“Extremism,” or The Art of Smearing
by Ayn Rand, From Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Among the many symptoms of today’s moral bankruptcy, the performance of the so-called “moderates” at the Republican National Convention was the climax, at least to date. It was an attempt to institutionalize smears as an instrument of national policy – to raise those smears from the private gutters of yellow journalism to the public summit of a proposed inclusion in a political party platform. The “moderates” were demanding a repudiation of “extremism” without any definition of that term.
Ignoring repeated challenges to define what they meant by “extremism,” substituting vituperation for identification, they kept the debate on the level of concretes and would not name the wider abstractions or principles involved. They poured abuse on a few specific groups and would not disclose the criteria by which these groups had been chosen. The only thing clearly perceivable to the public was a succession of snarling faces and hysterical voices screaming with violent hatred – while denouncing “purveyors of hate” and demanding “tolerance.”
This essay was originally published in the September 1964 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter and later
anthologized in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966 and 1967).
https://courses.aynrand.org/works/extremism-or-the-art-of-smearing/