There is a bizarre genre of articles that has emerged of late: the “fitness is fascism” thinkpiece.

It’s an interesting take. When Michele Obama took up the cause of improving the nutrition and fitness of America’s children I am pretty sure there weren’t a ton of articles in Left-wing publications about her secret fascist leanings.

The “fitness is fascism” meme at least temporally arose with the rise of Trump, or at least during his presidency. Given Trump’s fitness level and the frequency with which he is labeled America’s leader of fascism, I don’t quite see how the Left got from there to here, but the correlation exists.

Note the verbiage: Independent thinking and general wellness are now "toxic." Because (I'm guessing) this was written by a Millennial and everything he doesn't agree with is toxic, narcissistic wrongthink. (I hear a clock striking 13 right now)

— Ann Bauer (@annbauerwriter) August 12, 2023

The Guardian–Great Britain’s voice of the mainstream Left–has taken up the theme, tying fitness, wellness, free-thinking, and hesitancy to trust authority (which is somehow fascist!) together into a toxic brew threatening to take down democracy itself by leading people to reject the idea that they should unhesitatingly indulge their appetites while doing exactly what they are told.

I do admit that more people I know are doing yoga, and most people running around in my social circle are politically conservative. On the other hand, most people I socialize with are about as fit as I am, which is to say not at all. Granted, we all wish we were more fit, but as people nearing our 60s that is no different than wishing we had saved more in our 20s and 30s. We would all be better off if we had.

The obsession with disparaging fitness–and it has arisen to that level among some Leftists, who not only attack going to the gym but insist that we can be “healthy at any size,” just like Lizzo–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…–are now labeled “White supremacy.”

There is, of course, nothing “White” about these behaviors, except the historical fact that they became highly valued in Western culture with the dawn of modernity. Modern science and industrial society depend upon these virtues, and there is plenty of evidence that non-White people are no less capable of succeeding in industrial societies when these virtues are elevated.

Western culture is the enemy of Leftism and always has been. There is nothing secret about that fact–Leftists scream it from the rooftops and proudly declare that they want to replace it.

The Guardian argues, of course, that fitness and QAnon are intimately related, just as any expression of concern about the increasing attempts to sexualize children. There is a whole industry it seems dedicated to disparaging concerns about child sexualization as derived from the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Thanks to wellness, QAnon is the conspiracy that can draw in the mum who shops at Holland & Barrett and her Andrew Tate-watching teenage son. The QAnon conspiracy is one of the most dangerous in the world, directly linked to attempted insurrections in the US and Germany, and mass shootings in multiple countries – and wellness is helping to fuel it. Something about the strange mixture of mistrust of the mainstream, the intimate nature of the relationship between a therapist, spiritual adviser, or even personal trainer, and their client, combined with the conspiratorial world in which we now live, is giving rise to a new kind of radicalisation. How did we end up here?

QAnon has become the all-purpose scary enemy, when in fact it is more prominently spoken of among Leftists than any conservative I have ever met. And I can assure you that while my knowledge of all the kooky corners of conservative thought is hardly encyclopedic, I have a much better grasp of what the average conservative thinks than any writer for The Guardian. I have never once met a person whose reaction to the mention of QAnon with anything but “What exactly is that? I hear about it all the time and have no idea what it means.”

QAnon is a boogeyman, attached to anything the Left dislikes. I have come to suspect it is an invention of the Left or a 4Chan/8Chan joke that got out of hand. Just as the Left really believes that flashing an OK sign is a White supremacist phenomenon (a 4Chan troll invented the idea), QAnon is an idiotic idea that the Left has adopted. It is their favorite conspiracy theory, assuming that there is a Right-wing cabal bent on taking down the elite.

The more interesting question is why the Left worries that people oppose the ideas that gluttony is bad, fitness is good, and pedophiles should be ruthlessly hunted and jailed.

Because that is the inverse of their denigration of these ideas–they are promoting the opposite. They point to unhealthy and obese people as ideals to be emulated, they denigrate fitness/wellness as fascist and are determined to crush concerns about sex trafficking and the sexualization of children. They push porn into the schools and attack its opponents, and can’t find a traditionally virtuous behavior they embrace because they are “White supremacists.”

Even the virtues they rhetorically embrace, such as compassion and empathy, are entirely conditional. Be nice, so punch a TERF.

The Guardian article reveals the real problem the Left has with fitness: it promotes self-improvement and self-reliance. It is independence that is the enemy, with resilience and independence a direct challenge to the authority the Left craves.

The COVID pandemic was crucial to the Left’s expansion of power, and what group of people (aside from young people) were least at risk and least likely to fear the disease?

Fit people. Almost everybody who died from COVID suffered from obesity, diabetes, or other comorbidities. When a fit person said he had little to fear from COVID and wanted to avoid vaccines, he was right and his choice was rational.

No wonder fitness infuriates the Left. They don’t just want you weak and dependent; they need you weak to make you dependent.