[fusiongyro]

And I hear you can support the capitalist system by buying shirts with Che Guevara's face on them. Or perhaps referencing equal parts Ayn Rand, Hemmingway, Poe and Cervantes might be more of an attempt to bring to mind famous authors rather than objectivism?

[oulipian]

Sure. But it's like using a picture of a circle, a triangle, a square, and a swastika to suggest "geometric shapes".

[fusiongyro]

No, it's like using a picture of a circle, a triangle, a square and a swastika to suggest "famous shapes." And of course, Godwin's law and all that on you.

[forensic]

Why would you put a swastika on your business in any situation?

Ayn Rand is for Glengary Glen Ross wannabes. Not for your typical creative writer.

[fusiongyro]

Unless Ayn Rand murdered a few million people on the side, her face is in no way commensurate with a swastika.

[forensic]

Objectivism caused Goldman Sachs, Alan Greenspan, the 2008 crash, countless corporate psychopaths... The death count is more than a few million.

GS alone is responsible for a famine.

Have you ever been to their offices? Copies of Atlas Shrugged on every desk.

Destructive ideologies that advocate fucking the poor and letting them die definitely cause deaths.

[fusiongyro]

The logical convolutions you have to go through to make Ayn Rand into Hitler are absurd. Marxism has easily killed ten times that number, many by accident, many intentionally, yet few hold Marx personally responsible or would find his face a repugnant symbol of death.

You're allowing your opinion of an ideology to turn it into nazism, but in so doing you must overlook what makes nazism unique: that it does indeed advocate murdering people simply for being different as a solution to problems—and that it actually did murder millions of people directly. Ayn Rand did not do any of that. At worst, she advanced a philosophy whose overzealous application by unscrupulous people with power led to deaths. If that's enough to make you Hitler, nearly every philosopher or novelist is, or would be if they were simply famous enough.

In short: calm down. She's included in the image because her novels are in the 100 Most Influential List put out by some non-profit. Not because she was a saint.