Greetings.
In this podcast, I follow up on some threads I started a long time ago. In that very short series of entries on Trump’s body (see the archive below), I found a lot of possible ancillary paths (or distractions, as it were). One of them was the idea of a more general piece tracing the conceptual genealogy connecting right-wing or reactionary political thinkers (Nietzsche, Evola, Mishima) with contemporary trends in the “5%” or hardcore fitness world. The thesis I pursue here is one that tries to do that, to place or trace the new visibility of Ur-fascist themes, images, tropes and forms of anxiety in the development of this interconnection between ideas (overtly fascist and crypto-fascist) and action (the establishment of gyms and movements devoted to fascist mobilization).
As I say in the podcast, it seems to me that trends in the hardcore fitness world are one very vivid expression of some of the deepest anxieties of contemporary, late-capitalist life. For example, in the world before Trump, Crossfit “functionality” mirrored the neoliberal obsession with total competitiveness. As the old hegemony began to break down, new (and ugly) hardcore fitness tropes bubbled up from the underground: antimodernity, connection with (white) ancestors, hostility to the softness associated with social justice and so on. Some of this was of course just surplus ideology from the “kill the normies” crowd, but some of it was more dangerous than that.
Oh yeah, I promised in the podcast I would link to the ridiculous world of the Liver King, so here you go.
Thanks for reading and listening.
Hardcore Fitness and Fascism