Heidi: Raniere Discovered Ayn Rand Through My Mother

Heidi Hutchinson

By Heidi Hutchinson

There was a huge cult around Ayn Rand and the Rand Institute, established long before Keith Alan Raniere discovered Ayn Rand’s brilliance.  The Rand Institute hosts a “think tank”’ centered in liberal Los Angeles where conservative intellects gather to plot world salvation around her philosophy. Or their interpretation of her philosophy.

Rand’s background is interesting. Her family wealth was drained by the Nazis take on “eminent domain” — the policy that gives the government the right [and power] to appropriate and redistribute property for the “greater good.” KAR put paying taxes on that list.

The Nazis helped themselves to Rand’s family wealth in Germany before she fled, wrote her embittered fictions such as Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead and became a sort of spokesperson touting anti-socialist views on talk shows like Mike Douglas, Phil Donohue, and Johnny Carson .

Rand also has a lot of titillating things to say about a woman’s sexual sway over men, though she’s not terribly attractive. Things like, “Tell me a man’s philosophy and I’ll tell you his sexual pleasures” — to that effect. That was edgy talk from a lady for TV in those days.

And, no, I didn’t catch those shows live any more than I was ever in a hippie commune. And my sister, Gina Hutchinson, and Pam Cafritz never poisoned girls from Libya — as Crazy Days and Nights reported as a rumor – when they were being fed misinformation from who I suppose were NXIVM insiders.

I’ve researched Ayn Rand beyond the cliff notes. KAR discovered Rand through book report assignments meted out or taken on by one of his first students, my sister, Gina, whose family was mesmerized into letting his first acolyte drop out of school, just like Dani did, to receive his tutoring and imbibe his teachings.

Our mother was a Rand fan mostly because the US government absconded with a third of our land in Clifton Park, NY to build a highway under “eminent domain.” And she loved her afternoon talk shows and Rand’s sass – that she would never dare repeat herself.

But, in the end, she was a bleeding heart liberal, wanna-be feminist housewife, part-time social worker distributing blankets to the homeless on bitter cold Albany, NY nights before becoming a military museum curator.

Rand’s talk show interviews are far more interesting than her books. In some, Rand completely contradicts the most popular interpretation of her fictional works — end welfare and let the stupid, lazy poor folks fend for themselves while robbing them.

I don’t see anyone striving to end eminent domain or taxes on the poor and middle-class. Although the filthy rich conservatives and liberals in combined power did recently end inheritance tax without a fight, not a peep of opposition to that pesky tax relief for the ultra rich who want to keep all that loot in the family after all the tax hoops and loopholes they had to jump through to get it.

Justice for Gina, free Ally Mack, free the NX slaves from their mental prisons. Let India and Dani and Frank Report lead the way!

Ayn Rand

First published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged remained on The New York Times Bestseller List for 21 weeks, peaking at number four. Sales of Atlas Shrugged averaged 74,000 copies per year in the 1980s; 95,300 copies per year in the 1990s; 167,098 copies per year in the 2000s, and 303,523 copies in the 2010s. In 2011 Atlas Shrugged sold 415,000 copies.  Atlas Shrugged has made numerous “best of” lists. In 1991 the Book of the Month Club and Library of Congress asked readers to name the most influential book in their lives: Atlas Shrugged came in second only to the Bible.  The novel made the New York Public Library’s list of Best Books of the Century in 1996, and Radcliffe Publishing ranked it 92 out of the top 100 novels of the 20th century. In 1999, Atlas Shrugged was number 37 in the list of 100 Favorite Novels of Librarians. A Harris poll placed Atlas Shrugged on America’s Top 10 Favorite Book List in 2008, and The Modern Library ranked it the number one best novel published in the English language in 2009. The novel is listed as number six on Boston Library’s list of 100 Most Influential Books of the Century, and it ranks number five on the list of the 20 Most Inspirational Books ever written. Atlas Shrugged has been translated into 14 languages, including Chinese (2007).  All told it has sold around 7 million copies.

The book [and its author] has one other, lesser known and perhaps somewhat dubious distinction – his interpretation of it was the inspiration [or justification] of many of Keith Alan Raniere’s ideas on government, freedom, seeking one’s own happiness and operating a cult.

Keith Raniere strikes his ‘Thinker’ pose.

The Mayor of Escobedo, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, Clara Luz Flores Carrales, who is a Nxivm coach, poses for a photograph at Nxivm’s Monterrey Center. Note on the wall behind her are large photographs of Einstein, and Gandi and in between them is Ayn Rand.