Working Out Is Now Allegedly “White Supremacy”

(RightWing.org) – MSNBC began under a partnership between Bill Gates’ Microsoft and NBC, hence its hybrid name. The network’s challenges over the years in attracting viewers is well known, as are its staffing issues. For instance, in early 2020, primetime host Chris Matthews abruptly left after comparing the rise of Sen. Bernie Sander’s (I-VT) presidential campaign to Germany’s invasion of France. The troubled news organization recently stepped into controversy again for promoting an article detailing alleged connections between physical fitness and white supremacy.

On July 10, MSNBC tweeted a link to an article discussing the white supremacist movement’s “latest scheme” to glorify “violence and hypermasculinity.” However, instead of directing people to the most current plot, the link takes them to a stale op-ed dating back nearly sixteen months ago.

The far right’s obsession with fitness is going digital https://t.co/saGOFXMn64

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 10, 2023

Penned by American University professor and self-proclaimed “scholar of extremism and radicalization,” Cynthia Miller-Idriss, the opinion piece attacked pandemic-related home physical fitness trends. Taking a page out of the Chris Matthews playbook, she ripped into online “fascist fitness chat groups” and drew comparisons between working out and Mein Kampf’s focus on jujitsu and boxing.

Miller-Idriss also accused neo-Nazi groups of “recruiting and radicalizing young men” by providing fitness tips and strategies. She claimed white supremacists were valorizing hypermasculinity in the same way 1930s Germany created an army of millions with “impeccably trained bodies… [and] love of the fatherland.”

As one might expect, MSNBC received immediate backlash to its post and dated article. For example, BizPac Review published a fiery article shredding the “paranoid fantasy world inhabited by leftists” that led MSNBC to publish the op-ed in the first place. The conservative news organization also pointed out that the opinion piece appealed to the “physical and mental slothfulness” of the failing network’s audience.

Similarly, MSNBC’s tweet drew criticism from conservatives and liberals alike. Leftist opinion writer David Weissman lashed out at the network’s “stupid click bait [sic] headlines.” Twitter head Elon Musk responded too, tweeting, “MSNBC thinks you’re a nazi if you work out, LMAOoo.”