He wants to return to a glorified past that never existed by tearing down the current system, a return to where everyone is living off the land like early humans (“climbing the vines growing along the Sears tower”). He promotes the idea that men must return to being warriors, and something about the modern world has made them “weak.” He promotes that such strength must be used to dominate, and claims it can be used to improve people’s lives, as he claims with Raymond K. Hessel (whom Tyler threatens to murder if Hessel does not follow his dreams), despite the fact that Hessel is most likely left devastated with trauma and unable to move forward due to fear of being murdered. We never see Hessel’s outcome, so Tyler gets to pretend he “helped” by completely traumatizing a person (reminds me of Trump bragging about “lifting people off of food stamps” when he actually kicked them off and made them more hungry, his followers don’t see the outcome so they just believe the lie). Tyler captures the attention of disaffected, alienated young men and brings them under his wing to become part of their in-group, making them more likely to go along with extreme demands because now they have found family in Project Mayhem. He literally beats the living shit out of one of his men, destroying his pretty face, and yet still commands the respect of his men while disfiguring one of them potentially permanently. With Project Mayhem he intends to bring about his ideal world by force.
So we have numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 of Umberto Eco’s 14 features of Ur-Fascism in Tyler and Project Mayhem, in my opinion.
1 - “The cult of tradition” - At no point he gives any shit to tradition
2 - “The rejection of modernism” - That’s partial at best, and partial hits do not count on that scale
3 - “The cult of action for action’s sake” - Yes
4 - “Disagreement is treason” - Absolutely not
5 - “Fear of difference” - Dude, how the fuck did you claim he hits that one? Absolutely not
6 - “Appeal to a frustrated middle class” - Yes
7 - “Obsession with a plot” - Yes
8 - cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak” - Their enemies are never strong
9 - “Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” - Absolutely not
10 - “Contempt for the weak” - Absolutely not
11 - “Everybody is educated to become a hero” - Yes
12 - “Machismo” - Yes
13 - “Selective populism” - Yes
14 - “Newspeak” - No
Anyway, it’s complete bullshit to just list those criteria like they are a checklist. I’ve listed them here just to show that even that bullshit argument is bullshit by its own standards.
Are you claiming that fascists don’t need to be authoritarian? It’s not on the list, by the way.
Rejection of modernism. He literally wants to return to a tribal society. He says this specifically in both the book and film, he describes the future he sees:
“In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rock feller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighways.”
Fear of difference. He literally beats the shit out of the pretty guy for being “different” and pretty. Project Mayhem are all forced to dress the same and have no names. They are forced to shave their heads and become his “space monkeys.” They are berated for a week in front of the building before being accepted. EDIT: Further, this treatment of the Project Mayhem recruits is authoritarian, they have to follow all Tyler’s rules which they repeat them ad nauseum and they have to shed their prior identity to fit into the new group.
Cast the enemies as both too strong and too weak. In the film Tyler plans to destroy credit card companies and reset debt to zero, a lot of people would claim the financial system is an enemy that is strong, but also portrayed as weak when they strong-arm the politician threatening to cut his balls off. In the book he wants to destroy museums, destroying history, writing a new history, which is also fascist. He says museums represent a dead world and that “this is our world now.”
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. They threaten to cut off people’s balls who threaten to expose them, the cops are literally about to do it to the narrator/Tyler himself at the end of the film, because stopping Project Mayhem is a pacifist route.
If you don’t see the contempt for the weak here and how they only accepted Bob into their fold because the narrator pitied him, I don’t know what to tell you. Tyler would have rejected Bob as unfit and weak. When their homework is to go start a fight, the lesson is that most people will avoid fights (and by extension this makes them “weak”). Fight Club is portrayed as “strong” because they will chase a fight. They’re different, they’re special, they’re enlightened by violence (once again, fear of difference).
These are the ones we obviously disagree on, so these are the ones I’m addressing.
But yeah, 10 out of 14 is pretty telling in my opinion. No, this list of Eco’s isn’t definitive, but it’s got good depth and is a good starting point showing that clearly Tyler has fascist tendencies. Enough that I am comfortable calling him fascist
EDIT: Also while there is no strict nationalism, the entire plot is deeply Amero-centric and treats the rest of the world as though it functionally does not exist when it comes to Tyler’s plans.
“You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?”
Not. a. single. foreign. airport. Not even Canada.
It’s been too long since I’ve read the book, but at least in the film it’s consumer culture in particular that he’s talking about when it comes to modernity. I think most of us agree with him on that one
“In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rock feller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighways.”
Tyler Durden in Fight Club. There’s a similar, slightly shorter version in the film when the narrator is in his “coma” and wakes up to Tyler gone, this is the dialogue Tyler speaks as he is abandoning the narrator just as the narrator’s own father abandoned him.
I don’t know how to read that any more clearly as a complete rejection of modernity, not just consumer culture.
I haven’t read this book in almost 20 years myself, but I remember these salient aspects of the text.
EDIT: Does no one else remember this kind of media from the early 2000’s (and really made it around on reddit, it was quite popular) clearly inspired by Fight Club and the “what to do in an emergency” flight cards, which the comic obviously mimics. To act like this wasn’t a major theme is literally absurd. The comic is presented in “how-to” format starting as a white collar office worker riot that eventually leads to the office being a tribal society inside the office building.
Obviously Fight Club Inspired Comic:
Emergency Flight Card from Fight Club:
I mean, presenting themselves as just standing for the common man and wanting to tear down a broken system and don’t have ulterior motives is one hundred percent on brand for fascists.
Also “waahhh, my penthouse is too nice, my job is too boring, I get paid too much and I’m a bored white man” is the narrator, the man Tyler was covering up, a weak man’s idea of a strong man. “I look how you wanna look, I talk how you want to talk, I fuck how you want to fuck.” He is literally a manifestation of what the narrator, a weak person, thinks a strong person is.
He wants to return to a glorified past that never existed by tearing down the current system, a return to where everyone is living off the land like early humans (“climbing the vines growing along the Sears tower”). He promotes the idea that men must return to being warriors, and something about the modern world has made them “weak.” He promotes that such strength must be used to dominate, and claims it can be used to improve people’s lives, as he claims with Raymond K. Hessel (whom Tyler threatens to murder if Hessel does not follow his dreams), despite the fact that Hessel is most likely left devastated with trauma and unable to move forward due to fear of being murdered. We never see Hessel’s outcome, so Tyler gets to pretend he “helped” by completely traumatizing a person (reminds me of Trump bragging about “lifting people off of food stamps” when he actually kicked them off and made them more hungry, his followers don’t see the outcome so they just believe the lie). Tyler captures the attention of disaffected, alienated young men and brings them under his wing to become part of their in-group, making them more likely to go along with extreme demands because now they have found family in Project Mayhem. He literally beats the living shit out of one of his men, destroying his pretty face, and yet still commands the respect of his men while disfiguring one of them potentially permanently. With Project Mayhem he intends to bring about his ideal world by force.
So we have numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 of Umberto Eco’s 14 features of Ur-Fascism in Tyler and Project Mayhem, in my opinion.
But sure, he’s not a fascist.
Without your bad rephrasing:
1 - “The cult of tradition” - At no point he gives any shit to tradition
2 - “The rejection of modernism” - That’s partial at best, and partial hits do not count on that scale
3 - “The cult of action for action’s sake” - Yes
4 - “Disagreement is treason” - Absolutely not
5 - “Fear of difference” - Dude, how the fuck did you claim he hits that one? Absolutely not
6 - “Appeal to a frustrated middle class” - Yes
7 - “Obsession with a plot” - Yes
8 - cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak” - Their enemies are never strong
9 - “Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” - Absolutely not
10 - “Contempt for the weak” - Absolutely not
11 - “Everybody is educated to become a hero” - Yes
12 - “Machismo” - Yes
13 - “Selective populism” - Yes
14 - “Newspeak” - No
Anyway, it’s complete bullshit to just list those criteria like they are a checklist. I’ve listed them here just to show that even that bullshit argument is bullshit by its own standards.
Are you claiming that fascists don’t need to be authoritarian? It’s not on the list, by the way.
Fear of difference. He literally beats the shit out of the pretty guy for being “different” and pretty. Project Mayhem are all forced to dress the same and have no names. They are forced to shave their heads and become his “space monkeys.” They are berated for a week in front of the building before being accepted. EDIT: Further, this treatment of the Project Mayhem recruits is authoritarian, they have to follow all Tyler’s rules which they repeat them ad nauseum and they have to shed their prior identity to fit into the new group.
Cast the enemies as both too strong and too weak. In the film Tyler plans to destroy credit card companies and reset debt to zero, a lot of people would claim the financial system is an enemy that is strong, but also portrayed as weak when they strong-arm the politician threatening to cut his balls off. In the book he wants to destroy museums, destroying history, writing a new history, which is also fascist. He says museums represent a dead world and that “this is our world now.”
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. They threaten to cut off people’s balls who threaten to expose them, the cops are literally about to do it to the narrator/Tyler himself at the end of the film, because stopping Project Mayhem is a pacifist route.
If you don’t see the contempt for the weak here and how they only accepted Bob into their fold because the narrator pitied him, I don’t know what to tell you. Tyler would have rejected Bob as unfit and weak. When their homework is to go start a fight, the lesson is that most people will avoid fights (and by extension this makes them “weak”). Fight Club is portrayed as “strong” because they will chase a fight. They’re different, they’re special, they’re enlightened by violence (once again, fear of difference).
These are the ones we obviously disagree on, so these are the ones I’m addressing.
But yeah, 10 out of 14 is pretty telling in my opinion. No, this list of Eco’s isn’t definitive, but it’s got good depth and is a good starting point showing that clearly Tyler has fascist tendencies. Enough that I am comfortable calling him fascist
EDIT: Also while there is no strict nationalism, the entire plot is deeply Amero-centric and treats the rest of the world as though it functionally does not exist when it comes to Tyler’s plans.
Not. a. single. foreign. airport. Not even Canada.
It’s been too long since I’ve read the book, but at least in the film it’s consumer culture in particular that he’s talking about when it comes to modernity. I think most of us agree with him on that one
Tyler Durden in Fight Club. There’s a similar, slightly shorter version in the film when the narrator is in his “coma” and wakes up to Tyler gone, this is the dialogue Tyler speaks as he is abandoning the narrator just as the narrator’s own father abandoned him.
I don’t know how to read that any more clearly as a complete rejection of modernity, not just consumer culture.
I haven’t read this book in almost 20 years myself, but I remember these salient aspects of the text.
EDIT: Does no one else remember this kind of media from the early 2000’s (and really made it around on reddit, it was quite popular) clearly inspired by Fight Club and the “what to do in an emergency” flight cards, which the comic obviously mimics. To act like this wasn’t a major theme is literally absurd. The comic is presented in “how-to” format starting as a white collar office worker riot that eventually leads to the office being a tribal society inside the office building.
Obviously Fight Club Inspired Comic:
Emergency Flight Card from Fight Club:
Its been a long time since I’ve seen the movie but I always thought he was an anarchist who just wanted to burn everything to the ground.
I mean, presenting themselves as just standing for the common man and wanting to tear down a broken system and don’t have ulterior motives is one hundred percent on brand for fascists.
Also “waahhh, my penthouse is too nice, my job is too boring, I get paid too much and I’m a bored white man” is the narrator, the man Tyler was covering up, a weak man’s idea of a strong man. “I look how you wanna look, I talk how you want to talk, I fuck how you want to fuck.” He is literally a manifestation of what the narrator, a weak person, thinks a strong person is.
Fascists coopting socialist language to obfuscate their class loyalties and goals is unfortunately fairly common