Thread by @quintal_etienne

You've definitely seen it, but you might not have picked up on it: anti-fatness is everywhere in far-right politics. Unfortunately, there's been very little focus on why that is.

🧵Let's talk about it and start a conversation.🧵

One of my goals with #OHREP has been to look at communities targeted by hate which are too often ignored by researchers in our field. The targeting of fat people very much falls within that focus. It's puzzling, because anti-fatness is actually... very prominent in these spaces.

To give you an idea, our team has collected and analyzed over 2900 memes. Of these, a bit over 30 - or about 1% - directly targeted fat people. Most often, that's done through dehumanizing depictions.

Fat people are depicted as less than human, and their bullying as justified.

Don't just take my word for it: just look at these ultra-popular anti-fat social media pages. One's a Twitter page, the other a subreddit. Both have followings in the six digits. Both post content meant to humiliate, including by screenshots from fat people's dating profiles.

Anti-fatness is popular, in traditional hate movements, and also on the General InterWebs. Why is that? There's a few obvious answers. As someone who got bullied all through high school over my weight, I think I'm not wrong in saying bullies love to target you on that basis.

And that's worth saying: far-right movements are movements built by and for bullies. Their participants are mean-spirited, small people with time on their hands and a desire to hurt others. They don't just bully 'outsiders' either - they bully each other all the time.

But it goes beyond that, in my opinion. Fatness is a disruptor of the strict gender roles and essentialist archetypes that are so central to essentially all far-right ideologies. Women are supposed to be thin and meek, men are supposed to be strong and bold, and so on.

This meme we found on a white nationalist Discord server illustrates that point well. Fat people (as well as women and trans folks) are seen as weak, incapable of fighting or surviving in the dystopian nightmare of a future the far-right wants to bring about.

Fatness is also used in far-right propaganda as a floating signifier for modernity. In their eyes, fat people didn't exist until today (???), and are not people: they're examples of the decay of society.

Notice, in that last image, the discretely anti-'race mixing' messaging. Like in previous images, fat people are often targeted alongside other groups, in propaganda. To me, that illustrates how interwoven anti-fatness is with things like anti-queerness and racism.

To those in my followers who are researchers (especially those lucky few with paid jobs in the field): I think we have to ask ourselves why we haven't been more explicit in discussing anti-fatness as a theme in hate movements. Is it unconscious bias? Is it ignorance?

Is it (as it often is) that we make the choice to ignore it, because there's a deadline, because there's a word limit, because your editor doesn't understand why it matters?

Ultimately, whatever the reason, we're letting people down.

I think that as researchers, it's our job to reconsider our methods, to think about what we're choosing to focus on, and to dedicate our efforts towards addressing gaps in literature.

And right now, I think this is a major gap we need to close.

I'm no expert on anti-fatness/fatphobia, and it's entirely possible I'm getting some things wrong in this thread. If you know a researcher who focuses on these themes (or even better, are one!) please reach out! I'm always looking for opportunities to learn.