An activist speaking at the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago asserted that the diet industry and contemporary weight management approaches constitute a form of "body fascism," arguing that the policing of "Black fat flesh" is integral to systems of governance and racial control.
During a session titled "Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State," author Da’Shaun L. Harrison stated that "Black fatness is made meaningful through suffering, through surveillance, and through control." Harrison contended that without a population to discipline, concepts like Body Mass Index (BMI) and the notion of an obesity epidemic would not exist, nor would medical institutions focused on managing weight.
"The diet industry reflects this logic. It operates through what I once defined as formal and informal relationships among major food corporations, the medical-industrial complex, and individual wealthy benefactors to sustain a social order in which fat people are monitored, restricted, guilted, stolen from, and punished," Harrison said, according to reports from the conference.
The four-day conference, organized by Haymarket Books, featured various discussions and workshops on topics related to socialist organizing. Harrison's panel, which also included podcast co-hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, drew over 200 attendees. Clips of the conference were shared on social media platforms.
Harrison further elaborated that as governments reduce social services, health and fitness are increasingly used as markers of discipline and moral worth. The speaker argued that "body fascism" is not a historical concept but an active component of modern imperial regimes. "Abstaining from pleasure becomes a way to train obedience, to train self-denial, and to train discipline in service of a broader political order," Harrison explained.
Criticizing GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, Harrison linked efforts to frame fatness as a public health issue to racial control. "Every time a government decides whose body must be protected and whose bodies must be erased for the sake of national imagery, this is body fascism," Harrison stated. "Every time Black flesh is wrangled, dismembered, abused, this is body fascism."
Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, author of "Therapy Nation," commented that such rhetoric illustrates how ideology can permeate everyday issues. "We’re seeing more and more ordinary issues viewed through the same lens: Who has power? Who’s oppressed? How does race factor into it? Now even a conversation with your doctor about weight or diet can be framed as a form of oppression," Alpert told Fox News Digital. He added that framing medical advice as oppression can discourage individuals from hearing necessary health guidance.
Alpert suggested that this perspective shifts focus from individual responsibility to systemic explanations, where personal issues become political problems attributed to external systems or groups. He stated that this ideological framing can have a psychological cost, potentially making people less receptive to advice they may need.
Representatives for Harrison and the Socialism 2026 panel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.