The Patriot Post® · Is Fitness Far-Right?

Last night, as we were nibbling on some Cheetos, tipping back a Bell’s Two-Hearted, and becoming one with our Barcalounger, it occurred to us: Fitness is indeed a right-wing virtue.

Much as we hate to admit it, those freaks at MSNBC are right. When they tweeted last week that “the far right’s obsession with fitness is going digital,” and dusted off a year-old opinion piece from columnist Cynthia Miller-Idriss about those pesky “white supremacists” and their “latest scheme to valorize violence and hypermasculinity,” we knew they had us cold.

Take far-right fitness freak Donald Trump, for example. His workout regimen and his dietary discipline are legendary — except for, you know, his presidential paunch, his fondness for fast food, and his dependence on Diet Coke. But let’s face it: If the Don isn’t out there making America great again or collecting sham indictments or building a 40-point lead in the Republican primary, he’s probably camped behind a bowl of sprouts or spinning on his Peloton.

Miller-Idriss, who describes herself as “an award-winning author and scholar of extremism and youth radicalization,” is a sociologist and a professor at American University in Washington, DC. She’s also the founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab.

Get it? It spells P-E-R-I-L.

“Physical fitness,” writes Miller-Idriss, “has always been central to the far right. In ‘Mein Kampf,’ Hitler fixated on boxing and jujitsu, believing they could help him create an army of millions whose aggressive spirit and impeccably trained bodies, combined with ‘fanatical love of the fatherland,’ would do more for the German nation than any ‘mediocre’ tactical weapons training.”

Hitler and his Nazis were on the radical Left, not the Right, but whatever.

Furthermore, warns Miller-Idriss, “The intersection of extremism and fitness leans into a shared obsession with the male body, training, masculinity, testosterone, strength and competition,” all the better to help its proponents “fight the street battles of ‘the coming race war.’”

Clearly, Miller-Idriss has never heard of Godwin’s Law, but she’s not the only one who has us sussed. So too does The Guardian, that bastion of balanced British journalism, whose James Ball promises to take us “inside the wellness-to-fascism pipeline” and teases: “One minute you’re doing the downward dog, the next you’re listening to conspiracy theories about Covid or the new world order. How did the desire to look after yourself become so toxic?”

If you’re debating whether to waste your precious time on the above article, Brownstone Institute President Jeffrey Tucker has done you a solid: “This might be the nuttiest article I’ve read post Covid. It argues that opposing lockdowns and masking, and getting interested in natural health, is QAnon and leads to … wait for it … fascism.”

It’s weird, this fixation on fitness. Admittedly, the Left is famous for politicizing everything, but since when is striving for health and wellness and strength and vitality a symbol of white supremacy? Are there laws against brown and black people doing the same?

When former First Lady Michelle Obama announced her “Let’s Move” campaign back in 2010 to address the alarming levels of obesity among American kids, was it all just a white supremacist dog whistle?

Nonsense. But perhaps what we’re seeing here are the manifestations of an inferiority complex. We’re talking about the Left, after all, and it’s not a stretch to say that they have more than their fair share of gully mahns.

As Hot Air’s David Strom writes: “The obsession with disparaging fitness … strikes me as connected to an overall project to normalize the indulgence of all appetites. ‘Who are you to disdain anything or anyone?’ is a common refrain, and the idea of healthy implies its opposite. Think of all the things we consider virtues — self-discipline, precision, studying, showing up on time — [that] are now labeled ‘white supremacy.’”

Elon Musk, who’s no right-winger but who has a first-rate idiocy detector, had this to say about the Left’s phony far-right fitness fetish: “MSNBC thinks you’re a nazi if you work out lmaooo.”

Not to be outdone, podcaster Joe Rogan, who can’t be pigeonholed politically but who really is a fitness freak, was even more succinct than Musk: “Being healthy is ‘far right.’ Holy f**k.”