Make (Anti)Fascism Fun Again
On steroids and ultimate fighting.
Welcome to the sunset edition of the Golden Hour. I am writing this from New York— as I was one of the poor souls stranded by the train delays and cancellations caused by this morning’s fire on the Amtrak tracks.
This week’s edition of the Golden Hour will be short. I am preparing for some major news and battles next week, so I need to conserve as much energy as I can. All I can say for now is—- watch this space!
The Roman Empire… but on steroids
Speaking of battles— it should be obvious to anyone by now that I think a lot about fighting and various forms of power. In particular, as a martial artist (Muay Thai and boxing), I am very interested in how politics intersects with athletic competition. Here are a couple of things I’ve been thinking about.
Last weekend, I listened to an excellent podcast, SuperHuman— a deep dive into the origins, hype, and controversies surrounding the Enhanced Games, aka the “steroid Olympics, which took place this past Sunday. Gayomali follows several semi-retired athletes, who decide to agree to dope up in exchange for not just athletic glory but for the possibility of winning 1 million dollars for breaking world records. What happens when a bunch of billionaires pay former top-level athletes to take a bunch of testosterone, peptides, and other types of steroids and run/swim/jump/lift as best they can? Can they break world records?
Well, for one, the podcast talks about how one swimming athlete, James Magnussen, got so big so fast that his muscles were literally spilling out of his swim bodysuit.
Turns out— more gear doesn’t make you more of a winner. Natural athletes ended up outperforming and winning events— and only one world record was broken.
The Enhanced Games are the brainchild of Australian entrepreneur Aron D’Souza, who saw them as an example of humanity's future without limits. D’Souza, who was friends with right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, also clearly hoped to exploit the pay gap at the highest level of sports, and offer mid-age athletes more money than they would have seen in a lifetime. Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. were among the major financial backers of the Games.
There’s a lot to be said about the booming industry of selling speed, strength, and virility in a pill or shot to people who are past their athletic prime. It is a chance to have an identity again, a purpose. Given the taboos and bans around PED’s— as well as the serious long-term health risks, I am in favor of more research and open discussion around the downsides.
But there’s more to it all, in my opinion, which is the ritual of hero-worship. From Samson in the Bible to Hercules, to Superman, the Superman that is given divine strength and power is embedded in Greek/Roman, and Judeo-Christian lore in particular.
In the podcast, Gayomali features an athlete who remarks about the rich men who invested in these enhanced games, saying that he felt a bit like wealthy men inspecting their prized racehorses.
And indeed— for all that can be said about the crisis of masculinity— these are men — some of them materially desperate— who are basically bought and paid for by other financially men— to put on a shit ton of muscle— and then perform an equivalent of superheroic stunts on command.
I wondered if this was a modern-day male meat market, in that the human meat is pumped full of drugs in order for us to consume. But it’s not true that the games are selling the athletes— they are now basically shunned from formal competition forever after these games, and after the Enhanced Games' stock plummeted, it’s doubtful the public will ever know or care about these athletes again.
But it's the intoxicating combination of muscles and money that forms the foundation of the psychological spectacle. This dynamic operates on a smaller scale, through entire fetish communities/fantasies on the internet dedicated to the dynamic of one person contributing to or watching another person grow bigger and stronger. Indeed, these athletes were one-time-use-only muscle labor. They were not selling direct pleasure to their billionaire benefactors (AFAIK), but a multi-billion-dollar commodity to the world—the promise of a younger, more joyful life through steroids, peptides, recovery protocols, ancillaries, and other chemical compounds. Compared to that potential, working as human billboards for maybe $1 million? Life-changing money for many— sure. But those billionaires are still the owner class, and athletes are still manual laborers.
With the right injectables, dads and moms could have more energy after work to keep up with young children. The right cycles of oral anabolics could help athletes extend their sports life well into middle age. The longevity industry promises to extend erotic longevity, in which men and women can improve their libido and connection to each other.
In short, the Enhanced Games are helping to sell the most important commodities we all have: joy and time.
That’s the high-altitude read of it. But maybe the base reason— as to why so much money was pumped into this thing— men just have fun watching muscly men do muscly-man things.
In that sense, we have to contend with the fact that right-wing billionaires are cornering the market on cultivating joy and fun.
Which leads me to my next point about fun and politics….
Make (Anti) Fascism Fun Again
This week, at Substack’s Media Founder’s Forum in New York, Tim Miller of the The Bulwark made a remark about the White House’s upcoming White House UFC fight on the lawn. Construction has begun for the vent. Miller basically said, well hey, at least the right is having fun and doing cool things.
There’s a lot to be said about this, giving Roman Empire gladiator vibes. Once again, muscled, sweaty men performing for the billionaire Emperor Trump.
And when it comes to muscles and money— again, it has been reported that Trump bought TKO group stock — the parent company of the UFC—ahead of the June 18th match.
As much as I detest that the UFC, MMA, and Brazilian Jiujitsu give the appearance that they have been captured by the right wing, Miller is on to something.
As a martial artist and sometimes fighter, something that Liberation Martial Arts, aka, Korean Fury talked about with me for the last few years is the importance of fun and play when it comes to— well, anything. That lefties tend to focus too much on self-defense and resistance as reasons to train, and that self-defense is actually a poor motivator for consistent training.
One needs to have FUN. Do I think I could handle myself better than the untrained in a fight? Sure! But I train Muay Thai and engage in ritualized suffering with others because I think it’s fucking fun, I get to meet people and learn new things.
I read this post, “Why Is the Left No Fun?” by Eric Blanc. In short, he argues that the right has figured out how to have more fun than the left. (I also think that anti-Blackness will also be a forever thorn in the side of the American left, but thats another post for another day.) He talks about how early lefties understood that you can’t recruit through boring meetings, or only theory, PowerPoint, or facts alone. You have to have FUN.
Sports and physical fitness activities were another pivotal way to make socialism more social. When asked what work young socialists should initially do locally, organizers replied—in addition to obvious things like educational classes—with the following activities: “form baseball and other athletic teams; run excursions; […] take cross-country walks, distributing literature on the way.”
Fun, sports, and joy are important parts of the history of Jewish resistance, as Molly Crabapple laid out so well in her amazing book “Here Where We Are is Our Country: The History of The Jewish Labor Bund”. The Jewish Bund, a working-class revolutionary party with roots in Russia and Poland in the late 1800s, made it a point to have sports teams, dance, and other social activities as part of their resistance to anti-semitism in Eastern Europe.
One of my favorite sayings from the Netflix animated show “Blue Eyed Samurai” is “pleasure builds strength.” Fun, sensuality, and physical connection build social and political power.
And yet, too many leftists insist on separating the mind and the body from building such power. And then wonder why movements remain easily fractured. As Blanc writes,
Until we can make the left more fun, more full of song, and more welcoming for working families, we’ll likely continue to primarily recruit self-selecting activists from college-educated backgrounds, many of whom are more comfortable posting online than inviting their neighbors to a barbecue.
I’m not saying that death matches are the solution. But maybe we need to think about how to make (anti) fascism fun again. Our lives may depend on it.
Competition starts at a young age, in sports, and ends in competition in politics. Winner takes all. But what about the fun of participation? Sports and politics give purpose and does not need to be a spectator sport. Get involved, be involved and stay involved and healthy in mind and spirit. In the end, politicians are "public servants" as are those who put them in office.