What better image to encapsulate muscular fascism than an Arno Breker statue?
As I have repeatedly stated in my past writing, I am something of a “disgruntled leftist”, which is to say I was a proto-SJW until I went to college and (mercifully) got a dose of non-cucked anthropology to the face. Thus, I like to think I’m fairly knowledgeable in the lifeways of the social justice crowd, at least as it was circa 2005-2008. And of course I can compare it to today’s scene.
Some thing I noticed in my social justice days, and can infer from looking at photos of social justice types today, is that they absolutely hate anything that is beautiful, or even the concept of beauty, especially forms of beauty that are created and enhanced with toil and effort—i.e. physical strength/muscularity.
To refer to an anecdote from my own personal life, I got into weight training around the same time I got into social justice—both of which happened in high school, which is admittedly somewhat paradoxical for reasons you’ll soon see. Especially when my compatriots were adamantly against the very thought of physical exercise and strength training. This puzzled me, and I would express my confusion to them—if we were supposed to be a revolutionary vanguard fighting the good fight, then wouldn’t the cause of revolution be better served by being physically strong and dextrous?
It seemed an obvious enthymeme to me (to use the Aristotlean term) to me, but there was no swaying them. And needless to say, that was the first seed of doubt that would give way to many others and ultimately lead to me abandoning the way of social justice.
Seeing as this “anti-fitness” tenet has only gotten stronger since I left high school, I have to ask: why? Why is this the case?
A somewhat knowledgeable reader would point out that strength and beauty are the most primordial of hierarchies, and the left despises hierarchy in all its forms (at least in theory). Some evidence would support this, like how the Soviet Union and other communist regimes would actively ban cosmetics and fancy dress for women. However, if the Soviets were so against physical hierarchy, it doesn’t seem to follow that that nation would have produced some of the greatest weightlifters, gymnasts, and various other athletes in the history of those sports, as well as pioneering training methods still used to this day.
How to explain this discrepancy? I would argue that only the hardest of hardline leftists, the “revolutionary vanguard” are the resentful nerds that we stereotype. Being ugly and/or untalented themselves, they hate beauty and hierarchy because it reminds them of what they cannot have (at least not without great toil, which they are unwilling to do). However, the smart communist will soon realize that a government made entirely of angsty dorks will get picked off real quick (See Bela Kun), and thus they need “functional beauty” to sustain the nation, ie: strength. Because angry, vengeful dorks like Lavrentiy Beria aren’t going to do the fighting, nor are smelly indigents like Che Guevara.
When that happens, you’re going to need some shaved gorillas to do the heavy lifting. That’s why, I feel, the Soviets quickly became masters of physical training, while going out of their way to discourage beauty (except of course for KGB “honeypot” agents): one is immediately functional and one is not.
While there are some notable exceptions to this rule of communist leaders being resentful dweebs (Leon Trotsky, Josip Tito), most communist dictators and (Especially) apparatchiks are much like their ideological progeny today—ugly, bitter and unwashed.
And presumably like their descendants, they probably hated the “natural aristocracy” until they needed it.
Who knows? If I had stayed in the social justice crowd, perhaps I would be antifa’s Vasily Alexeyev, clean and jerking hundreds of pounds to advance intersectionality.
Or maybe not, since a pair of broad shoulders and tree trunk legs is, like, triggering and stuff. And at least you, me, and the Soviets would have agreed to laugh disparagingly at hysterical nonsense such as that.