No 9/11 = Fight Club?

I've always wondered whether the film Fight Club was set in what was then the near-future, or what now would be an ATL where 9/11 didn't happen.
A lot of cultural commentators seem to note that American culture seemed to be sort of directionless by the late 90s, that the "End of History" was reaching some sort of self-fulfillment. In my opinion, it's no coincidence that a lot of films questioning both the nature of reality and the bland conformity of modern consumerism came out at this very time(The Matrix, The Truman Show, Dark City, American Beauty, Fight Club of course, and, why not? Office Space). It was as if reality itself seemed unreal.
Then, of course, we were welcomed to the desert of the real with 9/11, which presented a new cultural paradigm like few other events managed to.
The more basic level of the question presented here is, do you think that, if 9/11 had not happened- say, Bin Laden is offered by the Sudanese government in 1999 and the US accepts(I heard something like that came close to happen)- America would perhaps shift its focus to native terrorism such as Oklahoma, neonazis, a radical offspring of the anti-globalization movement or something along those lines? Would Bush lose in 2004?
The more philosophical part of the question goes: would the cultural trends of the 90s continue? 9/11 was a cultural reset button for many things, a minor example being the support for gay marriage which was going up and up in the late 90s, only to fall after 9/11 and only begin rising again after around 2005. Would the silly moral outcry over things like South Park, Marilyn Manson, Postal, Limp Bizkit and, well, Fight Club continue in the 2000s? Seeing as "Complaining about shows you don't watch" seemed to be a major part of the duty of so-called Moral Guardians in the late 90s. 9/11, in my opinion, overshadowed both the need to 'draw the line' on pop culture and the posturing of trying to be as shocking as possible, which was what a lot of musicians for instance seemed to be doing ca. the Millenium.
Finally, after continuing for another decade with the 'End of History' would we face the psychological collapse seen in Fight Club? Would American society be overtaken by apathy and despair?
Also, sorry if this seems disjointed and disorganized, I wrote it while sort of following my stream of consciousness.
 
Other issues that had nothing to do with 9/11 would have been an issue. The environmental disasters would have still happened, along with the political and economic movements to address them. The world would have probably put less focus on Dubya as the physical embodiment of all these woes since the wars that boosted him to 'stardom' wouldn't have happened.

Had a theory once that 3rd parties might play a more influential role without the solidification of the American political blocs into the partisanship of the 00s and now. Don't think they would have posed any sort of threat to the established parties of course, but would have made more headway in the local arena and stayed on the periphery of the national scene.
 
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Recession?

I think the economic recession which was bound to happen due to banks (free of Glass Steagall), brokers, insurance companies and hedge funds putting so many of their investment eggs into the real-estate basket (mortgages) was a big enough event on its own to make a lot of people re-think what the 'American way' was mutating into.

Perhaps a lack of 9/11 would make the Great Recession occur sooner as there would be no downtown to delay the haphazard growth. If anyone has a reason why it would be the opposite I would be glad to read.
 
I've had thoughts along these lines as well. It is rather hard to imagine what America's culture and how it reacts without 9/11. I think after a decade of decadence, when the dotcom bubble pops there will be some soul-searching and introspection, rather than just despair and escapism after 9/11 and during the War on Terror. How that manifests is another question...
 
I think the economic recession which was bound to happen due to banks (free of Glass Steagall), brokers, insurance companies and hedge funds putting so many of their investment eggs into the real-estate basket (mortgages) was a big enough event on its own to make a lot of people re-think what the 'American way' was mutating into.

Perhaps a lack of 9/11 would make the Great Recession occur sooner as there would be no downtown to delay the haphazard growth. If anyone has a reason why it would be the opposite I would be glad to read.

Good point, but the mini-recession was already basically under way when 9/11 happened. If I'm not mistaken, 9/11 did worsen it, but it began sometime in Spring 2000 when the Dot-Com Bubble burst.
With that in mind, I can't quite see why it would happen earlier than it did in OTL. The haphazard growth was already being delayed by real-life events.
Again, I think that maybe(and I'm really not sure on that one) a Democratic President after 2004 would probably lead to more regulation on the financial sector, which, though late, could possibly soften or delay the crash a little. It would probably be as bad as the 1987 crash, which didn't really alter the mood of the nation like the 2008 crash did.
 
Good point, but the mini-recession was already basically under way when 9/11 happened. If I'm not mistaken, 9/11 did worsen it, but it began sometime in Spring 2000 when the Dot-Com Bubble burst.
With that in mind, I can't quite see why it would happen earlier than it did in OTL. The haphazard growth was already being delayed by real-life events.
Again, I think that maybe(and I'm really not sure on that one) a Democratic President after 2004 would probably lead to more regulation on the financial sector, which, though late, could possibly soften or delay the crash a little. It would probably be as bad as the 1987 crash, which didn't really alter the mood of the nation like the 2008 crash did.

Or, alternatively, without 9/11, the economy burns out faster by 2006, Dems sweept the midterms but the GOP White House isn't in any mood for stimulus spending to get the economy back on track, total gridlock in a divided Washington, and things are worse than OTL and we get in a 2nd Great Depression
 
Or, alternatively, without 9/11, the economy burns out faster by 2006, Dems sweept the midterms but the GOP White House isn't in any mood for stimulus spending to get the economy back on track, total gridlock in a divided Washington, and things are worse than OTL and we get in a 2nd Great Depression

Yeah, or that. Damn.
 
I think the economic recession which was bound to happen due to banks (free of Glass Steagall), brokers, insurance companies and hedge funds putting so many of their investment eggs into the real-estate basket (mortgages) was a big enough event on its own to make a lot of people re-think what the 'American way' was mutating into.

Perhaps a lack of 9/11 would make the Great Recession occur sooner as there would be no downtown to delay the haphazard growth. If anyone has a reason why it would be the opposite I would be glad to read.


I've always been of the opinion that no 9/11 would mean the housing bubble forms slightly slower than OTL, so the crash occurs later. The Fed was lowering rates due to the mini-recession of early 2001, but by late summer they were slowing down the rate cuts and the prime rate was at 6.50%. Then 9/11 happens and they swiftly cut rates 4 times between 9/18/01 to 12/12/01 down to 4.75% and hold it there until 11/2002 when they lower it to 4.50% then lowered again in 6/2003 to 4.00%, where it stays for a year.

Without 9/11 I don't think we get such a quick rate cut in late 2001, and we don't end up with <5.00% rates for nearly 3 years between 12/2001 to 11/2004. That would mean the housing bubble will form at a slower pace than the OTL, which means the fallout due to mortgage defaults is pushed back some, and the crash of 9/2008 happens later. I can't say how much later, but there's a good shot it's after the 2008 election. So there could be huge political butterflies based on that.
 
Well, the US would likely turn against Bush by 2004. The reports on Florida were coming out around or after 9/11.
As for the bailouts, if there's gridlock, or if the right and left unite to oppose them, then the "too big to fail" banks fail...and others pick up the pieces. Meanwhile, people will still have their homes. The foreclosure crisis will be averted.
Plus, with no 9/11, the US will have fewer places with deployed forces. A Bush without 9/11 will have a harder time convincing people to go into Iraq- especially after they let the inspectors in.
 
Fight Club was a novel expressing the so called poisonous influence of feminism on male culture. In an sense it was about reclaiming manhood and being men. However, the novel, like the movie, is a piece of entertaining fiction. While Fight Club may seem to be an alternate history, it is merely set in the 1990's and set in Delaware. So that would be the reason that there is no mention of 9/11. The only involvement 9/11 has to Fight Club, is that the movies airplane has been neutered on television.

No one foresaw 9/11 happening, in the general population at least. If your saying that without the War on Terror, and the Bush administrations own sense of reclaiming manhood, through rather opportunistic governing, that we would have ended up with a world similar to that of Fight club, it's possible. Back when things were normal.
 
That's a very interesting way to tie culture into socio-political events and I've just erased two massive rants in a row. This is exactly the kind of thing to get me over-analyzing.:p

Suffice it to say, I see this trend continuing in the current slate of post-apocalyptic cultural products- when the society gets tired of its own story, the end of society becomes the story.

We might have just delayed the kind of action called for by Fight Club et al; basically a raging against lack-of-purpose.

Honestly I think butterflying the financial crisis is kind-of unlikely, given the POD. But the "good" news, assuming your purpose is vindication for your assertion, the financial crisis really helps get us to the kind of anger we see in Fight Club.

A world without the numbing effects of 9/11 means a Tea Party movement without the context of war and tragedy to know how ridiculous they sound- meaning they're likely to be even more vehement, dangerous, nihilistic, and annoying.

Similarly, a financial crisis without the "distraction" of ongoing war means an even bigger backlash against status quo monetism, financial institutions, and the rich in general. This could go in all sorts of ways and might even cut across the aisle.

So, I don't know if this post sounds rant-y too, but at least you don't have to read my 500 words on post-apocalyptic young adult fiction.:p
 
Right up until 9/11 the anti-globalization movement was starting to pick up some serious steam. While some of this is wishful thinking practically every activist I've met who worked on the globalization movement pre 9/11 blames the War on Terror and Iraq for shoving the issue into the background. Without 9/11 and with the dotcom bubble I could see the anti-corporate anti-globalization movement continuing to pick up steam.
 

katchen

Banned
Before 9/11, as you will recall, the Bush Administration's agenda was all about crowding China on human rights and the Wang Wei incident. Bush and Cheney were spoiling for a fight, but if nothing had happened around Al Qaeda to cause the US to pivot to the Middle East, I could see the US winding up with a war against North Korea in spite of the high casualties such a war would mean.

If President Bush managed to go for four years without a war, I would not see him being re-elected in 2004 ATL. And yes, I do think that without 9/11 Americans would have continued to have the same healthy skepticism of Big Brother government and corporate intrusion on privacy that we had during the Clinton Administration and which doomed the Clipper Chip. There would be no FISA law, not even with Senator Barack Obama supporting it and certainly no Patriot Act, not even with a straight up-down war with North Korea.

We might have much sharper militia/culture wars though, and maybe even domestic terrorism of the magnitude of the Klan insurgency of the 1890s in the South. though, now that I think about it. If the US started to experience the kind of sophisticated electoral and voter registration strategies on the part of the Democrats in 2002 or 2004 that we saw in 2008 or 2012 (and all it would take would be someone like Howard Dean really figuring out the potential of the Internet for networked fundraising early), this would crowd and frighten Christian conservatives at a time when there are still a lot more of them, more of them are younger and all of them are in country. Whatever you want to say about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the PTSD that it has caused, like foreign wars keeping the Roman legions busy and away from Rome, these wars have worn out the very people who could be expected to answer the call of miitias if they were in the US with time on their hands. And 9'11, for all the damage it has done has delayed the electoral/cultural shift in the US until more of the conservative voters are too old to be taking up arms against it in an organized fashion than they would have, say even 6-8 years ago.
 
Fight Club was a novel expressing the so called poisonous influence of feminism on male culture. In an sense it was about reclaiming manhood and being men. However, the novel, like the movie, is a piece of entertaining fiction. While Fight Club may seem to be an alternate history, it is merely set in the 1990's and set in Delaware. So that would be the reason that there is no mention of 9/11. The only involvement 9/11 has to Fight Club, is that the movies airplane has been neutered on television.

No one foresaw 9/11 happening, in the general population at least. If your saying that without the War on Terror, and the Bush administrations own sense of reclaiming manhood, through rather opportunistic governing, that we would have ended up with a world similar to that of Fight club, it's possible. Back when things were normal.

Fight Club, the novel and the movie, was hardly anti-Feminist; and trying to shoehorn it as such, does both a great diservice. However, I would say, that both spoke to a certain rudderless sense of self whic was prevalent during the period of history (and, honestly, still is.)

Without 9/11, I don't think we see underground Fight Clubs springing up all over the place, any more so than in OTL (and there were a few). But I do believe that the cultural malaise of the novel continues for longer. I could see Millenials ending up even more angry and embittered than they are in OTL; especially in the situation where we get no Obama. Lets say Bush gets bea by Kerry in '04, and things go bad from there. It would end up with a generation that has a lot in common with the Lost Generation of the 1920s. Maybe a it more idealistic and liberal, yes, but utterly disgusted with "the system."
 
Without 9/11 I think the whole 90s domestic terrorism would be larger, as there would be no external threat.Meanwhile new York does not experience as large a revival. Sure New york would be in a much better place, but the almost re-apprasil of new york dose not happen as quickly as it did post 9/11. For example Letterman dose't open with " Live from the greatest city in the world"

Also jackie Chan makes Nosebleed
 
This made me think of American Psycho (i think American Psycho and Fight Club are incredibly similar - violent surreality to escape normality) the idea of a consumer culture that's so deep and narcissistic that a guy that can blend in and become a serial killer with no-one noticing or realising...
 
Very interesting points raised by everybody! This one made me think:
Right up until 9/11 the anti-globalization movement was starting to pick up some serious steam. While some of this is wishful thinking practically every activist I've met who worked on the globalization movement pre 9/11 blames the War on Terror and Iraq for shoving the issue into the background. Without 9/11 and with the dotcom bubble I could see the anti-corporate anti-globalization movement continuing to pick up steam.
What if the anti-globalization movement did gain steam, and became an issue in US elections by, say, 2004 and 2006? A representative or two elected to "fight against globalization", and not just NAFTA?
 
I've always wondered whether the film Fight Club was set in what was then the near-future, or what now would be an ATL where 9/11 didn't happen.
A lot of cultural commentators seem to note that American culture seemed to be sort of directionless by the late 90s, that the "End of History" was reaching some sort of self-fulfillment. In my opinion, it's no coincidence that a lot of films questioning both the nature of reality and the bland conformity of modern consumerism came out at this very time(The Matrix, The Truman Show, Dark City, American Beauty, Fight Club of course, and, why not? Office Space). It was as if reality itself seemed unreal.
Then, of course, we were welcomed to the desert of the real with 9/11, which presented a new cultural paradigm like few other events managed to.
The more basic level of the question presented here is, do you think that, if 9/11 had not happened- say, Bin Laden is offered by the Sudanese government in 1999 and the US accepts(I heard something like that came close to happen)- America would perhaps shift its focus to native terrorism such as Oklahoma, neonazis, a radical offspring of the anti-globalization movement or something along those lines? Would Bush lose in 2004?
The more philosophical part of the question goes: would the cultural trends of the 90s continue? 9/11 was a cultural reset button for many things, a minor example being the support for gay marriage which was going up and up in the late 90s, only to fall after 9/11 and only begin rising again after around 2005. Would the silly moral outcry over things like South Park, Marilyn Manson, Postal, Limp Bizkit and, well, Fight Club continue in the 2000s? Seeing as "Complaining about shows you don't watch" seemed to be a major part of the duty of so-called Moral Guardians in the late 90s. 9/11, in my opinion, overshadowed both the need to 'draw the line' on pop culture and the posturing of trying to be as shocking as possible, which was what a lot of musicians for instance seemed to be doing ca. the Millenium.
Finally, after continuing for another decade with the 'End of History' would we face the psychological collapse seen in Fight Club? Would American society be overtaken by apathy and despair?
Also, sorry if this seems disjointed and disorganized, I wrote it while sort of following my stream of consciousness.

Rule 1: Don't talk about Fight Club.
 
What if the anti-globalization movement did gain steam, and became an issue in US elections by, say, 2004 and 2006? A representative or two elected to "fight against globalization", and not just NAFTA?

I could see this being picked up first by third parties, most likely the Greens (who might get a second wind from the movement with no 9/11) and the Libertarians, before the left Democrats or nationalist Republicans start picking up the issue. It would definitely be a more grassroots issue and would face some serious opposition from establishment forces since globalization is a great way to maximize profits.
 
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