

• 46. Fosdyke  |  July 4th, 2011 at 7:29 pm

  question funny monkey Rand, do a search for “Ayn Rand box mow Nathan teenager”

  For instance: “Nathan Branden had to mow Ayn Rand’s rank 80-year-old box every day in order to launch his self-esteem business”

  “Ayn’s box was disgusting people: more delicious than any communist.”

• 47. Anathame  |  July 4th, 2011 at 8:37 pm

  Ayn Rand was misanthropy personified into a staggeringly ugly lump of a woman. Her entire “philosophy” was just the insane gibberish of someone who was angry at the world because no one else could see how brilliant she was.

  Seriously, the crap she put on paper makes Stephanie Myers gay vampire books look like the work of a genius

  tl;dr

  Ayn Rand was a cunt

• 48. CAW  |  July 25th, 2011 at 9:19 pm

  “Two novels can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other involves orcs.”-Some random commenter @ Newsweek.com

• 49. Quentin Cumbers  |  September 20th, 2011 at 9:57 am

  Hello foolish comment monkey intern (COMINTERN), have you figured out you are a brainwashed cult-member and jumped ship yet?

  You should go work for Jack Idema; Mark Ames with class. And AIDS.

• 50. Quentin Cumbers  |  September 20th, 2011 at 10:10 am

  “First, they came for the Objectivists. But I did not speak out because I don’t say anything that doesn’t come directly from my superiors – Heil Ames!”

  Of course, we are both continuing the amusing fiction that Mark Ames gives a fuck enough or has the time to employ anybody at this fucking amazing evolution of the the Exile that has been kicking so much ass lately; we both know that my comment is a last desperate attempt to generate value from a vastly dwindling, jaded rightwing scam. As the wheel looses traction, it spins more….

• 51. Biff Grizzly  |  January 4th, 2012 at 11:49 am

  Ayn Rand’s biggest fan in my life was mom, ” Norma – the perfect girl ” ) who applied rand’s principles to her life daily – while daddy was raping junior, she pretended it was not happening – hell,it wasn’t happening to her – that’s what counted!

• 52. Robert  |  February 17th, 2013 at 6:25 am

  The fact is that I’m a Randroid. Yabba Dabba Doo.

Leave a Comment

(Open to all. Comments can and will be censored at whim and without warning.)

Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed