At the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago this weekend, a panelist named Da'Shaun L. Harrison stood before an audience and argued that the BMI scale and the entire concept of an "obesity epidemic" are tools of fascist population control. The panel was called "Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State."

That's a real panel name. At a real conference. Where attendees are required to wear face masks.

Harrison's argument, as reported by Twitchy, was that "without a population to discipline, there would be no BMI, no obesity epidemic" — framing basic health metrics as instruments of state oppression rather than, say, tools your doctor uses to keep you alive past 55. Joining Harrison on the panel was Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-host of a podcast called "Death Panel," who presented under the heading "The More Dysgenic, the Better."

Dysgenic. As in, the opposite of improving human health outcomes. That was the aspirational framing.

The four-day conference, running September 5-6 and beyond, featured a roster that tells you everything about the intellectual seriousness of the event. Hasan Piker — the socialist streamer currently giving Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed migraines — appeared as a speaker and was gifted a "Satan's School of Gay Communism" hat by a pro-abortion activist group called S.W.A.N. Cop-killer advocate Mumia Abu-Jamal was listed among the speakers. An upcoming panel was titled "Psychic Militancy."

Stu Smith of the Manhattan Institute has been documenting the proceedings, and the clips making their way across social media are doing exactly what you'd expect: confirming every suspicion normal Americans have about what socialism actually looks like when it holds a conference.

The conference rules themselves are a masterpiece. Mandatory face masks. Badge checking described as "non-carceral" — because apparently even verifying someone paid for a ticket needs to be ideologically cleansed. These are the logistics of people who think a lanyard is a tool of systemic oppression.

Here's what makes the "fitness is fascism" argument worth more than a passing laugh. These are the same ideological fellow travelers who want the government to run your healthcare. They want a single-payer system where bureaucrats decide what treatments you get, what medications are covered, and how resources are allocated. And their intellectual position — stated openly, on a panel, at their own conference — is that encouraging people to be physically healthy is a fascist project.

The left-wing response to this going viral has been predictable: "It's out of context" and "You don't understand critical theory." Which is the standard defense when the public sees what academics actually believe and recoils. But there's no missing context that makes "The More Dysgenic, the Better" a reasonable panel title at a health policy discussion. That means what it says.

The people who want to control your plate, your doctor's office, and your insurance premiums just told you that being in shape is a right-wing conspiracy. They put it on a panel. They gave it a title. They flew to Chicago for it.

When the people designing your future healthcare system think push-ups are political, the diagnosis isn't fascism. It's projection.