Fitness and alternative health subcultures have long mixed with fascist and supremacist movements. In the United States, early fitness and bodybuilding enthusiasts were also enthusiastic about eugenics, and the prospect of breeding for what they saw as a superior human form. Nazi propaganda was crowded with images of young men hiking, and Hitler was convinced that "natural" food was central to the success of the Reich (though his vegetarianism appears to have been somewhat exaggerated). The Nazi Party was riven with health fads and extreme occult beliefs, which were all marshaled in the project of building an Aryan super race of godlike men. Put another way, the entire mission of building a supposedly golden race had an occult quality, which is why it merged so easily with New Age health fads and various naturalist fetishes.

QUESTION: The connection between contemporary wellness/fitness subcultures and supremacist movements is worth examining further — are there modern parallels beyond historical fascism? SEED: An essay angle: how aesthetic ideals of bodily perfection map onto political ideologies of racial or ethnic superiority.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 553