Fitness, muscle-building, discipline and a sense of community – what for millions of people is simply part and parcel of sport is now also being cast into the shadow of the Nazi past. Extremism researcher Julia Ebner draws parallels between the sporting culture of certain far-right groups and the Hitler Youth.
The case raises a fundamental question: must everything that certain social or political circles find objectionable today inevitably be linked, sooner or later, to Nazism? Not every traditional notion is a throwback to the past. Not every sense of community is an expression of extremist sentiment. And not every well-toned physique is a reference to the 1930s.
Anyone who is constantly on the lookout for historical parallels will eventually find them everywhere – if only because, even during the Nazi era, people participated in sport, started families, belonged to clubs and went about their daily business.
After all, when even a weight bench has become the starting point for a debate about the Hitler Youth, the question eventually arises as to whether Nazi tendencies really are lurking everywhere – or whether some people are now primarily training one thing above all else: their ability to spot them everywhere.
There seems to be hardly any area of society left that is safe from historical comparisons with the Nazi era. Whether it be political attitudes, traditional gender roles, certain forms of community spirit or notions of masculinity – references to that period are sometimes made with astonishing speed. And the further back that ill-fated era lies, the quicker these comparisons are made. Now it seems that fitness is also in the firing line
In her book From Fitness to Fascism: The Dangers of Extreme Masculinity, the Austrian extremism researcher Julia Ebner examines the links between the cult of the body, ideals of masculinity and far-right movements.
In an interview with the magazine *Der Spiegel*, she explains:
“The fitness and martial arts culture of some radical movements bears clear parallels to the fitness and combat exercises of the Hitler Youth in the 1930s.”
At first glance, this statement is aimed at certain radical groups. But Ebner goes even further. In her view, the far right has, in a sense, ‘hijacked’ or ‘co-opted’ fitness culture – particularly martial arts culture, as she puts it. The left and liberals must therefore reclaim this ground. This will certainly be no easy task for the ‘let’s fight tonight’ left, for what must be going through the mind of a left-winger or Green if they take seriously their comrades’ current desire to become ‘fit for war’ or ‘capable of defence’?
Perhaps the bewildered would-be warrior might take comfort in the fact that discipline, physical strength and team spirit are neither right-wing nor left-wing traits. They form part of the foundations of many sports, and people have been training for a wide variety of reasons for a long time – even long before the Nazi era.
The Hitler Youth was no ordinary sports club, but an organisation of the National Socialist regime whose remit included, amongst other things, the political indoctrination and pre-military training of young people. The key difference, therefore, does not lie in whether someone does push-ups, lifts weights or practises martial arts, but in the political objectives being pursued through these activities.
The pathological search for parallels with Nazism is, however, a social phenomenon that extends far beyond the world of fitness. One increasingly gets the impression that certain phenomena can no longer exist without being linked to Nazism. Except, of course, in the case of the current warmongering aimed at crushing the Russians – there are, naturally, no similarities with the Nazi era.