Never try to engage with Ayn Rand's work in good faith: worst mistake of my life. She and her fanboys are basically the human version of brainy smurf. Even the name, Objectivism, is her bragging about herself. Thus since they are akin to brainy smurf, don't bother arguing with them because they will claim omniscience. Instead, deal with them as the rest of the smurfs dealt with brainy smurf.
Me: "Oil companies are using their private property to inflict environmental pollution that I do not consent to. Since they are using their property for evil, we should limit their use of a property. This way no one gets physically harmed, not even the oil tycoon."
Rand's Response: "This is stupid, how dare you tell someone what to do with their property. Live and let live! It is actually moral to let people use things that rightfully belong to them for immoral reasons."
Native Americans: "I just want to be left alone please."
Native Americans: "Didn't you just say people who own property should do whatever they please with it, and anyone who has a problem with it should mind their own business?"
Rand's Response: "Ugh, you fucking IDIOTS! Clearly you know nothing about my philosophy of IKnowEverythingIsm."
Me: "Uhhh...okay. I gotta say, insisting that you are the standing authority on all knowledge is a little dogmatic, it sounds kind of like a reli..."
Rand's Response: "UGH! RELIGION IS FOR IDIOTS AND IS AN INSULT TO THINKING!"
I genuinely wanted to read something from the right's POV so I could better understand them, lest I become as dogmatic as Rand here. So far, the closest I got was reading some classical liberal stuff like Plato's Republic, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and some Nietzsche. But it seems like anything further is just full on pompous dogshit. The Chapo book had more depth than this.
If you ever find something that makes vague sense, I’d be interested to hear about it. I’ve read Siege by James Mason and it was largely typical fascist talking points and very affective rather than analytical. I thought that maybe the book the fascists convinced each other to read would have some sort of aha moment similar to when I first read State and Revolution. At least something to make what they do have some internal consistency. There was none.
I’ve heard Mussolini’s writing is better. Burke is considered the father of conservatism, but then you’re getting back to reading older thought. Another one that gets pushed pretty often is von Mises. I dunno. I think at this point, having a rough overview of key thinkers’ frameworks is enough to contextualize readings about history. Getting into the political leanings of historians tends to be a little more grounded.
Mussolini's Doctrine was ghostwritten by Gentile, who is actually kinda interesting to read despite being a :no-fash: . If you wanna go down the far-right thinkers rabbithole just out of curiosity, you're better off checking out the people who were actually pretty influential as thinkers: Schmitt, Spengler, Evola, Gentile, and especially Sorel who was a Marxist that set the ball rolling on the development of Fascism. You're probably not gonna get a lot out of them since all of them (save for maybe Schmitt, whose political project can be summed up as completely fucking destroying liberal democracy and everything it stands for) are pretty batshit, ESPECIALLY Evola, who is worth reading for the :jesse-wtf: alone and for getting the point of view of a true reactionary to the core. If anything ,the biggest benefit you get from reading them, besides knowing thy enemy, is getting a good knowledge of reactionary thought traps you shouldn't fall into. You should also know ahead of time that absolutely no right-winger actually reads their own theory, especially no far-righter, so if you ever go through with reading these guys you should know you're probably alone in doing so lmao
As an aside, all of these draw their influences from reactionary interpretations of earlier, much better known thinkers, like for example Evola says his main influences are Plato and Nietzsche and urges people to read them instead. So basically, you would be getting all right wing thought and more by just getting going through the important thinkers in philosophy and political theory from antiquity to today..
If you want a book I genuinely, whole-heartedly recommend to communists: "Coup d'Etat; Technique of Revolution" by Curzio Malaparte. He's an Italian fascist, later turned Communist (and for some reason, Catholic?) who, as the title implies, went through the effort of analyzing the art of a coup d'etat and forceful seizure of power. I recommend it mainly for the honestly incredible chapters on the October Revolution and Soviet Russia, breaking down the Bolsheviks seizure of power, written as more of an "this is what a communist insurrection looks like and what to watch out for", which ironically ended up an extremely good guide for a communist insurrection lmao. The book, written in 1931, also gives a pretty dismissive portrait of Hitler as a mere reactionary and a simple imitator of Mussolini, which is interesting since you get to see what the rise of Hitler looks like from the point of view of an ardent Mussolini fan.
Thanks for the tip!
For what it's worth, there is a handful of classic lib stuff still holds up in my book. Thomas Paine was bretty based for his time. Common Sense even starts off with this banger of a paragraph:
"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general Favor; a long Habit of not thinking a Thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of Custom. But the Tumult soon subsides. Time makes more Converts than Reason"
Yeah, Thomas Paine was most certainly a :LIB:, but there are times when Common Sense makes him sound like a proto antifa-supersoldier:
"Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which would supercede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but Heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other: and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue." Basically, Thomas Paine is pro-society but anti-government. He isn't exactly like Thomas Hobbes because his reasoning is "human nature complicated" rather than "human nature bad".
Also, this paragraphs gives an actual coherent reason for "limited government":
"I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered"
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