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

Radical ideologies often provide adherents with a sense of personal meaning, a purpose that can be intensely embodied through the practices and aesthetics of physical culture. Indeed, in recent years, communities centred around physical culture have become important actors within the far-right ecosystem. Newly emerged digital subcultures revolving around bodybuilding, alternative health and nutrition and transnational networks focused on combat sports, each distil a broader trend across the far-right, which aligns personal development with physical strength as an aspirational model for young men in reaction to what has been termed the crisis of masculinity. In this study, I focus on two far-right digital subcultures revolving around bodybuilding and combat sports. Utilising a netnographic approach on X and Telegram, I conduct a comparative contextual analysis on how both communities cultivate meaning-making around personal development and fuse the practice of physical culture to their ideology. This approach allows for a deep dive into two little-explored fringe communities, and through delving into their various overlaps, explores how highly individualised pursuits are transformed into communalised activities integral for shaping the identities of participants. The article illuminates the development of a particular form of "far-right physical culture" as a distinct ideological strand and tendency. In unpacking the major ideological tributaries, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Yukio Mishima, I examine how far-right physical culture performs an ideological agent promoting intellectual and spiritual development, as well as promoting physical self-improvement, through establishing a distinct masculine archetype and role model.