Our friends at MSNBC decided that it would be a good idea to try to connect fitness and being healthy with the "far-right," going as far as to call fitness freaks "fascists." For real.
Earlier this month, researchers reported that a network of online "fascist fitness" chat groups on the encrypted platform Telegram are recruiting and radicalizing young men with neo-Nazi and white supremacist extremist ideologies.
Yep, if you go to the gym, lift heavy things and put them back down, and grow muscle – well, you‘re basically Hitler.
This article from MSNBC is really something to behold:
Physical fitness 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.
MSNBC is literally arguing: "You know who else lifted weights? HITLER!"
The U.S. is comparatively far behind, which will only become more and more problematic, especially since the phenomenon is growing in the country, building on the established fight-club culture of MMA far-right extremists. The leader of a Maryland skinhead group, for example, once ran a gym to "recruit and train white supremacists in mixed martial arts." Four members or associates of the racist, violent Rise Above Movement (RAM), the self-described "premier MMA club of the Alt-Right," pled guilty to conspiracy to riot after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. An online propagandist for that now-defunct group was spotted among protesters on Jan. 6 last year. When members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front marched in Washington, D.C., in December 2021, they were accompanied by a new media outlet created by RAM's founder, Robert Rundo, who is working to create a network of far-right MMA "Active Clubs" in the U.S. and abroad.
Oh look! They found a couple of examples of losers who met together to training and were also white supremacists! One was even at the January 6 protest!
Therefore all weightlifting is white supremacist and evil!
The whole contention is an absolute joke.
Going to the gym is healthy and good for you. It's not political!
Unless you're a fat studies leftist, then it definitely is political, bigoted, and fatphobic.
Stop listening to these miserable people and go to the gym.
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