Five times media has tried to pin physical fitness to political extremism

A recent post on MSNBC's official Twitter site promoting an opinion story about the connection between "physical fitness" and "the far right" has sparked social media backlash about the liberal media repeatedly attempting to make such a connection.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk and podcast host Joe Rogan mocked the tweeted story, which was published in March 2022.

"MSNBC thinks you’re a nazi if you work out lmaooo," Musk tweeted Monday, the day of the tweet. 

Rogan retweeted the MSNBC post with the comment, "Being healthy is 'far right.' Holy f***."

MSNBC did not to respond to a request Thursday for comment about why it tweeted a story that is roughly 16 months old. 

In the story, the female columnist attempts to connect physical wellness to Nazi ideology by stating that Adolf Hitler did martial arts and boxed.

"It appears the far right has taken advantage of pandemic at-home fitness trends to expand its decade-plus radicalization of physical mixed martial arts (MMA) and combat sports spaces," she writes in her opening paragraphm going on to claim "fitness has always been central to the far right" and citing Adolf Hitler as an example.

This is not the first time such a story or essay has appeared in the mainstream media in recent years.

Here are five examples:

5. The Guardian: "‘Fascist fitness’: how the far right is recruiting with online gym groups"

The British daily newspaper the Guardian has published several stories associating fitness with "far right" politics including a March 2022 investigative report by Mark Townsend about "fascist fitness" online group chats.

"European and US fight groups are regularly glorified" by "a network of online 'fascist fitness' chat groups on the messaging app Telegram," Townsend writes. He used as one example the Rise Above Movement (RAM), described as "a militant alt-right Southern California-based street fighting group" made up of racists.

He also cited the White Stag Athletic Club as racist and expresses in the article that its members post swastika flags online and "celebrated" the November 2021 acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three men, two fatally, during the civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin a year earlier. 

The article also quotes the self-described "anti-fascist group" Hope Not Hate, which reportedly said such fitness groups emphasize "transforming activists into soldiers that might be motivated to commit acts of violence." 

4. TIME Magazine: "The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise, and 6 Other Surprising Facts About the History of U.S. Physical Fitness"

"The concept of exercise as a way to improve bodily health" is "pretty new," TIME Magazine staff writer Olivia Waxman claimed in her 2022 article on the supposed racist roots of fitness.

Waxman cited a New York City professor, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, who said that it wasn’t until the 1980s that working out gained popularity with respect to an individual’s well-being.

Petrzela, author of the book "Fit Nation," told Waxman that one of the most surprising things she learned while researching for the book was "reflections of fitness enthusiasts in the early 20th century," whom she says suggested "white women should start building up their strength" to deliver "more white babies."

"They’re writing during an incredible amount of immigration, soon after enslaved people have been emancipated," Petrzela goes on to say. "This is totally part of a white supremacy project. So that was a real 'holy crap' moment as a historian."

3. The Guardian: "Do you boast about your fitness? Watch out – you’ll unavoidably become rightwing"

In 2018, Guardian contributor Zoe Williams published an opinion article lamenting that a recent "Fitness Day," or "the signal-boosting day," as she called it, was filled with people sharing workout content on social media. But after expressing frustration over the influx of fitness posts, Williams added that "[t]he problem wasn’t the hashtagging; the problem is with fitness itself."

"I know everything about what it [fitness] does to your personality, and none of it is pretty," Williams wrote. Too many remarks or too much boasting from an individual about his or her fitness routine "makes you more rightwing," she added.

2. Vice: "Gym Bros More Likely to be Right-Wing Assholes, Science Confirms"

Vice News published a piece in 2017 stating "gym bros" typically turn out to be "right-wing a**holes." 

The article is based on Brunel University research that studied 171 men ages 18–40 and collected various physical measurements and strength metrics. The findings from the study, led by Dr. Michael Price, concluded that "Physically stronger men are less in favor of social and economic equality than weaker men."

"The results showed a significant correlation between those with higher bodily formidability and the belief that some social groups should dominate others," Brunel wrote in its summary of the findings. "These men were also much less likely to support redistribution of wealth."

Vice also argued research has also yielded evidence suggesting "muscular men are more likely to support militarism and war."

1. MSNBC: "Pandemic fitness trends have gone extreme — literally"

As mentioned at the top of this article, an MSNBC op-ed on an alleged correlation between fitness and extremism has gone particularly viral, largely due to critics mocking it. The author and MSNBC columnist Cynthia Miller-Idriss opens the piece by claiming that the "far right" has used "at-home fitness trends" popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic "to expand its decade-plus radicalization" of combat sports like mixed martial arts (MMA).

"Physical fitness has always been central to the far right," the article reads, adding that "Hitler fixated on boxing and jujitsu, believing they could help him create an army" of aggressive and fit men who harbored a "fanatical love of the fatherland."

It then lists countries like Canada, Ukraine and France that have groups that have opened gyms "focused on training far-right nationalists," like Atalante Quebec, Azov Battalion, and Generation Identity, respectively.

"The realm of online fitness now provides a new and ever-expanding market for reaching and radicalizing young men," which necessitates a "targeted focus" to "stop" it, the op-ed concludes.

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