Socialists praise fatness and ugliness, attack MAHA’s ‘health fascism’

While I was in Provincetown enjoying gorgeous weather and gorgeous people, the socialist left spent the weekend attacking President Trump and the right and the MAHA movement for supposedly promoting health and body “fascism.” That’s because the right wants to empower Americans to eat correctly and be in good shape.

Seriously, I’m not making this up. This was a topic of conversation at their annual gathering in Chicago over the weekend.

As part of a panel on health fascism, participants assailed the notion of being conventionally attractive and healthy as tools of oppression used by the capitalist system to oppress working people and conscript them for the rulers! According to socialist podcaster Beatrice Adler-Bolton, it’s also ableist and racist and productivist — that’s a new one — and so on and so on. Just listen.

Listen closely to what she’s saying: Efforts to support your friends and family members, your neighbors and your countrymen, as they seek to better themselves physically, in terms of their health, are part of a fascist and racist program, according to socialists.

Now look, the United States unfortunately suffers from an epidemic of obesity and ill health, and the many, many Americans who are afflicted with obesity obviously have the same rights and moral worth as everyone else. No one, absolutely no one, on the right is in favor of mistreating people who are overweight. Frankly, other people’s health is none of my business. You live your life, and I’ll live mine. That is the proper ethos for the right.

But I’m sorry, it is not wrong whatsoever to want to help people escape obesity if they are willing, because obesity is associated with all sorts of serious health conditions that can cause premature death. We all understand this when it comes to kids: We want children to be physically active and to eat right, so that they can be fit and healthy. You don’t need to take this to some insane degree, but it’s a good thing generally to promote healthy eating and an active lifestyle, for children and adults.

But no, according to socialists, if we are at all organized around the principle that fitness and health are to be praised and encouraged and celebrated, then we are reproducing some archaic form of oppression .

“The more dysgenic the better.” That right there is the ethos of socialism, I frankly couldn’t put it any better than she did. According to socialism, it is a moral good to be, and to feel, and to look, unwell. To be diseased and obese. To be rotting from the inside out.

It’s not surprising they feel this way. This is what socialist policies would do to our entire society: rot it from the inside out. Under socialism, there is sickness and suffering. Under capitalism, there is beauty and health.

And to be clear, you don’t have to be a fascist to recognize this dynamic, and to prefer beauty. As I said, I spent my Labor Day in Provincetown, catching some sun and enjoying the beaches, surrounded by so many beautiful people. And it’s true that people are beautiful in all their shapes and sizes, and yes, it’s what’s in your head, and in your heart, that counts.

But as Americans, we do not share in the socialist vision of desiring our own decline. We shall seek self-improvement and the extension of our species because these are moral goods. We praise beauty because it is right to do so. We promote beauty because we want more of it. Socialists do not want more beauty. They want more ugliness and despair, and that’s exactly what their policies produce. In fact, misery is the only commodity that socialism produces in excess.

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.