Ayn Rand fans – both the dedicated Objectivists and the Tea Party libertarians – will not be surprised to see Rand slimed in Time magazine. In her early, unpublished work, Rand biographer Anne Heller asserts in Rand’s characters she is “glimpsing Charleston gunman Dylann Roof and his lethal ilk.”
Heller told Time readers "Rand hated ordinary people with a vengeance." In this passage, she’s commenting on Ideal, a novella that is being staged as a play in New York:
As Ayn Rand’s biographer, I came to appreciate certain things about her: her willingness to persevere as an outsider, her hard work, her ferocious drive to formulate and articulate what, like it or not, were ideas, not dictums or even policy papers. Yet reading Ideal today, I can’t help glimpsing Charleston gunman Dylann Roof and his lethal ilk in the undoubting fanaticism of Johnny Dawes and I am appalled.
On Heller’s own website, her earlier version of the article included Roof and Denver theater shooter James Holmes:
As Ayn Rand’s biographer, I came to appreciate certain things about her: her willingness to persevere as an outsider, her hard work, her ferocious drive to formulate and articulate what, like it or not, were ideas, not dictums or even policy papers. Yet reading Ideal today, I can’t help glimpsing Dylann Roof, James Holmes, and all their murderous kind in the undoubting fanaticism of Johnny Dawes and am appalled.
I haven't read Ideal or The Little Street, the other "stunningly harsh and anti-social" work Heller cites. But it should be plain that Rand never published these while she was alive, and perhaps she left them unpublished for a reason or two.
