December 2024
Dear Atlas Society Supporter,
The kids are all right—and they’re about to get even better.
In the most recent presidential elections, regardless of how you feel about the outcome, it’s clear that young people (especially young men) are retreating from the socialist left. In fact, we we witnessed a *29-percentage-point shift to the right* among young men (18–29) from 2020 to 2024—and while young women remain far more progressive, even this demographic shifted away from the left during the past four years.
The Atlas Society is at the vanguard of driving this sea change.
Ayn Rand is universally recognized as the “all time greatest recruiter for the liberty movement,” and The Atlas Society relentlessly engages Gen Z with Rand’s ideas in creative formats and at a scale never achieved before.
We’ve been able to accomplish this feat because we believed it was possible. And we believed it was possible because The Atlas Society rejects the conventional wisdom that young people are indoctrinated beyond repair. The unfortunate reality is that Gen Z is represented by the loudest voices on social media and on campus, spewing hatred of America, Israel, capitalism and Western Civilization over the past year.
And I’m personally no stranger to it, having been assaulted by a *trans-man* (a young woman who believes she’s a man) while giving a speech at Mercer College this past spring.
I’ve had the privilege of following this incredible team’s work for years, and I was finally able to attend their annual conference in person this summer. Their passion and expertise are truly inspiring. I highly recommend getting involved in their projects and programs. It’s a fantastic opportunity to learn and grow.
— Sebastian K.
I’d traveled to Macon, Georgia to speak about Atlas Shrugged to 150+ students, and this troubled young person decided this would be a good occasion to accuse me of supporting genocide, and push me around. I was having none of it, and had the protestor arrested. The administration pressured me to not press charges. I ignored
them, and he/she has now been convicted.
But if you focus on the shrillest voices on campus like this one—or the deranged opinions on TikTok—you’ll miss a larger, much more hopeful shift that’s happening— and one that I believe is directly being driven by your investment in our work at The Atlas Society.
Let’s stick with my animated young attacker on campus. If you believe the polls—and after how pathetically they failed to capture our most recent election results, I hope you don’t—you’d have been rightfully terrified by the Harvard Harris poll that came out last December suggesting that 60% of Gen Z publicly said Hamas was justified in killing those 1,200 Israelis.
Insane, right?
Except, it’s wrong.
Best organization around doing what they are doing.
Masters of inclusion and constructive engagement. — Brent H.
In my recent podcast interview with Todd Rose, author of Collective Illusions, he told me: “Sure enough, we’ve dug in and did the private opinion research, and it turns out it’s not 60% of Gen Z. It is 2% of Gen Z. It’s just that they think that’s what their peers believe, because that’s what they’re hearing from on social media.” And moreover, what they’re “hearing” turns out, more often than not, to be Iranian and Chinese and Russian bots weaponized to try and turn young people against Israel—and against America.
So what do malevolent state actors know about how to influence young people? The same thing that The Atlas Society knows—and has been pursuing relentlessly over the past eight years in our moonshot to engage a billion young minds with the ideas of Ayn Rand.
We’re fighting fire with fire:
• Launching more than 2,600 graphic memes a year, each one of which attracts over 40K engagements on average—that’s over 100 million engagements a year.
• We record and post 400 Instagram takeovers a year (half of those from yours truly)—one minute answers to questions submitted by our audience.
• It includes animated videos, like our popular Draw My Life format, and live weekly podcasts with entrepreneurs, artists, authors and thought leaders.
Our biggest flamethrower? We created an AI model to transform live action into anime to produce a book trailer of Atlas Shrugged that’s been viewed over 12 million times—
and which doubled book sales on the novel in ensuing weeks.
We followed that up with a similar treatment for The Fountainhead. We’re marrying technology and art—which Rand called “the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal”—to communicate the moral ideals of reason, individualism, productivity, achievement, and freedom.
The viral content we’ve produced over the past year has propelled our YouTube channel from just 42K subscribers in the fall of 2023 to well over ONE MILLION subscribers as of just a few weeks ago. This is a stunning milestone achieved by only .05% of YouTube accounts
In 2024 ALONE The Atlas Society’s YouTube channel saw over 800K hours of watch time. To contextualize that mind-boggling number: in 2024, people consumed nearly 100 years’ worth of Objectivist content through our YouTube channel.
Sure we could bemoan the fact that so few young people are reading books anymore for pleasure—or that they’re spending so much time online. Or…
We could lean into it. Meet young people where they are, and create a marketing/ conversion funnel system with programming and content for “skimmers, swimmers and deep divers,” as we move them towards opportunities for deeper learning.
We could recognize that while reading of print books is dramatically down, graphic novels have exploded in popularity among Gen Z…and then adapt Rand’s fiction into those formats, as we did once again this year with our THIRD graphic novel, Top Secret, based on notes Rand made for a screenplay about the making of the atomic bomb. It’s a story about the role of productive geniuses in our society—and the conditions required for technological achievement.
The timing of this year’s graphic novel was fortuitous—partly because of the interest stirred up by the fantastic movie Oppenheimer, which highlighted not just the role of productive genius, but of the central importance of free inquiry.
As Oppenheimer himself observed: “There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry.... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any
I was honored to receive a scholarship to attend the Atlas Society Galt’s Gulch conference in Washington, D.C…It was especially great to meet so many people, and especially young people like me, committed to learning more about Ayn Rand’s philosophy and objectivism. — Isabella D.
assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.”
In addition to a brand new graphic novel—three years in the making—we also published adaptations of our Anthem graphic novel in Spanish and Hebrew! Up next and already underway: our most ambitious graphic novel project to date, an adaptation of The Fountainhead. And our library of Pocket Guides got a few new additions— including our Pocket Guide to Ayn Rand, and Pocket Guide to Free Speech.
We’re growing the audience of young people engaged with Ayn Rand’s ideas online, in print, AND in person. This past summer, we hosted our second annual student conference in Washington, DC with DOUBLE the number of attendees. We provided travel scholarships to students who flew in from across the country—and around the world, including Latin America, Europe, Africa, even New Zealand!
Our team is already prepping for next year’s student conference on June 5th–7th in Austin, Texas, where we’re welcoming 150 young Objectivists—I hope to see you there!
All of this momentum has attracted the attention of one very important new audience—and that’s a new audience of donors. In 2024 we’ve welcomed nearly 1.4K entirely brand NEW donors—a 220% increase over the new donors welcomed last year.
The remarkable progress we’ve achieved in 2024—and the significant expansion in programming we’ve got planned for 2025— would not be possible without the support of donors like YOU. I’m deeply grateful for your support—and as I look forward to celebrating my 9-year anniversary with The Atlas Society next year, I remain committed as ever to seize this opportunity to introduce millions of young people to Ayn Rand’s life-affirming ideas.
The Atlas Society has provided me with significant knowledge and resources to persuade more students to start reading Ayn Rand and become objectivists. — Teryl R.
As Ayn Rand reminds us: “Atlas Shrugged is not a prophecy of our unavoidable destruction, but a manifesto of our power to avoid it, if we choose to change our course.”
Young people, here at home and around the world, are showing us that they are increasingly ready to choose to change course. They are showing us that they are willing to tune out the voices of envy, resentment, victimhood, and irrationality—and they’re finding their own voice, their own courage to speak, act, and defend their rational self-interest.
And The Atlas Society is there to support them in that journey—to inspire them to
wake up from the collective illusion that hatred, polarization, and lies are their lot. Because as Todd Rose recently told me: “Collective illusions are social lies. So while they’re really dangerous when they’re enforced, they’re fragile, because they are lies. And if you understand how to break them, you can actually unleash social change at a scale and pace that would seem unimaginable.”
wake up from the collective illusion that hatred, polarization, and lies are their lot. Because as Todd Rose recently told me: “Collective illusions are social lies. So while they’re really dangerous when they’re enforced, they’re fragile, because they are lies. And if you understand how to break them, you can actually unleash social change at a scale and pace that would seem unimaginable.”
Will you help The Atlas Society unleash that change—help us accelerate towards a new future of rationality, productivity, ingenuity and achievement?
Will you help The Atlas Society unleash that change—help us accelerate towards a new future of rationality, productivity, ingenuity and achievement?
(NAME), you can support this mission by helping us reach our goal of raising $3,000,000 by the end of 2024. If you’ve already invested in our work this year, THANK YOU. But keep in mind that our Board of Trustees are also MATCHING any increases in support over last year’s levels, MATCHING any brand new donations, and MATCHING any support from donors who haven’t given in a while.
Atlas Society Supporter, you can support this mission by helping us reach our goal of raising $3,000,000 by the end of 2024. If you’ve already invested in our work this year, THANK YOU. But keep in mind that our Board of Trustees are also MATCHING any increases in support over last year’s levels, MATCHING any brand new donations, and MATCHING any support from donors who haven’t given in a while.
For those of you who’ve gotten to know me and the team at The Atlas Society, you know we will not rest until we engage 1 billion young minds with Ayn Rand’s ideas—and make Atlas Shrugged fiction again!
For those of you who’ve gotten to know me and the team at The Atlas Society, you know we will not rest until we engage 1 billion young minds with Ayn Rand’s ideas— and make Atlas Shrugged fiction again!
Thank you for considering The Atlas Society in your 2024 philanthropic portfolio!
Thank you for considering The Atlas Society in your 2024 philanthropic portfolio!
With
grit, grace, and gratitude,
CEO, The Atlas Society
P.S. Every new or increased donation this year will be matched dollar-for-dollar. Your gift will have double the impact as we work to advance liberty and reason on college campuses and beyond.
P.P.S. Thank you for standing with us in this essential work. If you’d like to share your story or learn more about our programs, please reach out to me at jag@atlassociety.org. Your support makes it all possible.