SOMETIMES THE LEFT HAND DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THE FAR LEFT HAND IS DOING: Or, two NBCs in one!

Shot: CDC study finds about 78% of people hospitalized for Covid were overweight or obese.

—CNBC, March 9^th, 2021.

Chaser: Pandemic fitness trends have gone extreme — literally. White supremacists’ latest scheme to valorize violence and hypermasculinity has gone digital.

Earlier this month, researchers reported that a network of online “fascist fitness” chat groups on the encrypted platform Telegram are recruiting and radicalizing young men with neo-Nazi and white supremacist extremist ideologies. Initially lured with health tips and strategies for positive physical changes, new recruits are later invited to closed chat groups where far-right content is shared.

Physical fitness has always been central to the far right*. In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler fixated on boxing and jujitsu, believing they could help him create an army of millions whose aggressive spirit and impeccably trained bodies, combined with “fanatical love of the fatherland,” would do more for the German nation than any “mediocre” tactical weapons training.

—MSNBC, yesterday.

* How odd that a TV channel that wished to spread socialism nationally and believed that “your kids are not your own” would see those impulses occurring on the American libertarian “far right.”