The Cultured Thug: The Far-Right, Physical Culture and Masculinity

Radical ideologies often provide adherents with an important sense of personal meaning. As far-right communities centred around masculine health and fitness have become more prominent in recent years, this purpose is something increasingly being embodied through physical culture. Digital subcultures revolving around bodybuilding, alternative health and nutrition, and transnational networks of combat sports clubs each represent aspects of a broader phenomenon across the far-right in reaction to what has been termed the crisis of masculinity: the increasing emphasis on self-improvement through the pursuit of physical strength, presenting young men with clear aspirational archetypes. But how do these groups connect far-right ideology to physical culture? Using a netnographic approach on Telegram, I analyse how transnational combat sports clubs connect ideology to exercise through cultivating a "far-right physical culture" in which intellectual and spiritual development is promoted alongside physical self-improvement, through the establishment of a distinct masculine archetype. The article further illuminates the development of a particular form of "far-right physical culture" as a distinct ideological tendency by unpacking the major ideological tributaries, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Yukio Mishima. I examine how far-right physical culture performs as an ideological agent promoting intellectual and spiritual development, as well as physical self-improvement.