Editing Objectivist movement (section)

===Responses===
Rand stated that "I am not a cult",<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7cje1I3VM|title=Ayn Rand Phil Donahue Part 5|website=[[YouTube]] |access-date=May 23, 2020|archive-date=February 21, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210221222151/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7cje1I3VM|url-status=live}}</ref> and said in 1961 that she did not want "blind followers".<ref>{{cite book |last=Rand |first=Ayn |title=[[Letters of Ayn Rand]] |editor-first=Michael S. |editor-last=Berliner |location=New York |publisher=Dutton |year=1995 |isbn=0-525-93946-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/lettersofaynrand00rand_0/page/592 592]}} In a letter to Ida Macken (December 10, 1961), Rand wrote, "A ''blind follower'' is precisely what my philosophy condemns and what I reject. Objectivism is not a mystic cult." (emphasis in original)</ref> In the wake of NBI's collapse, she declared that she did not even want an organized movement.<ref>{{harvnb|Rand|1968a|p=471}} "I want, therefore, to make it emphatically clear that Objectivism is not an organized movement and is not to be regarded as such by anyone."</ref>

Jim Peron responded to Shermer, Rothbard and others with an argument that similarities to cults are superficial at best and charges of cultism directed at Objectivists are ''[[ad hominem]]'' attacks. Objectivism, he said, lacks layers of initiation, a hierarchy, obligation, cost or physical coercion:
{{blockquote|I cannot see how a disembodied philosophy can be a cult. I say Objectivism was disembodied because there was no Objectivist organization to join. The Nathaniel Branden Institute gave lectures, but had no membership. You could subscribe to a newsletter but you couldn't join. Objectivism was, and is, structureless. And without a structure there cannot be cult. [...] The vast majority of self-proclaimed Objectivists are people who read Rand's works and agreed with her. Most have never attended an Objectivist meeting nor subscribed to any Objectivist newsletter.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Peron |first=Jim |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021014162005/http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.31/obj_cult4.html |url=http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.31/obj_cult4.html |title=Is Objectivism a Cult? Part 4: Understanding Cults |journal=The Laissez-Faire City Times |volume=4 |issue=31 |date=July 31, 2000 |access-date=July 29, 2009 |archive-date=October 14, 2002}}</ref>}}

In 2001, Rand's long-time associate Mary Ann Sures remarked:
{{blockquote|Some critics have tried to turn her certainty into a desire on her part to be an authority in the bad sense, and they accuse her of being dogmatic, of demanding unquestioning agreement and blind loyalty. They have tried, but none successfully, to make her into the leader of a cult, and followers of her philosophy into cultists who accept without thinking everything she says. This is a most unjust accusation; it's really perverse. ''Unquestioning agreement is precisely what Ayn Rand did not want.'' She wanted you to think and act independently, not to accept conclusions because she said so, but because you reached them by using your mind in an independent and firsthand manner.<ref>{{cite book |title=Facets of Ayn Rand |last1=Sures |first1=Mary Ann |last2=Sures |first2=Charles |location=Los Angeles |publisher=Ayn Rand Institute Press |year=2001 |isbn=0-9625336-5-3 |url=http://www.facetsofaynrand.com/ |name-list-style=amp |page=29 |access-date=May 31, 2009 |archive-date=March 16, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090316094148/http://facetsofaynrand.com/ |url-status=live }} (emphasis in original)</ref>}}

Meanwhile, Shermer, who considers himself an admirer of Rand, has tempered his judgment. Contrasting Peikoff's "heavy-hammer approach" with the "big-tent approach" of The Atlas Society, Shermer told Ed Hudgins: "If we're close enough on the same page about many things, I think it's more useful to cut people some slack, rather than going after them on some smaller points. I don't see the advantage of saying, 'You shouldn't have liked that movie because ultimately, if you were an Objectivist, you wouldn't have.' I guess it was those sorts of judgments made by some Objectiv[ists] that I objected to."<ref name="shermertni">{{cite web |first=Edward |last=Hudgins |title=Interview with Michael Shermer |date=January–February 2007 |work=The New Individualist |publisher=The Objectivist Center |url=http://www.atlassociety.org/tni/tnis-interview-michael-shermer |access-date=April 29, 2014 |archive-date=April 30, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140430014819/http://www.atlassociety.org/tni/tnis-interview-michael-shermer |url-status=live}}</ref>