It’s surprising how much horrifying ideology begins with novels. The Turner Diaries. Atlas Shrugged. Battlefield Earth. LaVoy Finicum’s Only by Blood & Suffering. Donald Barr’s Space Relations.

Factual accuracy is not the right way to talk to people about fictional characters and fictional worlds.

I recommend formal analysis of these books—many of them sci-fi—by literary critics. That would lay good groundwork for journalists trying to understand terrorists.

. @adriandaub suggests a good reading of Ayn Rand’s novels as novels that I hadn’t thought of before in #whattechcallsthinking

There are two parts to reading novels: suspending disbelief and then, when the book’s done, unsuspending it.

I’m not a rabid fan of The Great Gatsby, but one thing that marked it as masterful is the way it aggressive walled off the figure of the American white supremacist in his own sci-fi world. Tom Buchanan is basically inadmissible to the moral order of the book.

This is hardly a reason to censor novels. It’s a reason to read more of them, & get good at it.

When I read Gatsby in public high school, I remember thinking, “One day you will come across someone enthusiastic about a scientific book about ‘the races.’ He is a bad person.”

THAT passage, no kidding, saved me a ton of time with Charles Murray, the intellectual dark web, etc etc.

Teach facts and empathy but please also teach how to read fiction.

P.S. Sure as a teenager I wanted to be blasé like Daisy and sporty like Jordan but above all I wanted to never, ever marry a man like Tom Buchanan.