If you look hard enough for a problem, you’ll find it. MSNBC published an editorial by Cynthia Miller Idriss in which she attempted to denounce home fitness and its potential role as a breeding ground of white supremacists.
Miler-Idriss cites a handful of mixed-martial arts training groups from Europe and Canada that were flagged for neo Nazi rhetoric. She is concerned that this growing trend in home fitness in America will result in a rise of white supremacy-minded MMA clubs within the United States.
That’s right. The first-class absurdity does not end there. Miller-Idriss thinks that a focus on fitness promotes life skills and values that appeal to white supremacists.
Extremism, fitness, and training all lead to a common obsession with masculinity, strength, and testosterone. Physical fitness training, especially in combat sports, appeals to the far right for many reasons: fighters are trained to accept significant physical pain, to be “warriors,” and to embrace messaging around solidarity, heroism, and brotherhood.
If you are involved in any kind of sport, you will learn how to push through pain and show heroism. These are all things that physical fitness training provides, but nothing is unique. These people may just be looking to get fit, and maybe they are learning valuable lessons.
Why is it so important to portray MMA and physical training as a place where white supremacists can be trained and developed and then sent to wreck havoc in an unsuspecting society?
Maybe it’s because Miller-Idriss does this for a living. According to her byline, she is a professor in the “School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University, where she directs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab.”
She has an economic stake in finding right-wing bogiemen in interesting new places.
MMA does not foster white supremacists. Many black, Hispanic and African fighters have had incredible success with MMA. People believe white supremacists flourish in MMA because there are many individuals within the sport, like Joe Rogan (based podcaster and UFC fighter) who supported Donald Trump during his presidency. Although Trump supporters are often portrayed as white supremacists, they don’t necessarily make them so.
So if you’re thinking about getting into physical fitness or even MMA at a more serious level, go enjoy yourself. You don’t have to listen to the Nazis.
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