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.
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.
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.
He’s not a good person’s identity, by any means. But he’s not fascist.
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.
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
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.