Socialist Convention Panelists Declare Fitness 'Body Fascism,' Claim Capitalism is 'Genociding Fat People'

When Marx and Engels coined the term lumpenproletariat in 'The Communist Manifesto,' I don't think what was on display at a far-left conference over the weekend was what they had in mind. While most of us had better things to do over the Labor Day holiday, America's leftists (or those that could afford to attend, anyway) gathered at the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago. Also there was Stu Smith of the conservative Manhattan Institute, who managed to churn out clip after clip of how ridiculous and evil this all was. Stu's best clip of the weekend — which has nothing to do with this article in particular but is too hilarious for you not to see — involved Twitch streamer Hasan 'America Deserved 9/11' Piker being gifted a 'Satan's School of Gay Communism' hat by a pro-abortion group: 🚨 BREAKING: Hasan Piker was just gifted a 'Satan's School of Gay Communism' hat at Socialism 2026, drawing a huge round of applause. The hat came from a member of S.W.A.N., a pro-abortion activist group known for confrontational protests and harassing opponents. pic.twitter.com/roLmjsZt0S — Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) September 4, 2026 And here I thought the official name for it was the University of California, Berkeley. But I digress, because the whole shindig was ridiculous on a level that should genuinely be frightening when you realize these are the crazies on the political ascendancy right now. Among the ideas being discussed on panels at the conference: The idea that the concept of being physically fit was actually 'body fascism' and that people should strive to be 'more dysgenic' — i.e., less hereditarily fit — because it disrupts 'the ruling order.' The conference, according to its website, was about 'bringing together thousands of socialists and radical activists from around the country to take part in discussions about social movements, abolition, Marxism, decolonization, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.' One of those strategies? Being, getting, or staying unfit. The first of these viral clips comes from Da'Shaun L. Harrison, a self-described 'black fat studies' scholar and author of 'Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness.' Harrison, a self-proclaimed 'queer and trans afropessimist and anarchy-communist,' said that the whole point of having people maintain a healthy weight — or at least black people — was control. 'Black fatness is made meaningful through suffering, through surveillance, and through control and the policing of Black fat flesh anchors entire systems of governance. Without a population to discipline, there would be no BMI, no obesity epidemic, and no medical or scientific institutions organized around managing fatness,' Harrison said. 'The diet industry reflects this logic. It operates through what I once defined as formal and informal relationships among major food corporations, the medical-industrial complex, and individual wealthy benefactors to sustain a social order in which fat people are monitored, restricted, guilted, stolen from, and punished. Diet culture has always linked food to morality, framing restraint as virtue and pleasure as danger through language like 'guilty pleasure.'' 'Every time a government decides whose body must be protected and whose bodies must be erased for the sake of national imagery, this is body fascism,' Harrison said. 'Every time there is a call for sovereignty by state powers with the intent to maintain borders, this is body fascism. Every time black flesh is wrangled, dismembered, abused, this is body fascism.' 🚨 Da'Shaun L. Harrison at Socialism 2026 argues that the policing of 'Black fat flesh' is foundational to broader 'entire systems of governance.' 'Without a population to discipline, there would be no BMI, no obesity epidemic, and no medical or scientific institutions organized… pic.twitter.com/GP4foaTgUJ — Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) September 5, 2026 Harrison went on to say that GLP-1 drugs were a sign of 'a world fixated on genociding fat people' and that the medications were 'fascistic.' 🚨 Da'Shaun L. Harrison at Socialism 2026 argues that the political deployment of GLP-1 drugs is 'fascistic' because they exist in 'a world fixated on genociding fat people.' 'The political deployment of GLP-1s is fascistic, not because individuals take them, but because the… pic.twitter.com/CMxfUTUq0e — Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) September 5, 2026 This seems like an illness in and of itself, but one crank speaker and author does not a story make, particularly at a conference like this. However, as you might expect, this became a motif, as proved by another author and scholar, Beatrice Adler-Bolton. She's the author of 'Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto,' in which she argues 'for a new global left politics aimed at severing the ties between capital and one of its primary tools: health.' Well, at least she's tacitly admitting that single-payer healthcare isn't going to make you any healthier, but that wasn't quite the point. Instead, she said that by being a pig and letting yourself go, you were 'rejecting disposability in all of its forms.' 'You have to give up the fantasy of being fitter than the fascists,' she said. 'It's not just that it's cringe or strategically bad — though it is. I think it's also politically revealing. Fitness is a measure of relative disposability under capitalism. Our task is not to become less disposable, to become more useful to the ruling order.' 'The point is not to beat the fascists at their own game. It is not to lay a better claim on their own territory by being fitter, more eugenic. In fact, the more dysgenic, the better, I think.' In other words — survival of the un-fittest, because that undermines some kind of order, or something. 🚨 'The More Dysgenic, the Better': Beatrice Adler-Bolton Says the Left Must Give Up the 'Fantasy of Being Fitter Than the Fascists' At Socialism 2026, Adler-Bolton argues that 'fitness is a measure of relative disposability under capitalism' and says the goal should not be to… pic.twitter.com/aK13lgiVGH — Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) September 5, 2026 I grant you that, to the individual too inclined to sarcasm like myself, there's a whole lot of logic at a conference called Socialism 2026 that can be dismissed with an '… or something' due to the inherent fallacies that 'logic' contains. However, the amount of '… or something' necessary to make arguments regarding the revolutionary nature of being unhealthy even slightly cohere is truly staggering. 'Binge and wheeze against the machine' or 'Physical maladapts of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your mobility!' have never been slogans Marxists have rallied around, and for reasons more numerous than the calories consumed by Da'Shaun L. Harrison at the Hyatt hotel buffet as this conference was being held. But lo, it didn't stop at two cranks. Here we have Jinzu Minna Jain — self-described 'writer, artist, Sōtō Zen Buddhist priest, and systemic oppression/equity educator' — saying that in addition to not paying attention to physical health under socialism, we ought not to pay attention to mental health, as well. 🚨 At Socialism 2026's 'Liberatory Spirit, the Spirit of Liberation' panel, Rev. Jinzu Minna Jain warns that even left-wing spaces can accidentally reproduce 'health fascism' through the language of healing. She says organizers need to be careful about what 'healing' means,… pic.twitter.com/Ke2ReyCENA — Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) September 6, 2026 'In lefty space, we can have this insidious, accidental, small bubbling up of health fascism when we talk about healing,' she said. 'We have to be really careful about what healing actually means and what we're offering. And I found over and over again in space over time during [Operation Metro Surge, the ICE operation] that folks were not looking for healing.' Instead, they wanted to be 'sitting with the cracks,' 'sitting with the bones,' and 'sitting in the dark together.' By the way, if you're wondering where I got Jain's self-description from, it was from a GoFundMe campaign to pay for her medical bills due to a shoulder injury. As someone who's suffered roughly the same thing she did, I understand the pain — but also, as someone who dealt with acute mental illness in my teenage years, who realizes that it was every bit as painful (if not more so) than that labrum tear, and did not think it was 'health fascism' that the professionals that helped me out of that period did not take the approach of 'sitting in the dark together' with me, I find the irony here more than a little rich. But then, that could also describe a lot of Socialism 2026: 'More than a little rich.' No, there weren't any Elons or Barrons in attendance, although multimillionaire Hasan Piker definitely was there. Almost all of the rest of these people have some degree of social capital among the intelligentsia, and I'd wager most of them also have no small degree of economic capital, either. They can lecture us about being unhealthy because they can afford to be unhealthy, for the most part. Rest assured, a 'black fat studies' author who can afford some gender transitioning surgery, from all appearances, can afford a cardiologist if and when needed. If Harrison forces a single-payer system on us, rest assured Harrison probably has the connections to get to the front of the line. For the rest of the neo-lumpenproletariat who suffer the consequences of radical obesity, hey — 'you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,' as any good Marxist would have said about the Soviet Union back in the day. The new radical leftism requires more than just a few eggs, from the looks of things, but Little Debbie and Crisco will do in a pinch, I suppose. Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today. Truth and Accuracy Submit a Correction → * Name * Email * Message * All fields are required. Success! We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.