Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged consistently shows up in readers' polls as one of the most influential novels ever written. Sporting paper-thin characters and a threadbare, boring plot that serves mainly as a platform for dispensing evil-tasting doses of Objectivist dogma, the book is of little interest to anyone looking for a good read. Quite a perplexing notion... a lousy novel that has gained a large and passionately devoted following.

Propaganda had its origins with the Jesuits. "Propagating" the faith was the purpose of the spoken and written word delivered to all varieties of unbelievers. For the word has power, the power to move persons, to move entire nations, the power to change history. After all, "In the beginning was the Word..."

The modern propaganda novel can trace its development from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Emil Zola's Nana, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, and Andre Malraux's La Condition Humaine, and finally to the notorious The Turner Diaries. The impact of such books has ranged from inspiring far-reaching social legislation to inciting terrorist acts, and even triggering bloody civil wars. These books were not intended to entertain, and in some cases fail even to uplift or educate the reader. Some of the most effective of them are poorly written, by most literary standards. The paradox is that good writing is not necessarily synonymous with powerful writing, and that great "art" does not always make for powerful demagoguery. The converse also holds true.

Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls tells a wondrous story - it is a novel with an engrossing plot and finely crafted characters. It has passed the test of time and endures as must-read literature. Unfortunately, it cannot claim to have converted many to the cause it espouses. By publication time, the Spanish Civil War had already been lost, and most of its intended audience had been brought over to anit-Fascism by the march of events.

A great novel may engage the reader, even leave her changed in some fundamental way, yet fail to arouse the passions to the same extent as a poorly written, 500 page heavy-handed diatribe that just happens to meet her particular needs - like a peg fitting exactly into a hole designed for it, or, more compellingly, a virus locking onto a matching receptor site.

Effective propaganda is timely, addressing pressing concerns, giving simple solutions to difficult problems. It leaves the readers thinking they are 'something special', and singles out scapegoats for their failures and faults. It tells the target audience what they need to hear. It grows and reproduces in a receptive medium, the minds of its followers. The propaganda model may have inspired Richard Dawkins' "memes", self-replicating ideas that seem to have a life of their own. Just as advertising jingles rattle around in your head and refuse to die, so do some propaganda slogans perpetuate themselves by hitching a ride in the minds of the susceptible, like some subtle, but malignant brain virus.

Objectivism designates its followers as the ones bearing the torch of Reason and Civilization, and exhorts them to combat parasites and altruists, the enemies of all that is Good and Right. Those who disagree are dismissed as incapable of using their reason or are branded as outright "evil", a word used promiscuously by some of the more rabid Rand fanatics. True dialog with the 'outside world' is discouraged. The argumentative energy of Objectivists seems reserved for convincing and recruiting new followers. For members of a movement, any movement, screaming epithets has always been easier than listening and questioning one's own beliefs.