This is what winning looks like

Why right-wingers should watch Joshua Citarella and Young Chomsky talk about Mark Rippetoe

Learning to buy steroids in Spanish.

Last week

Joshua Citarella

uploaded an episode of his show Doomscroll in which he interviews Yung Chomsky, the producer of the podcast True Anon, about some of my favorite topics: culture, politics, and weight lifting.

Doomscroll: Yung Chomsky

The thing is, I shouldn’t like either of these guys. While I don’t generally gel with bombastic people, I don’t normally gravitate toward particularly soft spoken people either. I am a 200 lbs jacked bald guy with very poor social intelligence, who happens to be blessed with a voice that sounds like Barry White + vocal fry, and I realize there’s only so much someone someone can do but I’m not just talking about a lack of depth here. I’m talking about the authority behind the voice, the acoustics that make it seductive. Sure, the Rock is yoked but would he still be The Rock if he sounded like Mickey Mouse? Further to the point, many lifters will note that famed cannonball and fitness influencer Kyriakos Kapakoulakis does not have a particularly low voice but is able to affect a compelling one nonetheless. I mean no disrespect to the soprano, alto, or tenor communities. I just want to let people know this how you command an audience (I have 340 followers but paid-sub penetration is growing).

Chomsky who largely speaks about fitness and physical culture throughout the interview is especially soft spoken in a way that seems more tepid than chill to me. I have a certain expectation that those who bring intensity to physical culture, also bring a certain charismatic oratory style, something significantly less anemic. Perhaps when leaving the gym floor for a more expository rhetorical style, one’s voice should less resemble the soundtrack of Gymnastics Forced Orgasm Compilation 8 (as copied by Grizz) and more the mellifluous timbre of Jordan Peterson or Matthew Yglesias. But I should also disclose that I’m also a cosmopolitan mama’s boy who lived in New York for 7 years so I’m probably projecting some disdain for myself onto these two. My inner bully bashing me for not being bully enough. What’s a guy to do in this thing we call 2020’s? 

So, having stated my rhetorical/auditory biases at length, I can’t help but saying, you have to watch this interview.¹

Congratulations rightoids, you’re winning

Let me make the strongest case for watching the Chomsky interview to the people least likely to enjoy it, those so many others so lovingly calls righoids.²  But first, I have to caveat that my opinion derives from watching the interview in its entirety. I initially watched approximately 2/3 of it, replayed as much with a friend who is a big jacked r-slur so that we could make fun of it a little, then I finished the rest on my own and found my overall impression positive.

TLDR this will be your immediate takeaway if you are a rightoid: Why are these two unimposing guys talking about lifting while sitting on folding chairs in the middle of an overpriced white box with no weights around? What you should be asking right now is: Why is this other big, jacked r-slur who does not exactly love leftwing politics, why is he telling me to watch it?

If you are sufficiently open-minded and consider certain counterfactuals, such as, would you prefer that everyone with different politics than you (most of the country) look like an ugly, pre-chonkabetic public health liability, you will hopefully walk away quite optimistic. White-pilled one might say.

A Journey in Vibes

Whether people like it or not, the human mind works in vibes. To make a quick aside, I stand by the idea that a lot of people, especially on the right, dislike Sam Harris, who is at pains to explain this very feature—call it vibessence—of human reasoning. But, he would also like to think that, through being aware of the vibes-based world order, one can transcend it. A lot of the disagreement understandably boils down to how practical the second part seems to each individual. Furthermore, Harris has profound respect for the limits of human reasoning although many suspect he is dishonest or hubristic about whether he can sufficiently diminish its influence over his political takes and whether he would be honest about it if he were aware these constraints were coloring his answers. 

According to my totally correct and scientifically provable vibessence hypothesis, I will make a prediction about those right-sympathetic people who might watch the interview. Their experience will go something like this:

• This guy has a dumb mustache

• This other guy is also skinny and talks funny

• Why is there nothing in this room?

• Okay, lifting + Mark Rippetoe, cool

• Wait. These pencil-necks are making fun of Rippetoe?

• They don’t like authoritarian politics?

• Sure, Rippetoe has a couple weird takes but he’s so much cooler and stronger than these two guys who look like they should be working the perfume counter at Bloomingdale’s

• Why do they even care what Rip thinks about trans people?

  (Stops video, narrowly avoiding Lex Fridman video by 30-70 minutes)

Pretending all of the above information were an accurate and charitable account of the video (it isn’t), let me first explain why even that is a huge win for, Mr. 700 lbs Deadlifter. The interview, whether it wants to be or not, can also be seen as one lengthy paean to the force of nature that is Mark Rippetoe, to Starting Strength, and the contemporary renaissance of physical culture. They spend a lot of time talking about Rippetoe because his business and his books are leaders in the discipline of moving weights.

Am going to miss this genre of editorial.

No peeing on the floor

When you enter a business that has signs plastered on the bathroom mirrors saying, “No peeing on the floor,” you can be fairly sure the business has a problem with people peeing on the floor. Just as surely, if you see your enemy trying to gatekeep something you have influence or domain over, it means you have something they want.

The right likes to think it holds the monopoly on fitness or that it at least has the monopoly on a certain kind of fitness. To the extent that this is true, it feels more true of the kinds of fitness that most resemble war, one of greatest predictors of popularity in sports. Not for nothing, UFC is an extremely hot property (including its female fights and fighters) while the WNBA is so popular it must be subsidized by the NBA). From an aerial view, soccer resembles frontline infantry skirmishes, while American football resembles mechanized warfare. Martial arts obviously resemble hand-to-hand combat. Bodybuilding mostly makes you look prepared for war, while strongman resembles war games which display diverse qualities like power, strength, endurance, agility, technique, things that can be couched under capabilities.

Citarella, Hanania, and even Bronze Age Pervert point out that the right often look less like Castizo bodybuilders and more like plus size commercial drivers waddling through Buc-ee’s travel centers in search of Monster and dick pills.

My observations

Having said that, I have trained myself for 16 years (roughly the same as Chomsky), and have worked in the industry for a decade, and I can say that in my personal experience, most of the serious bodybuilders and powerlifters I’ve known had politics that were right of center but not necessarily conservative (many are quite libertine), and they were probably ~15-35% more likely to say something out loud that confirmed a stronger belief in genetic difference than most people would out loud.

Most of the people I have known who taught or pursued yoga and Pilates were left-of-center but also were ~15-35% more likely to say something at least confirming group differences between men and women.

People who do calisthenics are all over the place, either being vegan or carnivore, heavily into marijuana and conspiracy theories, very anti-authoritarian, and into weird, often cool or cringe music. I learned from the interview that Chomsky shares my background in calisthenics and tearing one’s labrum.

I’m aware that’s not an extensive list of fitness interests but curlers and rollerbladers can BTFO.

All in, I could sperg out about a thousand things Chomsky said which mostly boil down to annoying, personal, nitpicky and subjective language preferences that I would also be subjected to were I trying to break any of this stuff down in real time for people who may have no idea wtf I’m talking about. Most of the points both Chomsky and Citarella make about how to work out, eat, etc. were completely legit, which is to say my reflex aversion to them is mostly dispositional, about who I normally associate with being a fitness-enthusiast versus who may actually be.

If you only watch the first 2/3 of the interview, you might get turned off by Citarella suggesting that a lot of powerlifters, juice heads, and the like are stupid, have shitty politics, listen to bad music, engage in cringe political LARPing that extends from 1776 to neo-monarchism, and all of this is certainly true of a nonzero contingency of powerlifters and generalized meatheads. Absolutely none of this disqualifies them from being among the best athletes in the same way that being fat and jolly doesn’t preclude you from being a good baker, in the same way that being tall and elegant doesn’t preclude you from being a model. However, if you watch the WHOLE interview, you will also hear him arguing that even if that were true that there is a predominant vibe of numetal and AR-15’s, it doesn’t make lifting, testing your physical limits, or any of the other assorted Chad behaviors that make our world so interesting into bad things. Getting into lifting probably won’t make you any more right wing than buying a bike to get a little fresh air will make you left wing. What converts you will ultimately be vibes, how seductive they are, and how sensitive or insensitive you are to them.

NonZionism - Radicalization is just the first step

As

NonZionism

points out on his recent interview with Alex Kaschuta right-wingers do something stupid when they denounce cycling at large because they hate bike lanes, when it turns out fresh air and exercise that resembles just getting to the store actually improves your life in many ways both on and off of the bike. The right should want to steal all the best things from the left and vice versa. Stealing cool shit from other cultures is exactly what makes port cities so much livelier and more sophisticated than many landlocked mountainous places run by bearded warlords of unscrupulous nature. Chomsky recognizes this kind of cultural exchange runs both ways when he mentions the amount of leftists getting into guns the last few years. 

Actual image of Mark Rippetoe, owner of Starting Strength gyms.

Speaking of warlords

I spent a lot of time, too much time, imagining little-l, fuck around x find out, libertarian Mark Rippetoe, the author of the legendary book Starting Strength along with the very excellent Practical Programming, and more importantly the head of the business empire (also named Starting Strength), the leader of a movement, a demagogue par excellence, and a true American hero—I  spent way too much time imagining Rippetoe making a pink-faced reaction video in Wichita Falls, TX, elbows on his desk, hands clenched, forearm veins thick as warheads, as he glares into the camera and begins committing a verbal assault that can best be described as a half Shakespearean, half hate crime.

But, in the end, even Rippetoe would have to admit: This is what winning looks like. After decades of tirelessly building a brand that believes in what it does and largely makes good on the promises it makes, you have a couple lefties (some of the good ones) deciding to respond to a vibe and stake their claim in it. If you like Rippetoe, powerlifting, or general meathead things, this is a win. If you like natural bodybuilding or physique competitions, this is a win. And if you want to open up the conversation to curling and rollerblading, we will see your ass out here on the internet debate forum.

These guys

Chomsky and Citarella, are not all critical. Towards the end, Citarella talks about the ways in which fitness has refined the aesthetics of his body, and improved his overall health along with the quality of his spirit and soul. Seeing your numbers go up, the amount of weight you can move, week after week, is quite satisfying since it shows objective progress in the material world, something many feel bereft of in their everyday lives. Putting a twist on a famed Henry Rollins adage, Citarella points out, whether you live under communism, socialism, liberal democracy, fascism or any other arrangement, a 45-pound plate is still a 45-pound plate.

Imagine an arms race for vitality; disputes of dogma; dynamism, strength, and beauty, the actualization of man at the highest level. I cannot even imagine caring what politics those people have. For they would be my brothers. Physically competent, welcome on the eyes, people who give a shit.

I wouldn’t mind losing a culture war to people with superior culture to mine. In Afghanistan, the insurgents had a phrase: “You have all the clocks but we have all the time.” At the moment, the left has most of the competence and the right has the warlord energy. I only pray that whoever has the best culture is able to align their charisma in a way that decisively wins the conflict ahead.

1. I also happen to really like Citarella’s interview with Catherine Liu. There’s plenty to disagree with in both videos but I’m not here to start shit and I find that both interviews make points that are particularly poignant in the places where I have common cause.

2. If this moniker offends you, I am probably speaking to you, although I am not personally disparaging you, as much fun as it is to put a target on my back and let people insult me.