Apparently, the bathroom scale is the socialists’ next political battlefield.
A speaker at Chicago’s Socialism 2026 conference turned an ordinary debate over weight, dieting, and health measurements into a sweeping theory of political control, arguing that the policing of “Black fat flesh” helps underpin entire systems of government.
Author Da’Shaun L. Harrison made the case during a Saturday panel titled “Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State,” part of a four-day gathering organized by Haymarket Books. The conference’s own program confirms Harrison appeared alongside Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant.
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Harrison argued that modern ideas about obesity, dieting and medical weight management amount to much more than health advice.
“The policing of Black fat flesh anchors entire systems of governance,” Harrison told the audience.
From there, the theory got considerably bigger.
Harrison argued that without populations deemed in need of discipline, society would not have Body Mass Index classifications, an obesity “epidemic,” or major medical institutions devoted to treating excess weight.
Harrison also portrayed the diet industry as a network that monitors, restricts, and punishes fat people while teaching that restraint is morally virtuous.
And dieting apparently isn’t just dieting.
Harrison connected food restraint and self-denial to obedience and a broader political order, eventually describing the phenomenon as “body fascism.”
The panel’s official description similarly argued that fitness, disability, body size, illness, race, and physical capacity can be turned into standards of political and moral worth.
Watch the clip below:
🚨 LMAO! Socialists are now raging at the use of weight-loss drugs because it’s “FASCISM” and “genociding fat people”
“GLP-1s just mark a new phase in body fascism.” 🤡
“The political deployment of GLP-1s is fascistic…because conditions under which they become necessary are… pic.twitter.com/ZbTvdshHQV
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 9, 2026
