OPINION:
Da’Shaun L. Harrison, an activist who spoke at the four-day Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago, called out the “diet industry” for pushing “body fascism” and said the “policing of Black fat flesh anchors entire systems of governance.”
What?
Here’s the quote, from Fox News: “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.”
She then went on to say, “The diet industry reflects this logic” and collaborates with food companies, the uber-wealthy and “the medical-industrial complex” to create and maintain the social conditions necessary to persecute fatness.
“Diet culture,” she said, “has always linked food to morality, framing restraint as virtue and pleasure as danger through language like ‘guilty pleasure.’”
OK. To her point: It’s probably more the fashion industry than “diet industry” and “diet culture” to blame for the imposition of oft-ridiculous standards of beauty on both men and women, particularly women, leading to the accompanying shaming of those who don’t fit into the molds.
But let’s not confuse fashion and dieting for the purposes of physical beautification — for solely the reasons to look good on the beach — with health.
And “fat flesh” just ain’t healthy. It doesn’t even sound healthy. It sounds a bit revolting, really.
More from Harrison: “Abstaining from pleasure becomes a way to train obedience, to train self-denial and to train discipline in service of a broader political order. Body fascism is not some relic of the past. It’s an active feature of modern imperial regimes.”
Actually, self-discipline and obedience are key biblical teachings, necessary characteristics for the mature believer to live a life of a goodly Christian, productive in the service of Christ. Another word for an undisciplined individual is a toddler.
Meanwhile, Beatrice Adler Bolton, a podcaster speaking at this same conference — who took to the stage wearing a face mask — suggested the entire Make America Healthy Again movement was based on the faulty premise that “fatness, illness, disability, racialized difference [whatever that means], perceived dependency or perceived degeneracy are interpreted as evidence of social rot in need of excising.”
Leave it to a socialist to take the fat, lazy and ugly and turn it into a positive.
It’s all about tearing down classes and making everyone equal — meaning identical. It’s all about imposing some sort of equity on all of society, of forcing a sameness of those who are not the same. And since it’s much easier to tear down than build up, and much easier to destroy than construct, then those who are considered beautiful, physically fit, talented, artistic, intelligent, productive, creative, ingenious — add in any number of positives here — must discard their beauty, fitness, talents, intelligence and creativity, etc., so they won’t outpace those with less. If they won’t willingly discard their positives, then society — government — must strip them of their positives.
Socialists redefine what is good to make those with less feel better about themselves.
They do it as an extension of the collectivist mindset that rots the brains of all socialists and Marxists and communists.
If Joe Worker makes more money than Joe Nonworker, then JW must give up money to support JN. And this is called fair in the minds of socialists. And that is called equity.
It’s the same thought process that leads socialists to fight against the MAHA movement and to try and turn sickness and disease and poor health and “fat flesh” into fascism — and more so, “Black fat flesh” into something racist. Divide and conquer; divide society into small segments and then pit these populations against each other, using jealousy, greed, fear and laziness as the means of destroying individual achievement, motivation, drive, ambition and success.
“MAHA,” said Adler Bolton, “draws on … anti-Black, anti-fat, ableist, racist, productivist traditions.”
There’s a certain level of compassion that should be afforded these socialists who think so little of their own worth that they feel the need to redefine the most basic and commonly accepted of humanity — even to the point of changing what it means to be healthy. But after the compassion should come the refusal to submit to their nonsense.
The idea of tearing down the best to the level of the worst is the true evil of socialism. It’s a logic and drive that destroys the human soul. It’s a cancer that must be driven from the culture as well as the political and economic worlds.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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