Make (Anti)Fascism Fun Once more

Welcome to the sundown version of the Golden Hour. I’m penning this from New York— as I used to be one of many poor souls stranded by the practice delays and cancellations attributable to this morning’s fireplace on the Amtrak tracks.

This week’s version of the Golden Hour will probably be brief. I’m getting ready for some main information and battles subsequent week, so I must preserve as a lot power as I can. All I can say for now’s—- watch this house!

Speaking of battles— it must be apparent to anybody by now that I believe quite a bit about preventing and numerous types of energy. In specific, as a martial artist (Muay Thai and boxing), I’m very considering how politics intersects with athletic competitors. Here are a few issues I’ve been occupied with.

Last weekend, I listened to a superb 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….

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 brief, he argues that the appropriate has found out how one can have extra enjoyable than the left. (I additionally assume that anti-Blackness may even be a endlessly thorn within the aspect of the American left, however thats one other submit for an additional day.) He talks about how early lefties understood that you would be able to’t recruit by boring conferences, or solely principle, PowerPoint, or information alone. You should have FUN.

Sports and bodily health actions had been one other pivotal method to make socialism extra social. When requested what work younger socialists ought to initially do domestically, organizers replied—along with apparent issues like instructional courses—with the next actions: “form baseball and other athletic teams; run excursions; […] take cross-country walks, distributing literature on the way.”

Fun, sports activities, and pleasure are essential elements of the historical past of Jewish resistance, as Molly Crabapple laid out so nicely in her wonderful ebook “Here Where We Are is Our Country: The History of The Jewish Labor Bund”. The Jewish Bund, a working-class revolutionary celebration with roots in Russia and Poland within the late 1800s, made it some extent to have sports activities groups, dance, and different social actions as a part of their resistance to anti-semitism in Eastern Europe.

One of my favourite sayings from the Netflix animated present “Blue Eyed Samurai” is “pleasure builds strength.” Fun, sensuality, and bodily connection construct social and political energy.

And but, too many leftists insist on separating the thoughts and the physique from constructing such energy. And then surprise why actions stay simply fractured. As Blanc writes,

Until we are able to make the left extra enjoyable, extra filled with music, and extra welcoming for working households, we’ll seemingly proceed to primarily recruit self-selecting activists from college-educated backgrounds, a lot of whom are extra comfy posting on-line than inviting their neighbors to a barbecue.

I’m not saying that demise matches are the answer. But perhaps we want to consider how one can make (anti) fascism enjoyable once more. Our lives could rely on it.