At the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago this past weekend, scholar Da'Shaun L. Harrison argued that the diet industry functions as a mechanism of surveillance and control disproportionately wielded against Black bodies.
During a panel titled "Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State" at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Harrison contended that the policing of fatness—particularly Black fatness—serves as a foundation for broader systems of governance and social ordering. More than 200 people attended the discussion, one of several sessions within the conference's "Health Fascism" series organized by Haymarket Books.
"Black fatness is made meaningful through suffering, through surveillance, and through control," Harrison said. "The policing of Black fat flesh anchors entire systems of governance. Without a population to discipline, there would be no BMI, no obesity epidemic, and no medical or scientific institutions organized around managing fatness."
Harrison traced a direct line from historical practices of bodily control to contemporary health policy, framing diet culture as an interconnected web linking food corporations, the medical-industrial complex and wealthy interests. He described this as a "social order in which fat people are monitored, restricted, guilted, stolen from, and punished."
Harrison positioned diet culture's link between food and morality—framing restraint as virtue and pleasure as danger—within a longer continuum of how marginalized bodies, particularly Black bodies, have been subjected to regulation, measurement and moral judgment by state and corporate power.
"Abstaining from pleasure becomes training for obedience, self-denial, and discipline in service of a broader political order," he explained.
The panel also featured podcast co-hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, whose work examines how health standards intersect with disability justice and state power.
Harrison critiqued pharmaceutical interventions, including GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, positioning efforts to medicalize fatness as inseparable from racial hierarchies. He connected this to what he termed "body fascism."
"Every time a government decides whose body must be protected and whose bodies must be erased for the sake of national imagery, this is body fascism," Harrison said. "Every time there is a call for sovereignty by state powers with the intent to maintain borders, this is body fascism. Every time Black flesh is wrangled, dismembered, abused, this is body fascism."
Harrison's analysis aligns with broader scholarship on how medical and health institutions have historically participated in racial control—from forced sterilization programs to differential treatment in clinical settings. Recent data has documented how weight-related stigma compounds existing health disparities, with Black women reporting higher rates of weight discrimination in medical settings.
The four-day Socialism 2026 conference brought together activists, organizers and communities from across the country and internationally, featuring more than 100 participatory sessions.
