Bro! The Carlyle Club is hogging the remote, refusing to ask for directions, and generally manning up for some guy talk on masculinity. (No girls allowed.)

Table of Contents

Jack Donovan is an anti-feminist, anti-modernist, anti-populist anarcho-fascist who “moonlights as an advocate for the resurgence of tribalism and manly virtue.” And what is “manly virtue”? The Way of Men is Donovan’s answer:

For decades, people have been talking about a “crisis” of masculinity. Our leaders have created a world in spite of men, a world that refuses to accept who men are and doesn’t care what they want. Our world asks men to change “for the better,” but offers men less of value to them than their fathers and grandfathers had. The voices who speak for the future say that men must abandon their old way and find a new way. But what is that way and where does it lead? As I came to understand The Way of Men, I became more concerned about where men are today, and where they are headed. I wondered if there was a way for men to follow their own way into a future that belongs to men. That’s the path of this book. My answers may not be the kind of answers you want to hear, but they are the only answers that satisfied my inquiry.

Ultimately, it boils down to this:

Relieved of moral pretense and stripped of folk costumes, the raw masculinity that all men know in their gut has to do with being good at being a man within a small, embattled gang of men struggling to survive. The Way of Men is the way of that gang.

In this issue of Radish, we’re checking Donovan’s work, with help from an esoteric fascist philosopher and a figment of our narcissistic, sleep-deprived imaginations.

Zdeněk Burian’s Volcanoe (image)

The Perimeter

In Chapter 2, Donovan takes us back in time to the Dawn of Man, before iPads and tanning beds and income tax and birth control—or after civilization to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a new Dark Age—or way out beyond civilization to a lawless frontier filled with dangerous savages: Mogadishu, Lagos, Soweto, Detroit—any one of these will do.

You are part of a small human group fighting to stay alive. The reason why doesn’t matter. Conquest, war, death, hunger or disease—any of The Horsemen will do. You could be our primal ancestors, you could be pioneers, you could be stranded in some remote location, you could be survivors of a nuclear holocaust or the zombie apocalypse. Again, it doesn’t matter. For humans without access to advanced technology, the scenario plays out more or less the same way. You have to define your group. You need to define who is in and who is out, and you need to identify potential threats. You need to create and maintain some sort of safe zone around the perimeter of your group. Everyone will have to contribute to the group’s survival in some way unless the group agrees to protect and feed someone who can’t contribute due to age or illness. For those who can work, you’ll need to decide who does what, based on what they are good at, who works well together, and what makes the most practical sense.

Zdeněk Burian’s Hunting the Cave Bear (image)

Hunting and Fighting

Hunting and fighting are two of the most dangerous jobs you’ll need to do to stay alive. To thrive, humans need protein and fat. You can get enough protein and fat from vegetables, but without an established farm you’re going to be hard pressed to gather enough vegetables to meet your nutritional needs. A large animal can provide protein and fat for days—longer if you know how to preserve the meat. The problem with big, protein-rich animals is that they don’t want to die. Meat is muscle, and muscle makes animals strong — often stronger than men. Wild beasts come equipped with tusks, antlers, hooves, claws and sharp teeth. They’re going to fight for their lives. Taking down a big, protein-rich animal is going to be dangerous. It will require strength, courage, technique, and teamwork. Finding food also requires exploring—venturing out into the unknown—and who knows what lurks out there? If you are going to survive, your group will need protection from predators—animal, human, alien, or undead. If there is someone or something out there who wants what you have and is willing to fight for it, you’re going to need to figure out who in your group is going to be willing to fight back. You’ll want the people who are best at fighting to stand watch, to defend everything you care about, or to go out and eliminate a potential threat. If someone or something has something that you need, the best way to get it may be to take it. Who in your group will be willing and able to do that? Maybe females are part of your group. Maybe they aren’t. If females are with you, they won’t have access to reliable birth control. Males and females won’t stop having sex, and females will get pregnant. Humans are mammals, and like most mammals, a greater part of the reproductive burden will fall on women. That’s not fair, but nature isn’t fair. Even strong, aggressive women become more vulnerable and less mobile during pregnancy. Even tough women will nurse their young. They’ll bond with their offspring and take to caring for them quickly. Babies are helpless, and children are vulnerable for years. If there were no other physical or mental differences between women and men, in a hostile environment the biological realities of human reproduction would still mean that over time more men would be charged with exploring, hunting, fighting, building, and defending. Men would have more time to specialize and develop the necessary skills to excel at those tasks. They wouldn’t have a good excuse not to. Men will never get pregnant, they will never be nursing, and they will be less encumbered by their children. They may not even know who their children are. Women know who their kids are. Children don’t depend on their fathers in the same way that they depend on their mothers. Men are freer to take risks for the good of the group, believing that their offspring will live on. As things are, there are biological differences between men and women that have little to do with pregnancy or breastfeeding. On average, men are bigger and stronger than women. Men are more daring, probably more mechanically inclined, and generally better at navigating. Men are hard wired for aggressive play. High testosterone men take more risks and seek more thrills. Men are more interested in competing for status, and when they win, their bodies give them a dopamine high and more testosterone. Because your group is struggling to survive, every choice matters. If you give the wrong person the wrong job, that person could die, you could die, another person could die, or you could all die. Because of the differences between the sexes, the best person for jobs that involve exploring, hunting, fighting, building, or defending is usually going to be a male. This is not some arbitrary cultural prejudice; it is the kind of vital strategic discrimination that will keep your group alive. […] If there are females in your group, they will have plenty of hard and necessary work to do. Everyone will have to pull their own weight, but the hunting and fighting is almost always going to be up to the men. When lives are on the line, people will drop the etiquette of equality and make that decision again and again because it makes the most sense. That practical division of labor is where the male world begins.

Zdeněk Burian’s Magic Rites (image)

The Party-Gang

It’s natural for a man to look after his own interests, but those interests drive men together—quickly. A loner has no one to ask for help, no one to watch his back, no one to guard him when he sleeps. Men have a greater chance of survival together than they do apart. Men have always hunted and fought in small teams. […] Chimpanzees organize on a party-gang basis, which means they change the size of their groups depending on the circumstances. Chimps gather together in large parties and build alliances for strategic reasons, for mating, and for the sharing of resources. When circumstances change, they break into smaller groups and hunting parties. The smaller groups—the gangs—are the tightest and most stable. […] Men organize the same way. For example, take military units. […] All of the men in a given army are part of the same big team, but the strength of the bonds between men will increase as the size of the unit decreases. In smaller groups, men are more loyal to one another. […] Some researchers believe that the human brain can only process enough information to maintain meaningful relationships with 150 or so people at any given time. That’s about the size of a military company, but also about the size of a typical primitive human tribe, and roughly the number of “friends” most people contact regularly through social networking sites. Within that tribe of 150, people form even smaller groups. How many people would you loan a lot of money to? How many people could you depend on in an emergency? How many people could depend on you? If you’re like most, that number drops to the size of a platoon [26–55 members], a squad [8–13], or even a fireteam [2–4]. […] Men revert back to this archetypal gang size, even for recreation and storytelling. […] The group of 2 to 15 men is a comfort zone. It’s an effective team size for tactical maneuvers, but it’s also socially manageable. You can really know about that many guys at one time. You can maintain a good working relationship and a meaningful social history with 100 or so more. Beyond those numbers, connections become extremely superficial, trust breaks down, and more rules and codes—always enforced by the threat of violence—are required to keep men “together.” In times of stress—when resources are scarce, when the system of rules and codes breaks down, when there is a lapse in enforcement, or when men have little to lose and more to gain by breaking the law—it is The Way of Men to break off from large parties and operate in small, nimble gangs. The fireteam-to-platoon sized gang is the smallest unit of us. Beyond us is them, and the line that separates us from them is a circle of trust.

Zdeněk Burian’s Encampment of Late Palaeolithic Hunters (image)

Drawing the Perimeter

Imagine yourself again in our survival scenario. People can’t fight and hunt and kill all day and all night forever. Humans have to sleep, they have to eat, and they need downtime. You need to create a safe space and set up camp somewhere. […] The survival of your group will depend on your ability to successfully claim land and keep it safe. When you claim territory and draw a perimeter, that line separates your group from the rest of the world. The people inside the perimeter become us and everything known and unknown outside the perimeter becomes them. Beyond the light of your night fire, there is darkness. They lie just beyond the flicker of your fire, out there in the dark. They could be wild animals, zombies, killer robots, or dragons. They could also be other men. Men know what men need, and what they want. If your men have something that men want or need, you’ll have to be wary of other men. The things that have value to men—tools, food, water, women, livestock, shelter or even good land—will have to be protected from other men who might be desperate enough to harm you to get those things. The perimeter separates men you trust from men you don’t trust, or don’t know well enough to trust. People like to make friends. Being on the defensive all the time is stressful. Most people want to trust other people. Most people want to be able to relax. If you are smart, until you know them, they will remain out there on the other side of the perimeter. Even if you let your guard down to cooperate or trade with them, they may or may not be absorbed into us. As long as other men maintain separate identities, there is always the chance that they will choose to put the interests of their own ahead of your interests. In hard times, agreements between groups fall apart. Competition creates animosity, and men will dehumanize each other to make the tough decisions necessary for their own group to survive.

Speaking of the perimeter: near the end of the 2008 election season, America’s official press suddenly discovered that a high-ranking official in the fake opposition party, the otherwise suitably useless Michelle Bachmann, while running for Congress, went off script (“controversial,” “inflammatory,” “questionably informed,” and other mouth noises) on the Muslim colonization of Europe (Issue 5), something the progressive ruling class would rather we didn’t discuss.

Prompted by a question on the rioting in France and Europe at the time, Bachmann said “not all cultures are equal, not all values are equal,” letting it be known that she thought that people of the Muslim faith had an inferior culture to that of the United States and the West.

The usual array of useful idiots and volunteer thought police—rabid, dim-witted progressives, who would never dream of moving to a Muslim neighborhood, let alone a Muslim country—were quick to characterize this “loonie toon” and her “massive ignorance and bigoted mischaracterization” as “disturbing” and “depressing,” and I’m sure they had a good cry over it. More to the point, this revealing and unintentionally amusing comment compares “conservatives” (though of what, unclear) like Bachmann (bad) to progressives (good):

Conservati­ves want people to assimilate before they will accept them. Democrats will accept them and HOPE they assimilate and be a part of the culture.

Zdeněk Burian’s A Neolithic Settlement (image)

A Role Apart

You’ve decided who is in and who is out. You’ve decided who you trust, and who you don’t. You are watching the perimeter, protecting what is inside the circle of flickering light, defending everything that means anything to you and the men who stand with you. It all comes down to you, the guardians, because you know that if you fail at your jobs there can be no human happiness, no family life, no storytelling, no art or music. Your role at the bloody edges of the boundary between us and them supersedes any role you have within the protected space. Yours is a role apart, and your value to the other men who share that responsibility will be determined by how well you are willing and able to fulfill that role. Other men will need to know that they can depend on you, because everything matters, and your weakness, fear or incompetence could get any one of them killed or threaten the whole group. Men who are good at this job — men who are good at the job of being men — will earn the respect and trust of the group. Those men will be honored and treated better than men who are disloyal or undependable. The men who deliver victory at the moments of greatest peril will attain the highest status among men. They will be treated like heroes, and other men—especially young men—will emulate them. […] When men evaluate each other as men, they still look for the same virtues that they’d need to keep the perimeter. Men respond to and admire the qualities that would make men useful and dependable in an emergency. Men have always had a role apart, and they still judge one another according to the demands of that role as a guardian in a gang struggling for survival against encroaching doom. Everything that is specifically about being a man—not merely a person—has to do with that role. As you stand back to back, fending off incoming oblivion, what do you need from the men in your group? As you close a circle tighter around dangerous game that could feed you all for a week, what kind of men do you want at your flank?

Jack Donovan’s answer is a set of four “tactical virtues:” strength, courage, mastery, and honor, which we’ll talk more about later. For now, we turn to a 20th century esoteric fascist philosopher for more on the way of the gang.

Julius Evola in his youth (image)

Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century. Franco Ferraresi

(He says that like it’s a bad thing!)

The Sicilian Baron Julius Evola (1898–1974) was one of the most influential reactionary philosophers of the 20th century. Evola’s core trilogy comprises

(Would that every writer had the Baron Evola’s gift for subtitling.)

Most relevant to the Way of Men, Donovan’s way of the gang, is the Baron Evola’s conception of the Männerbund, introduced in Men among the Ruins, Chapter 2.

According to an old view, the State derives from the family: the same principle responsible for shaping the family and the gens, having been integrated and extended, allegedly gave rise to the State. Whether or not this is the case, it is possible, from a logical point of view, to trace the origins of the State to a naturalistic plane only by committing an initial mistake: to assume that in ancient civilized areas, and especially those populated by Indo-European civilizations, the family was a unity of a purely physical type, and that the sacred, together with a well-articulated hierarchical social system, did not play a decisive role in it. […] But if the family is thought of in naturalistic terms, or in the terms in which it presents itself today, the generating principle of the properly political communities must be traced to a context that is very different from the one typical of the family: it must be traced to the plane of the so-called Männerbünde.

Männerbund (plural Männerbünde): German. Literally band of men. An all-male warrior band or gang.

Among several primitive societies, the individual, up to a certain age, being regarded as a merely natural being, was entrusted to the family and to maternal tutelage, since everything related to the maternal, physical aspect of existence fell under the maternal-feminine aegis.

We’re a generation of men raised by women.

However, at a certain point what happened, or better, what could happen, was a change of nature and status. Special rites, known as “rites of passage,” which were often preceded by a period of detachment and isolation,

If the applicant is young, tell him he’s too young; old, too old; fat, too fat. If the applicant then waits for three days without food, shelter, or encouragement, he may then enter and begin his training.

and which were accompanied by harsh trials,

This is a chemical burn. It’ll hurt more than you’ve ever been burned, and you will have a scar.

generated a new being according to a scheme of “death and rebirth” who alone could be regarded as a “man.”

The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes, like the first monkey shot into space. Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.

In fact, prior to this initiation, the member of the group, no matter what his age, was believed to belong to the same category that included women, children, and animals. Once the transformation occurred, the individual was incorporated into the Männerbund.

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.

It was this Männerbund, in which the qualification of “man” had simultaneously an initiatory (i.e., sacred) and a warrior meaning, that wielded the power in the social group or clan. This Männerbund was characterized by special tasks and responsibilities; it was different from all other societies to which other members of the tribe belonged.

Like the monkey ready to be shot into space. Space monkey! Ready to sacrifice himself for the greater good.

In this primordial scheme we find the fundamental “categories” differentiating the political order from the “social” order. First among these is a special chrism—namely, that proper to “man” in the higher sense of the word (vir was the term employed in Roman times) and not merely of a generic homo: this condition is marked by a spiritual breakthrough and by detachment from the naturalistic and vegetative plane.

Stay with the pain; don’t shut this out. Look at your hand! THIS is your pain, THIS is your burning hand. It’s right here. This is the greatest moment of your life!

Its integration is power, the principle of command belonging to the Männerbund. We could rightfully see in this one of the “constants” (i.e., basic ideas) that in very different applications, formulations, and derivations are uniformly found in the theory or, better, in the metaphysics of the State that was professed even by the greatest civilizations of the past. Following the processes of secularization, rationalization, and materialization, which have become increasingly accentuated in recent times, those original meanings became obscured and attenuated; and yet, wherever they are entirely obliterated, even though they exist in a transposed form, without an initiatory or sacred background, there no longer is a State or a political class in the specific, traditional sense. In reference to this, someone was able to say that the “formation of a ruling class is a divine mystery”; in some cases, though, it could be a “demonic mystery” (e.g., the tribunes of the people; demagogy; communism), but never something that could be defined in mere social or, worse yet, economic factors.

You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.

The substance of every true and stable political organism is something resembling an Order, a Männerbund in charge of the principle of the imperium, comprising men who see loyalty as the basis of their honor (as the saying of the Saxon Code goes). But in time of crisis and of an overall moral, political, and social disintegration (as is the case in our day and age), a generic reference to the “nation” does not suffice for reconstructive work unless such an idea assumes a revolutionary overtone, including elements of a properly political order, weakened to various degrees. The “nation” will always be a promiscuous entity; in the above-mentioned situation what needs to be done is to emphasize the fundamental duality of the origins: on the one side stand the masses, in which, besides changing feelings, the same elementary instincts and interests connected to a physical and hedonistic plane will always have free play; and on the other side stand men who differentiate themselves from the masses as bearers of a complete legitimacy and authority, bestowed by the Idea and by their rigorous, impersonal adherence to it.

Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are all part of the same compost heap.

The Idea, only the Idea, must be the true fatherland for these men: what unites them and sets them apart should consist in adherence to the same idea, rather than to the same land, language, or blood. The true task and the necessary premise for the rebirth of the “nation” and for its renewed form and conscience consists of untying and separating that which only apparently, promiscuously, or collectively appears to be one entity, and in reestablishing a virile substance in the form of a political elite around which a new crystallization will occur. I call this the realism of the idea: realism because what are needed for this work are strength and clarity, rather than “idealism” and sentimentality.

First you have to know — not fear, KNOW — that someday you are going to die.

This realism, however, is opposed both to the coarse, cynical, and degenerate realism of politicians and to the style of those who abhor “ideological prejudices”; the latter, in fact, are capable only of reawakening a vague feeling of “national solidarity” (a herdlike spirit) by means that do not really differ from the general techniques employed to arouse the excitement of the masses.

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.

All this falls below the level of what politics is, in the virile, traditional sense; moreover, it is inadequate for the times.

We’re the middle children of history, man: no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.

In this way, too, we can see the insufficiency of the simple notion of “nation” as a guiding principle, and the need for its political integration, in terms of a higher idea that alone must be the standard, uniting and dividing factor. The essential task ahead requires formulating an adequate doctrine, upholding principles that have been thoroughly studied, and, beginning from these, giving birth to an Order. This elite, differentiating itself on a plane that is defined in terms of spiritual virility, decisiveness, and impersonality, and where every naturalistic bond loses its power and value, will be the bearer of a new principle of a higher authority and sovereignty; it will be able to denounce subversion and demagogy in whatever form they appear and reverse the downward spiral of the top-level cadres and the irresistible rise to power of the masses. From this elite, as if from a seed, a political organism and an integrated nation will emerge, enjoying the same dignity as the nations created by the great European political tradition. Anything short of this amounts only to a quagmire, dilettantism, irrealism, and obliquity.

Which brings us to the end of Chapter 2. Evola has much more to say on this subject, but we’ve seen enough to appreciate the relevance of the Männerbund to the Way of Men. But what’s with all these strange interjections? And who is Tyler Durden?

Fight Club is both a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk and an outstanding 1999 film adaptation whose popularity has eclipsed the original and to which, therefore, we restrict our attention. If you haven’t seen Fight Club, do so immediately. I don’t want to spoil it.

Did you watch it? Good. You probably — if not, like me, already — feel a powerful urge to revolt against the modern world. This is normal. Defer the urge until you’ve finished reading Radish.

For a reactionary exegesis of Fight Club, we turn to Jef Costello’s ‘Fight Club as Holy Writ’ (Counter-Currents, 2012), which makes explicit the connection between Tyler Durden’s Fight Club and Julius Evola’s Männerbund:

This film addresses my problems and the problems of the age; it speaks to my own deepest dissatisfactions and darkest desires; and proposes (or at least seems to propose) many of the right solutions to what ails us… … In terms of our struggle against the modern world… Fight Club is the most important artwork of the last fifty years — and the only artwork to be directed exclusively at men. But in order to change the world one must always appeal, primarily, to men. … Fight Club is about reclaiming lost masculine rites of passage, and pathways to male self-actualization. It’s about reclaiming masculinity itself. Note that I did not say “reinventing” or (choke) “reimagining” masculinity. That’s what the phony “men’s movement” is all about: creating a new, feminist-approved masculinity. … … “Tyler” is not “somebody else.” He is the higher part of ourselves. We must become that. We must become who we are. Nevertheless, in accomplishing this it is useful to have a spiritual Master. This really comes into play once Jack [the narrator, played by Edward Norton] and Tyler [Durden, played by Brad Pitt] form Fight Club — and especially once Fight Club morphs into Project Mayhem. The cult Tyler forms is made up of equal parts military boot camp, Zen, and skinhead zaniness. … But the real training is in becoming a man, and it is modeled closely on boot camp. … The discipline and denial is martial. … … In classic boot camp fashion, they are broken down and then built back up again; given a new identity that centers on their membership in a warrior band, serving a common purpose. In this case, the purpose is the destruction of the modern world… Fight Club and Operation Mayhem are a re-creation of the classical Germanic Männerbund — living on the fringes of society; a volatile force that can be used for good or ill. The way Fight Club approaches this process of male self-transformation is often disturbingly (and unnecessarily) nihilistic. (This is especially true of the novel.) Tyler tells us (as worded in the original screenplay): “Self-improvement is masturbation. Self-destruction is the answer.” After Tyler gives Jack the chemical burn kiss (a Männerbund rite of passage if there ever was one), he tells him “Congratulations. You’re one step closer to hitting bottom.”

Rite of passage

All of this can be very easily misunderstood. I’ve known guys like Jack who drank or drugged themselves into oblivion over despair at life in the modern world. They were truly engaged in self-destruction, with no higher purpose. This is pure nihilism. What Tyler is actually doing, however, is breaking down that portion [of] Jack’s (and the Space Monkeys’) self-image that is built on conformity to the norms of modern, consumerist society. Fighting, drinking, theft, vandalism, self-mutilation, living in filth (the whole skinhead lifestyle, actually) — these are all “hitting bottom” by the standards of our Brave New World. But for Tyler and his followers these are means to self-realization. And these men do become awakened, transformed beings. … Membership in the Fight Club Männerbund confers meaning on even the most mundane aspects of their lives. [Jack] says, “Fight Club became the reason to cut your hair short and trim your fingernails.” Even soap takes on a spiritual significance: “The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes. Like the first monkeys shot into space.” Their lives have been given a purpose, and that purpose contextualizes everything else and gives it significance… As I have argued, Fight Club is all about the recovery (or revivification) of manhood. And I have argued that manhood is achieved through orientation towards some ideal that we strive to actualize, preserve, or protect. But we can’t lose sight of the fact that man is one half of a dyad, and that part of being a man is defined in relation to a woman. …

But though men consciously define themselves in opposition to women and the feminine, being a man involves achieving some positive relationship to these as well. Putting it mildly, this requires a delicate balance. Women are most strongly attracted to actualized, masculine men who are not totally absorbed by them and who want to achieve something in the world. … For his part, the man wants a woman he thinks will be faithful to him. Quite simply, he wants some assurance that the children he raises will be his own. The primary sign of faithfulness he looks for is devotion: he wants a woman who truly believes in him before all others; who believes in him, in his mission, and in his ability to accomplish it. … As Derek Hawthorne puts it in his essay on the film Storm over Mont Blanc: Without a woman a man lacks a sense of being grounded. Men tend to be so focused upon doing that they miss out on being. Their quest to achieve their purpose in life becomes something cold and barren. Ultimately, without a home and hearth and woman to return to for sustenance, they burn themselves out along the path. They feel a sense of emptiness, and drift into despair. The Männerbund exists in a state of tension with society. It has the potential to protect and preserve the society from which it emerges, but it is also something wild, volatile, and transgressive. Ultimately, its members, to be truly fulfilled as men, must strike a balance between their devotion to each other, and their desire for a wife and family. These two things can co-exist. But in order for a man to make it work, he has to overcome the influence of his comrades, who will always pull him off to some adventure rather than see him “pussy whipped.” And he must resist the influence of the woman, who will (unless she is truly exceptional) always try and sabotage his relationship with his comrades. He must learn how to say “no” to both, but saying “no” to the woman will be more difficult. …

Since the film was released in 1999, people have debated the question of whether the film, or at least the organization depicted in it, is “fascist.” Is Fight Club fascist? Yes. Fight Club and Fight Club are both fascist. Meaning: the film and the organization it depicts (later, Project Mayhem) are both implicitly fascist. Now, to repeat: I don’t care what Chuck Palahniuk or anyone connected with the film has said about it. The organization in the film is clearly fascist, and the film, whatever its makers’ intentions might have been, is as convincing and inspiring a cinematic argument for fascism as I have ever seen. … In the most essential terms, fascism is the idea that the Männerbund should rule. Fight Club is the formation of the Männerbund. Project Mayhem is the inescapable conclusion drawn by the men of the bund once they are awakened: that it is they who should rule. In real-life fascism, those men have been moved by the desire to use their thumos [roughly, spiritedness] to protect their people, their land, and their culture. … … Fight Club’s fascism is essentially Traditionalist and vaguely anarcho-primitivist. Project Mayhem essentially aims to do three things. The first is to destroy symbols of American capitalism and cultural degeneracy… Second, they are out to destroy the means by which Americans distract and anesthetize themselves: blowing up computers, erasing videotapes, smashing satellite dishes, etc. Third, and most important, they are out to destroy the financial structure of the U.S. (of the world, really) by destroying the headquarters of the credit card companies, and similar targets. … … Tyler’s aim is to re-start history: to destroy capitalism, globalism, technology, consumer culture, class divisions based upon wealth, etc. Is he aware that once we’ve returned to the semi-primitive state he dreams of, divisions will again be drawn along racial and ethnic lines and felt more keenly than ever before? … Yes, Fight Club and Project Mayhem are racially mixed. However, one thing that I don’t think viewers recognize is that they actually get whiter as the film goes along. … We’re all more comfortable with our own kind. And so what we find in the house is almost entirely a bunch of beefy, white, buzz cut Space Monkeys. … There’s much in the film that seems to speak directly to whites. When Tyler tells Fight Club that they are “an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; or they’re slaves with white collars,” I think of white guys. I think of all those working class guys out there who can’t find decent jobs because the good jobs have been sent overseas and given to non-white wage slaves. Or, worse yet, all those guys who can’t find jobs because right here at home they’re being given to aliens — invaders whose “rights” are being defended by the same people who feel free to crack jokes about guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks. I think about all those middle class, college-educated white guys who’ve lost a job or a promotion to somebody who says “aks.” And I think about all those smart, eighteen-year-old white guys who’ve been denied admission to Harvard or MIT because some other guy’s great great grandparents owned slaves. We are “the middle children of history,” guys and “we’re very, very pissed off.” But remember: we are also “the quiet young men who listen until it’s time to decide.” … So, at this point — if indeed you’ve come all this way — you might be wondering whether I have just “read a lot into” Fight Club. A fair question. … The simple truth is that Fight Club is bigger than [author] Chuck Palahniuk, [director] David Fincher, or [screenwriter] Jim Uhls. It means a hell of a lot more than they think it does. Fight Club means what it means to us. It is almost as if this novel and film have been gifted to us by the gods, and that Palahniuk, et al, were merely vehicles for its expression. This story is so powerful to us; says so much to us about our world and our generation. It moves us so much that it is a thing that belongs to the age and to us, not to any man or any film studio.

“What would happen,” Jack Donovan asks in Chapter 11, “if men got spoiled, gave up and gave in to women completely? How would that society operate?” Well, we already know, because we’re living in it. Welcome to the Bonobo Masturbation Society.

As a metaphor for what happens to men living in a secure peace of plenty like our own, the bonobo way looks eerily familiar. Aren’t most men today spoiled mamma’s boys without father figures, without hunting or fighting or brother-bonds, whose only masculine outlet is promiscuous sex? Wars against men are known to fewer and fewer of us. … Average men know more about collegiate basketball than they know about a given overseas conflict. Like the bonobos, we don’t have to worry about hunger. We barely have a reason to get up off the couch. Until the recent extended recession, jobs were fairly easy to come by, and almost all of the men who wanted to work were able to get a job. Welfare and social assistance programs provide safety nets for many others, and few American men living today grew up in a home without a television. True hunger and poverty and desperation, the way people know it in Africa, is rare even for those who are officially considered poor. … If anything illustrates the surreal plenty we live in today, it is the fact that we have problems like epidemic obesity. People are able to sit in their homes and eat until they are so fat they can’t move. Americans are obese in part because they simply don’t do enough. It’s hard to find a job doing the kind of back-breaking work our ancestors did. … The human body is made to work hard. When there is no work to do, our physical health deteriorates. Doctors have to tell people to walk like it is some kind of breakthrough exercise technology. … The rest of us go to the gym to “work out,” which is just a substitute for doing physical work. People who answers emails for a living go to a special building where they trick their bodies into thinking they are actually doing the kind of work humans evolved to do. … The goal of civilization seems to be to eliminate work and risk, but the world has changed more than we have. Our bodies crave work and sex, our minds crave risk and conflict. … Our society has almost no tolerance for unsanctioned physical violence. Children are expelled from school for fighting, and something as historically common as a weaponless, drunken brawl can land men in court or in jail.

A recent headline in Silver Spring, Maryland: ‘Boy, 6, suspended over finger gun’ (UPI). Not worth a headline in Silver Spring: ‘Lawless mobs periodically loot convenience stores’ (Unamusement Park).

As coalitions of females, pandering politicians and fearful men organize to child-proof our world, to ban guns and regulate violent sports, men retreat to redoubts of virtual and vicarious masculinity like video games and fantasy football because it’s all they have left. … Our world isn’t offering men more paths to virile fulfillment or vital experience. What the modern world offers average men is a thousand and one ways to safely spank our monkey brains into oblivion.

No, no, no, no, NO. Fuck it, let it all burn.

Narcissism, Consumerism, Feminism

Free with your purchase of Modernity.

All the anti-masculine elements of the modern world Jack Donovan highlights figure prominently in Fight Club (see above). From Jef Costello’s review at Counter-Currents:

Our friend Jack [the narrator] is the Last Man. He works as a “recall coordinator” for a major, unnamed car company and he is living “the American dream.” When not working, he spends his time stocking his climate-controlled, concrete-lined condo… with IKEA furniture, duvets, and dust ruffles. He has it all: CK shirts, DKNY shoes, AX ties. And absolutely nothing else. Had this film been made (or the novel written) more recently no doubt a large portion of Jack’s evenings, and days off, would be spent looking at porn online and masturbating. (Sorry, guys. Did that hit too close to home?) Jack says “I would flip through catalogues and wonder, ‘What kind of dining set defines me as a person?’” My God, I’ve done the exact same thing. I’ve spent many an afternoon winding my way through IKEA looking at their displays thinking “Is this the sort of couch a person like me would have?” Or, worse yet, “What do I want to say about myself by buying that bedspread?” Fight Club does a marvelous job of conveying the utter barrenness of this modern life — especially the way it tries to cover its stench with the sickly-sweet perfume of moral superiority. Jack buys “Rislampa wire lamps of environmentally-friendly unbleached paper,” and “glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections. Proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of… wherever.”

Jack’s fault is narcissism — symptom of modernity; defining mental disorder of our age. Briefly, according to the reigning expert, The Last Psychiatrist, a narcissist “believes he is the main character in his own movie. … A narcissist looks the same every day; he has a ‘look’ with a defining characteristic,” which he uses “to create an identity in his mind that he will spend a lot of energy keeping up” (2006). “He’s a man in a glass box, unable to connect. He thinks the problem is people don’t like him, or not enough, so he exerts massive energy into the creation and maintenance of an identity… If the other person is also in a glass box, then you have a serious problem. If everyone is in their own glass box, well, then you have America” (2010).

The ultimate manifestation of Jack’s narcissism is Tyler Durden. “You were looking for a way to change your life,” Tyler remarks. “You could not do this on your own. All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. … People do it every day. They talk to themselves; they see themselves as they’d like to be. They don’t have the courage you have, to just run with it.”

Besides narcissism, Costello notes, we are confronted with universal consumerism:

And everywhere there is the oppressive vulgarity of a processed, homogenized, corporate world: “When deep space exploration ramps up it will be the corporations that name everything. The IBM Stellar Sphere. The Microsoft Galaxy. Planet Starbucks.” … Fight Club not only captures the ugliness and emptiness of today, it captures its inhumanity as well. The automated phone lines with their menus within menus, the corporations that knowingly put our lives at risk with shoddy products, the bosses who think your life belongs to them, and the complete and total lack of any sense of community, any sense of caring for others. This plush little Rislampa lit paradise we’ve created is hard and cold, filled with harried, angry people. It’s the men who are angriest of all. The women, true enough, are awful: brittle, desiccated career harpies; emotionally stunted and even physically damaged by their religious commitment to infertility. And this is, in many ways, very much a woman’s world. It is soccer-mom safe. Oriented around material comfort, security, and the suppression of thumos [roughly, spiritedness].

Not to mention emasculation:

Yes, it’s with emasculation that Fight Club begins. Literally. (And literal emasculation is a thread that runs through the entire film.) The world of Fight Club — our world — is a world where all healthy, male expressions of masculinity have been pathologized and suppressed. And the story of Fight Club starts when Jack, an emotionally repressed insomniac looking for some kind of catharsis, visits a support group for men with testicular cancer: “Remaining Men Together.” Some of these men have literally been emasculated. One of them, Bob, has developed “bitch tits” because testosterone therapy caused his body to up his estrogen level. … It is implied that Bob’s steroid abuse led to his testicular cancer. How ironic. Here’s a guy who pumped himself full of synthetic man hormones and built enormous man muscles — why? Well, to be manly for gosh sakes. And it led to his manhood being removed. Punishment from the gods, if you ask me. Like Jack and so many other men today, he felt a sense of masculine inferiority. And like so many men today he addressed it through the external, through the cosmetic. So he built big muscles (which, of course, any fairy can do in a gym in Chelsea). Others allow a quarter inch or so of stubble to accumulate on their faces, and carefully trim it every few days. Others buy snazzy cars. … No, it’s because all the traditional ways in which men have proved their masculinity are now closed to us. And so masculinity becomes purely a matter of externals, of looks and size: height, size of muscles, size of penis, size of bank account, size of house, etc.

Which brings us back to narcissism.

Tyler Durden sees this emptiness with total clarity:

Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man: no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaries and movie gods and rock stars — but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

He also says, “Fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns,” which is good advice too.

A Clockwork Orange

The End of Men?

We return to The Way of Men, Chapter 11 (“The Bonobo Masturbation Society”), for a glimpse into one possible future:

The future that our elite handlers have in store for us advertises more of the same. More detached pleasure, less risk, freedom from want, more masturbation. … In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange bests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. … If you’re a good boy and you follow the rules, if you learn how to speak passively and inoffensively, if you can convince some other poor sleepwalking sap that you are possessed with an almost unhealthy desire to provide outstanding customer service or increase operational efficiency through the improvement of internal processes and effective organizational communication, if you can say stupid shit like that without laughing, if you record checks out and your pee smells right — you can get yourself a J-O-B. Maybe you can be the guy who administers the test or authorizes the insurance policy. Maybe you can be the guy who helps make some soulless global corporation a little more money. Maybe you can get a pat on the head for coming up with the bright idea to put a bunch of other guys out of work and outsource their boring jobs to guys in some other place who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Whatever you do, no matter what people say, no matter how many team-building activities you attend or how many birthday cards you get from someone’s secretary, you will know that you are a completely replaceable unit of labor in the big scheme of things. … If you’re a good boy, you can curl up in the womb of your safe little Soviet-nouveau bloc apartment with your comfy stuff and enjoy your measured indulgences, your gourmet food, your micro-brew. You can busy yourself trying to master the art of erasing your own carbon footprint… Maybe you’ll pay someone to let you play a game or run a race or put on a safety harness and climb fake rocks. If not, you can always watch someone else do it on TV. … Whatever you do, just find some way to busy yourself.

There is, however, another possibility. From Chapter 12 (“What Is Best in Life?”):

This end of men, this decline of males, this new bonobo masturbation society of peace and plenty — this No Man’s Land — is not inevitable. It will require the tacit or expressed consent of billions of men. Like every civilization, it must be built on the backs of men, and most of them must agree to abide by and enforce its laws. You can’t have prisons without prison guards and you can’t have security without some kind of police. Men will have to get up in the morning and go to their clerking jobs and smile and consume and continue to amuse themselves according to regulation. Civilization requires a social contract, and men have to keep up their end of the bargain for it to work. This future can only happen if men help create it. As I wrote in the opening chapter of this book, men must choose a way.

What, then, is the alternative? Tyler Durden’s vision of the future should be familiar by now:

In the world I see, you’re stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller 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 Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.

Jef Costello elaborates:

Tyler Durden is an Übermensch who aims to destroy our Last Mannish utopia, squatting fat and happy at the End of History. How? By restarting history. By recreating that primal scene at the Beginning of History where manhood first flowered; where men struggled against each other using only their own strength and will…

Suppose we win. Suppose we restart history. What then? To be precise, as Donovan asked in The Way of Men, Chapter 2: “As you stand back to back, fending off incoming oblivion, what do you need from the men in your group? As you close a circle tighter around dangerous game that could feed you all for a week, what kind of men do you want at your flank?” He answers, simply: strength, courage, mastery, honor.

From Chapter 3 (‘The Tactical Virtues’):

Vir is the Latin word for “man.” The word “virtue” comes from the Latin virtus. To the early Romans, virtus meant manliness, and manliness meant martial valor. Demonstrating virtus meant showing strength and courage and loyalty to the tribe while attacking or defending against the enemies of Rome.

Recall Julius Evola, particularly the “special chrism… proper to ‘man’ in the higher sense of the word (vir was the term employed in Roman times) and not merely of a generic homo: this condition is marked by a spiritual breakthrough and by detachment from the naturalistic and vegetative plane.”

As the Romans became more successful and their civilization became more complex, it was no longer necessary for all men to hunt or fight. … The meaning of the word virtus and the Roman idea of manliness expanded to include values that were not merely survival virtues, but also civic and moral virtues. Definitions of manliness expand to include other virtues as civilizations grow. However… Manly virtues should be virtues directly related to manhood. The virtues that men all over the world recognize as manly virtues are the fighting virtues. … The virtues associated specifically with being a man outline a rugged philosophy of living — a way to be that is also a strategy for prevailing in dire and dangerous times. The Way of Men is a tactical ethos. … Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor. These are the practical virtues of men who must rely on one another in a worst-case scenario. Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are simple, functional virtues. … These tactical virtues point to triumph. They are amoral, but not immoral. Their morality is primal and it lives in a closed circle. The tactical virtues are unconcerned with abstract moral questions of universal right and wrong. What is right is what wins, and what is wrong is what loses, because losing is death and the end of everything that matters. Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are the virtues that protect the perimeter; they are the virtues that save us. … Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are the alpha virtues of men all over the world. They are the fundamental virtues of men because without them, no “higher” virtues can be entertained. You need to be alive to philosophize. You can add to these virtues and you can create rules and moral codes to govern them, but if you remove them from the equation altogether you aren’t just leaving behind the virtues that are specific to men, you are abandoning the virtues that make civilization possible.

Donovan devotes much of his book to expanding on the tactical virtues, so if you’ve enjoyed these excerpts from The Way of Men, consider picking up a copy.

The Walking Dead, Dawn of the Dead (2004 remake), and Shaun of the Dead. Who’s most likely to survive?

The modern world’s most revealing obsession.

Recall how Jack Donovan had to bring us outside civilized society to find “the raw masculinity that all men know in their gut.” He invites us to imagine ourselves as “part of a small human group fighting to stay alive. … You could be our primal ancestors, you could be pioneers, you could be stranded in some remote location, you could be survivors of a nuclear holocaust or the zombie apocalypse.”

Whether you believe we’re living at Fukuyama’s End of History or restarting history from Evola’s Kali Yuga, — whether we’re Jack Donovan’s mindless, masturbating bonobos or Tyler Durden’s pissed-off “middle children of history,” — surely it bears consideration that one of the most popular shows on television depicts a zombie apocalypse and mankind’s forced return to that prehistoric condition of “raw masculinity,” “relieved of moral pretense and stripped of folk costumes.”

Ask yourself: why would the Last Man watch The Walking Dead? Not to mention Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Left 4 Dead, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, World War Z, Resident Evil, the Zombie Research Society, ‘5 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen’ (Cracked), ‘10 Essentials for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: A Practical Guide’ (The Huffington Post), ‘Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse’ (the CDC, for God’s sake), ‘Montana TV Station Warns Of Attacking Zombies’ (NPR), ‘“Canada will never be a safe haven for zombies,” Foreign Minister John Baird tells House of Commons’ (National Post), ‘Zombie apocalypse cancelled by Quebec government’ (CBC), and of course the Walking Dead zombie swimsuit calendar.

Donovan explains in Chapter 10 (‘A Check to Civilization’):

Unfortunately, we’ve reached [such] a level of civilization, technology and plenty that — to protect order and established interests — opportunities for vital, immediate equivalents to hunting and war are increasingly rare. … Men are dropping out and disengaging from our slick, easy, safe world. For what may be the first time in history, the average guy can afford to be careless. Nothing he does really matters, and — what’s worse — there is a shrinking hope of any future where what he does will matter. … This is one reason why people love zombie movies and “disaster porn” so much. The apocalypse — any apocalypse — offers an opportunity. As the back cover of The Walking Dead comic book reads, “In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living.”

Near the beginning of Fight Club, immediately before meeting (that is, creating) Tyler Durden, the narrator remarks: “Every time the plane banked too sharply on take-off or landing, I prayed for a crash, or a mid-air collision — anything.”

Even some “conservatives” are picking up on this, in their own confused way (Breitbart, 2012):

“The Walking Dead” has finally started to get good because the characters and the show itself have shed the essentially liberal world view that not only led to two seasons of failure for their characters but made the show itself almost unbearable to watch. … Conservatives… hold a tragic world view. There are iron laws of human nature that don’t change. In contrast, liberals hold an idealized view, one where man can change his essential nature, where he can be perfected. But this requires a rejection of the world as it is in favor of a world as it can (they believe) be. This leads to the conservative critique that liberals ignore reality and base their policies on feelings. But that is a natural consequence of an ideology concerned not with how man and the world are, but with what they might be transformed — “fundamentally transformed,” to quote a well-known liberal — into. Now, let’s apply this to the first two seasons of “The Walking Dead.” Most of the problems (both within the plot and with the show itself) were a result of characters denying the reality of their situation. Characters focused energy arguing over their petty emotional conflicts like they were back in the suburbs and not in an entirely changed world. Their denial of reality manifested in their rank stupidity — my favorite example was their deciding to gather around a campfire facing inward with no security, like they were going to toast up some s’mores. … But the greatest example of denial was the entire second season, where the survivors wound up on Herchsel’s farm. The farm itself was a rejection of reality — they simply assumed it was secure against all evidence and immediately returned to their personal dramas rather than dealing with their situation. … … But that nonsense is all gone this season. The crackerjack opening sequence in the season premiere last week demonstrates without a doubt that the survivors have left their liberal baggage behind, embracing the world as it is and not as they wish it to be. They aren’t perfecting mankind; they’re dealing with reality. The door to a house is kicked open and Rick immediately guns down a zombie without a second thought — using a sound suppressed pistol like anyone with common sense would. The survivors, everyone knowing their place and their task, systematically and ruthlessly clear the house. There’s no chitchat. Herschel isn’t sounding off from his pulpit on Mount Sanctimony. The racist hick? He’s now the backbone of the group, his skills and savvy recognized and respected. Even Rick, [whose] dithering during the last two seasons made being around him riskier than grabbing a ride home from a beach party with Teddy Kennedy, has started to man up. Just ask the convict survivors the group later discovers at the prison after Rick deals with them. And little Carl — the kid whose poisonous mother Lori used to whine about being armed — dispatched a ghoul with his own silenced pistol. The suburban mom mortified by guns is gone — though she’s still a useless pain. Later, they conduct another blitzkrieg when securing a prison yard, planning and executing — with speed and overwhelming force — a lethal assault on the zombie occupiers. And when they afterwards gather around the fire this time, Rick is providing security. … The characters (and the show itself) are dealing with the world as it is. Reality has won. Its many liberal fans won’t like it, and its writers would no doubt deny it, but as long as the show stays on course and doesn’t turn back, it will be good to go. “The Walking Dead” is finally alive, and that’s because it has gone conservative.

Breitbart says “conservative,” Donovan says “anarcho-fascist”—well, it’s becoming something, that’s for sure.

We close with a poem on the “perimeter” by Radish favorite Rudyard Kipling: The Stranger (1908).

The Stranger within my gate,

He may be true or kind,

But he does not talk my talk—

I cannot feel his mind.

I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,

But not the soul behind. The men of my own stock,

They may do ill or well,

But they tell the lies I am wonted to,

They are used to the lies I tell;

And we do not need interpreters

When we go to buy or sell. The Stranger within my gates,

He may be evil or good,

But I cannot tell what powers control—

What reasons sway his mood;

Nor when the Gods of his far-off land

Shall repossess his blood. The men of my own stock,

Bitter bad they may be,

But, at least, they hear the things I hear,

And see the things I see;

And whatever I think of them and their likes

They think of the likes of me. This was my father’s belief

And this is also mine:

Let the corn be all one sheaf—

And the grapes be all one vine,

Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge

By bitter bread and wine.

Until next time.

Want to learn more about the topics covered in this issue of Radish? We recommend the following resources. (We do not, however, necessarily endorse all opinions expressed in them: some are not nearly extreme enough.)

Jack Donovan

The Way of Men Reviewed

Masculine Websites

Manly Books

Counter-Currents

Roissy

Evola

Insanity

On Failed Men

The Real Failures

Womanly Virtue

Assorted, Tangential & Miscellaneous