MSNBC is going viral for warning about “the far right’s obsession with fitness” — with Elon Musk and Joe Rogan among those mocking the left-wing network’s comparison of the health craze to the Nazis.
MSNBC’s tweet Monday re-shared a year-old op-ed by extremism expert Cynthia Miller-Idriss claiming that the “far right has taken advantage of pandemic at-home fitness trends.”
In it, she even compared some fitness influencers to how Adolf Hitler “fixated on boxing and jujitsu” to garner followers.
MSNBC’s tweet soon got more than 34 million views — and a flurry of mockery.
“Being healthy is ‘far right.’ Holy f–k,” tweeted podcaster and UFC commentator Joe Rogan, a self-styled liberal and lifetime fitness fanatic.
Twitter boss Musk — who recently started training martial arts again to take on Facebook rival Mark Zuckerberg — replied to Rogan’s message by saying that “parody & reality are becoming indistinguishable.”
“MSNBC thinks you’re a [N]azi if you work out lmaooo,” tweeted Musk, who has previously described himself as a liberal only now labeled far-right because “woke progressives” are pushing the left to extremes.
Others also joked that they were “doing white supremacy” with planned workouts.
“I was doing pushups and suddenly a swastika tattoo appeared on my chest. Weirdest thing,” one person replied to Musk. “I’m prone on the couch eating potato chips, hoping it will go away.”
Someone else asked: “If I skip leg day does that make me a Democrat?”
“I’m just trying to not be so fat y’all,” an accountant wrote alongside a gym selfie.
It was not immediately clear why MSNBC decided to again share the op-ed that was first published in March 2022.