Counter-Currents
1,685 words
I contend that John Hughes’ 1985 film The Breakfast Club is a pro-white classic and fascist masterpiece.
The film takes place in a high school library in suburban Chicago although upon release, a lot of people liked to think of it as taking place in Anytown, USA.
The premise is that five white teenagers show up to school for Saturday detention and each one represents a different teen social archetype or high school clique that would have been familiar to viewers at the time. Molly Ringwald as Claire represents the preppy clique and the archetypical “popular girl.” Representing the jock clique is Emilio Estevez as Andrew. Anthony Michael Hall, who specialized in playing nerds throughout the 80s, plays another one in the movie named Brian. Judd Nelson as Bender represents the stereotypical antisocial lumpenprole stoner. Ally Sheedy as the eccentric and possibly mentally ill Allison is perhaps hardest to pigeonhole. As a social outcast, she is somewhat defined by not fitting into a group.
The five teens are not divided by race or class. There was no Catholic-Protestant sectarianism in 1980s America. Rather, the five white teens are divided by school cliques and the social archetypes that are expected of them. The five white kids all went to the same school and yet lived in different worlds. Now they all wind up in detention together and for the first time ever find themselves interacting with people that they had previously only ever seen across the hall but never talked to.
At first the group is guarded with each other but the antisocial Bender starts trolling members of the group to amuse himself. At first, the group are annoyed with Bender but his trolling does have the effect of getting everyone to come out of their shells and start talking to each other.
Over the course of the film, the five teens engage with one another and gradually come to learn that each are more complex and 3-dimensional than any of them would have expected given the person’s respective social archetype.
In essence, The Breakfast Club is a movie about white solidarity. It’s a story of five teens learning to transcend the high school caste system and see each other as family. Even Bender, who everyone hates at first, they come to see as a brother by the end of the day.
In fact, I would say that The Breakfast Club is a movie could only have been made about white people. I don’t think you could make a black Breakfast Club because I don’t think there a total of five different black social archetypes. There’s basically just criminals and DEI hires.
The Breakfast Club is a testament the fact when left to their own devices, white people will create their own diversity. Even the 1980s suburbs which we think of as very homogeneous will have an array of subcultures.
Even less likely to work would be trying to do a multi-cultural Breakfast Club. The moral of The Breakfast Club is that their social archetypes were the most relevant differences between them but that these were largely superficial. However, if you had a movie with a black girl from the popular clique and a white girl from the outcast clique, it would be absurd to pretend that their relative social standings are the most profound distinctions between them. Half the movie would be complaining about racism. It wouldn’t be the same film. The film only works because it is about white people.
There are also clear fascist overtones in The Breakfast Club. A major tenet of fascism is class cooperation. Instead of having endless tug-of-war between bosses and unions, agrarians and urbanites, etc, the goal of fascism was to get all the various classes to start working as a team.
High school has its own class system. Within the context of The Breakfast Club, Claire the popular girl and Andrew the athlete would be high caste in the school’s social ladder whereas Bender and Allison as outcasts are lower. Brian the nerd, who is neither popular nor scorned is somewhere in the middle.
At the first, teens squabble with each other but in the face of the tyrannical Vice Principal Richard Vernon, members of these various social classes put aside their differences to act in solidarity. Even though they don’t like Bender, the teens, even the high caste ones, lie to protect Bender.
In return, the individualist Bender sacrifices himself for the collective when he allows the vice principal to catch him so that the rest of the group can escape punishment.
As the movie progresses, the high caste teens learn noblesse oblige and the lower class teens overcome their class resentment against the school’s aristocratic class. Being neither aristocrat nor outcast, Brian the nerd is the closest thing The Breakfast Club has to an Everyman and so it is fitting that he gave the final monologue.
To play devil’s advocate, some might say that The Breakfast Club is actually Marxist-coded. Maybe what is actually happening in The Breakfast Club is that the teens are overthrowing the school class system and establishing a new classless friend group. After all, the movie ends with Brian’s letter saying: “each one of us is a brain (Brian), an athlete (Andrew), a basket case (Allison), a princess (Claire), and a criminal (Bender).”
That passage could be interpreted as somewhat Marxist.
My counter-argument would be that unlike Marxism, fascism did not seek to destroy existing hierarchies but to make existing hierarchies in harmony. Bender and Brian do not seek to overthrow Claire and Andrew but to find understanding.
Ultimately, each member of the Breakfast Club learns to use the skills of his or her specific class for benefit the collective. Brian, the brainy one, is the one who writes the letter to principal at the end because that is something his class (nerd) is good at. Claire uses her skills as a school princess to give Allison a makeover. Even lumpenprole Bender uses his criminal skills to benefit of the group and he supplies the marijuana.
This is the essence of fascism.
While class is not a major theme in The Breakfast Club but it is touched on a few times. There are only two adult characters in the movie. One is Vice Principal Vernon, played by the magnificent Paul Gleason who made a good living playing asshole authority figures in the 80s, most notably in the original Die Hard.
The other adult character is the more easy-going school janitor played John Kapelos. You don’t have to be a Marxist to notice that the working class guy is vastly more sympathetic than the middle class despot. One could be forgiven for thinking this is a Marxist dog whistle. However, there is a scene later in the movie where the vice principal and the janitor are seen drinking together. We see that despite their conspicuous class divide, there is no antagonism between them and that they are on friendly terms.
While the working class janitor and the middle class principal may not see eye to eye, they understand each other and treat each other with respect. This is an appropriate fascist message.
Class is touched on a handful of other times. When Bender performs an imitation of his father, he uses a working class accent. There’s another scene that, while ambiguous, suggests that Brian might be somehow related to the janitor, implying that the high-IQ and book smart nerd might actually come from a working class background.
The Breakfast Club has its flaws. Even in the 1980s people found some of the dialogue corny. There have been criticisms of the casting, for example that Judd Nelson was too old to be playing a high schooler or that Molly Ringwald wasn’t hot enough to be a convincing popular girl. There are also questions as to how well it has aged. Younger views might even find it somewhat camp.
One issue is that white social archetypes have evolved since the 1980s. In some cases, they might be extinct. The anti-bullying movement killed off the Benders of the world.
There are still people who call themselves nerds and there’s even a “nerd culture” but what it means to be a “nerd” has evolved. These days, a nerd is defined by their cultural consumption. Liking anime, comic books, and video games makes you a nerd. In the 1980s, the defining characteristic of a nerd was that they were book smart but socially unsuccessful. They won the science fair every year but couldn’t get a date. There were stereotypes about their cultural consumption (they liked Star Trek and played Dungeons & Dragons), but what they liked to watch wasn’t the first thing you thought of when you heard the word “nerd”. You thought “smart”. That’s why when someone says “I’m a Civil War nerd” or “I’m a political nerd”, they mean they study that subject intensely, not that they watch cartoons about the Civil War. A person who liked Star Trek and played Dungeons & Dragons without being book smart would be a “dork”, not a “nerd”. Many people calling themselves “nerds” today are not true nerds but dorks.
The Breakfast Club is seen as a quintessentially 80s movie, but could it be made again today? It could and it should, as its lessons in white solidarity are needed more urgently than ever. Hell, even the white nationalist community, the people you would most expect to understand white solidarity, can’t help but fall into cliquish factionalism.
Perhaps some aspiring Dissident Right filmmaker could produce a modern day retelling of The Breakfast Club where a groyper, a wignat, a MAGA, a Patriot Front member, and a post-Leftist all end up in the same room somehow. Handsome Truth would play the Bender role, obviously. I’m thinking Morrakiu doing his Jew voice as the vice principal.
You don’t have to give me credit. Just do it.
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19 comments
Great article about a favorite movie from my early years. God, I hope they never try to remake this for “modern audiences” for the reasons stated above. I can just imagine a black version of Claire bitching endlessly about being a BIPOC in a white space while everyone tries their best to kiss her ass. Or worse, a black Bender explaining the trauma he faces from interactions with authority figures all because he be black while the white girls clamor for his attention.
You can bet your last dollar that a remake has been considered containing all the horrors you mention. An all white remake would not be tolerated.
A couple years back, Devon Stack broke down this movie, & masterfully exposed how subtle, yet prototypical Jewy John Bender’s ”’rebel”’ character was (which was played by Judd Nelson, cohencidentally a Jew IRL.)
Just a couple of examples– He had disdain for White accomplishment –ripping up books in the school library, & he tried to shirk responsibility for his current obnoxiousness with a sob story of being neglected as a young child.
Insomnia stream: Breakfast Edition
https://www.bitchute.com/video/yucEjupdKx7x
Give me a fucking break.
Devon Stack wasn’t there. I was there.
I could play that game. Hey, it was fashionable in the 1980s for metal bands to Satanic and occult imagery. Clearly the Jews, being in control of the music industry, were inserting all this Satanic imagery into heavy metal to demoralize Christians and subvert our ancient European traditions. It’s not like any gentile would ever independently think to do it on the grounds that pentagrams look FUCKING BADASS on the front of your double bass drums.
Try telling anyone in this movement that heavy metal is Jewish.
I’m not trying to be some BAP-ist “you’re taking the JQ too far” but there is a point where you start seeing Jews in your corn flakes. “Ripping up books in the school library” is just what white kids did to be edgy in the 1980s instead of becoming internet racists.
Devon Stack doesn’t understand Bender for the same reason why zoomers don’t understand Beavis and Butthead: because they were archetypes of a kind of person who existed before the internet.
There is a strain of “fuck everything” nihilism that pops up among the gentile species every now and then. Marilyn Manson is an example. He’s not Jewish. In fact, he’s reportedly an antisemite. But he will still attack all the sacred cows of white society like a Jew but he’s coming at it more from a “Fuck everything. Nothing matters. It’s all a big joke.” angle.
Bender is an avatar of that strain. You don’t encounter him much anymore because he’s online now.
Very true. Being a rebel is more or less a White thing in itself.
More than 200 years long all “rebels” were and are manipulated by the Jews. Just look at all those “revolutions”, colored or not.
“Ripping up books in the school library” is just what white kids did to be edgy in the 1980s instead of becoming internet racists.
I graduated high school in ’88. I never knew anyone who tore up books, in my lifetime. And at my junior high, students were actually required to use sandpaper & sand down/ remove pen marks off the page edges of hardback books that may have been written on, before turning them in at the end of the year.
But, then again, I went to strict & academic private schools. Perhaps that’s a factor.
I agree with the stuff you say too, especially apropos the heavy metal, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if the Judd Nelson stuff was intended. There is a lot of subtle wit in movies of that era. These filmmakers were smart people. For example, I was rewatching True Lies after a long period for the first time the other night, mainly in pursuit of its thematic connection to Eyes Wide Shut. There are similar comments about art in both movies—why? People often site true lies as a strong example of Hollywood anti-Arab/Muslim sentiment. However, if you watch carefully in the scene where the terrorist explains his motives, he says “you’ve bombed our women and children, La La La” then the camera goes dead. The battery in the camera goes dead. It’s a very comic scene, but the point is that these people have real grievances, only there is a media black out and you are not hearing their side of the story. Also, if you watch carefully, the used car salesman represents James Cameron. “I can be honest.”
beat me to it, i came to the comments to also mention the DS take. Although I also appreciate Travis’ analysis of it. I still like the film having been born in 1970 and went to a similar albeit very much smaller HS.
When I saw first saw this movie, in a theatre no less, I enjoyed it well enough, but I didn’t think it was particularly wholesome. In fact, I was bothered that the movie contained what is, in effect, product placement for pot. (How much of pop culture is just advertising for the drug cartels, anyway?)
I wasn’t particularly memorable, either. In fact, I forgot everything about it and confused it with another movie with a lot of the same cast.
The only thing that was unforgettable was the greatest song of the decade, Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”
I rewatched The Breakfast Club on a whim a couple years ago, though, and it seemed shockingly wholesome. We’ve lost so much in the last 40 years. I dread to think what America will be like 40 years from now, unless we turn things around dramatically.
Thanks Trav.
An alt-right remake of the Breakfast Club would be pretty funny.
I came across this idea from a poster on an internet forum I frequent; the guy talked about “dominance hierarchies.” How we see, even among co-equals at work, people in the same position and getting same pay, there exists a sort of internal pecking order of sorts. This can either be abused or provided benefit.
I think we’ve seen the loss of the noblesse oblige with all of these billionaires and other wealthy people being in favor of mass migration to drive down wages. Achieving this class collaboration will be beyond impossible as the US becomes more and more diverse as racial animosity makes collaboration very difficult.
It’s worse than that. The billionaire class believes that flooding the country with foreigners IS noblesse oblige.
Foreigners are cheaper labor and “better” subjects, which are easier to be ruled – without questions and objections.
Of all the wonderfully all-White John Hughes ’80s comedies, my fav was She’s Having a Baby w/ Kevin Bacon (1988). Witnessing other peoples’ fertility difficulties were what finally *scared me* into starting a family of my own! In real life, I remember my immediate supervisor, in her late 30s, was highly stressed out, crying, & clocking out at weird times to rush home & try to get pregnant w/ her hubby.
When the love nest, has become a stud farm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPXGowa6p3Y
I remember when that movie and For Keeps starring Molly Ringwald came out one month apart from each other. Two movies about pregnancy, one with the director of Sixteen Candles and Breakfast Club and the other with the star of those two movies.
I saw For Keeps in the theater but I remember thinking She’s Having a Baby was a better movie.
Interesting take. My conclusion was that it seemed to riff on Jean-Paul Tartre’s No Exit.
I’ve only had one literary agent in my life, and it was from 1996-7. Her name was Charlotte Sheedy, mother of Ally.
was she a sweet pc of A?
Another fun exercise: Who would these characters be like 30-40 years later? Who would they have voted for? How are their lives turning out?
preppie (Molly Ringwald) – attended an ivy league college, very feminist and left wing, aspired to be an elite but only landed a job as an underpaid college lecturer, divorced, can’t find a man ‘good enough’ or worthy of her. Definitely for Kamala and Hillary.
Bender (the delinquent) – struggled a bit with motivation to work but now a respected carpenter or perhaps electrician. May have dropped out of college or never attended. Not very political and thinks they are all crooked. Likes RFK a little.
the Jock (Emilio Estevez) – got a business degree and is a division leader in something corporate. Very Republican, careful not to say anything offensive in public that could come back to bite him. May have quietly settled some sort of he said/she said event at a drunken frat party from his youth.
Ally Sheedy – has wrestled with depression or bipolar, may have been an artist, tends to be a Democrat, but doesn’t make a lot of money and has some history with guys of all political stripes.
the nerd (Anthony Michael Hall) – less nerdy with age, a little bit emotional, married to a depressive, like himself. Generally considered himself a quiet liberal democrat in his youth but lost more than 1 promotion to affirmative action and not being very assertive, and has moved quietly rightward in politics but without telling his wife he voted Trump.
Vice Principal Vernon – still thought the kids are clueless barbarians till his retirement. He generally voted with the teacher’s union platform recommendations, but saw an ever woke, anti-white curriculum coming and began marching rightward.
Carl the Janitor – was a bit like Bender in his youth and mellowed over time. Growing tired of the low pay as janitor went to trade school and became a general contractor or electrician. Tough to call his politics but less liberal with age.
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