Taking the iron pill
Welcome to the weird world of far-right fitness
Welcome to all our new subscribers who joined after reading about Lewis, an activist trying hard to stop the far-right from syphoning off the members of his anti-vaccine group. Today we’re looking at the iron pill, where far-right fantasies and fitness collide. Tell your friends about Scout — forward this email to them and ask them to sign up.
‘You are the resistance’
The online far-right like to talk about “pills” to represent the ideas they believe in. It comes from The Matrix, where the main character takes a red pill and wakes up to the sad reality that his life is being manipulated by sinister forces. For our purposes, taking the red pill means accepting far-right tropes about immigrants, Muslims, and Jews. The far-right have added some other ones. Taking the black pill, for instance, means adopting a nihilist view that the world is irredeemably ruined and nothing can be done about it. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen a lot of social media activity about the iron pill. Taking this pill loosely means believing that modern society has made young men miserable, a civilisational collapse is looming, and that a survival strategy begins with going to the gym, getting jacked and getting stuck into far-right conspiracy theories.
Scanning through far-right social media profiles — particularly on Instagram and Telegram — it’s easy to find men sharing videos of their deadlifting progress and selfies of their post-workout torsos, hashtagging some variant of #ironpill. Some influencers are openly far-right, but many hide their identities by uploading pictures of themselves with cut-outs of Adolf Hitler over their faces. The crossover between far-right and fitness goes back a long way — think of the muscular Nazis in the films of Leni Riefenstahl or the “New Men” of fascist Italy. There’s been a fair bit written about far-right groups like Patriotic Alternative members running their fight clubs, but iron pilling seems different, living in a weird grey area between violent fantasy and self-improvement.
Today, iron-pilled influencers promote an Arnold-grade physique while incorporating a popular far-right aesthetic based on vaporwave — a synthey, Betamax Miami vibe. Memes, videos, and even clothing retailers have adopted this far-right look. Musclewave USA is a gymwear store that has jumped on the bandwagon, flogging “alt white” t-shirts that say things like “you are the resistance”, “ultraviolence” and “we live in a dying society”. The online shop appears to be run out of a residential house in the distinctly un-Miami location of Englewood, a boxy suburb of Denver, Colorado that is surrounded on all four sides by highways. It promises a “high-test explosion of energy, shocking and aweing men back to the roots”, test meaning testosterone. As you can see from that picture above, which the Musclewave admin uploaded onto their Instagram, the iron pill look combines being shredded with vaporwave and the veneration of far-right figures like Oswald Mosley, lurking in the top right corner.
Iron pilling, at least in its modern form, emerged from the primordial ooze of 4chan. This anonymous message board and its subsequent imitators has been hugely important in developing and sharing the latest far-right ideas. The iron pill came out of 4chan’s /pol/ section, short for politically incorrect. This no-holds-barred forum has been especially popular among disenchanted, sedentary young men with low prospects and high interest in the far-right. Aiming to improve their circumstances, 4channers share tips labelled SIG — self-improvement general.
At first glance, these threads are fairly encouraging. The advice is pretty basic stuff. 4chan users recommend workout routines that are aimed at people beginning with a low level of fitness. They progress from light jogging and bodyweight exercises to heavy compound weightlifting. They also discuss how to eat healthily, cut down on porn, cigarettes, drugs and alcohol, get more sleep, watch less TV, read more, dress well, set goals, learn hobbies, spend time in nature and take care of personal hygiene. 4channers often share feelings of loneliness, suicidal ideation, and the tear-inducing boredom of being a NEET (not in education or training). On the surface at least, these self-improvement threads seem pretty helpful. But there’s more to it.
One of the biggest advocates of this genre of self-improvement is a Swedish influencer called Marcus Follin, who blogs under the name The Golden One. He calls it “the glorious pill”, although by his own admission it’s very similar to the iron pill. In a video explaining the origins of iron/glorious pill ideology, he cites Julius Evola — the far-right’s favourite 20th century philosopher.
“Taking the glorious pill is about approaching life in a more heroic and epic and glorious manner,” Follin says. “In viewing the West as already fallen, there is nothing to mourn. We don’t need to say everything’s going downhill because it’s already fallen. We view ourselves as the men among the ruins.” Men Among the Ruins is the title of one of Evola’s books, which advocated self-mastery in the face of degeneracy and decline.
Follin, a YouTuber with more than 112,000 subscribers, has leveraged his fame into selling workout gear, lifting straps, t-shirts, and merino wool sweaters. What a relief that all it takes to overcome degeneracy and decline, and begin a new life of glorious self-sufficiency is a £200 lifting belt, shipping not included!
Ben Elley, a social scientist who has researched the self-improvement world of 4chan, writes that iron pilling threads are actually “designed to turn the movement from aimless online ‘shitposters’ into survivalists and soldiers”. 4chan, and the /pol/ board where self-improvement advice appears, is a deeply conspiratorial place where white supremacy, Hitler worship, and far-fetched claims about Jewish ambitions for world domination are rife.
Elley says iron pilling is just another way into the online far-right world, writing:
“Instead of motivating individuals to make change for their own benefit, [iron pilling] positions self-improvement as part of a wider political struggle, giving it a greater significance and providing the individual with the promise of a greater reward. The iron pill extends the far-right’s imagined political battlefield to include the individual’s body and private life, exhorting them to make change on behalf of their people.”
He cites an example of how iron pilling can suck people into the far-right conspiratorial world view. Apologies, it’s a bit grim. The iron pill crew tell their followers to avoid watching porn — not just because it’s a waste of time and can become an obsession — but because they claim that Jews created the porn industry to turn strong western men into feeble onanists.
So iron-pilling is political. That’s why 4channers respond to self-improvement threads with comments like “SIG HEIL” and “the low-t jew fears the chiseled Aryan chad,” low-t meaning low testosterone and Chad being the name of the online far-right’s strong masculine ideal. It sounds pretty fantastical, but the iron pill is ultimately about building an army of men who are in shape and self-sufficient and primed for the coming race war. Still, when the apocalypse comes, it’s unclear how being good at barbell inverted rows would be more useful than, say, knowing how to light a fire without matches.