At the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago, author Da'Shaun L. Harrison told a panel titled "Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State" that the "diet industry" and modern health standards function as forms of "body fascism" that specifically police "Black fat flesh." Harrison argued that concepts such as BMI and the framing of obesity as a public-health crisis exist primarily to discipline and control fat bodies, tying this surveillance to broader systems of racial and state control. The remarks matter because they surfaced a wider argument, gaining attention beyond the conference after clips circulated online, about how activist movements are reframing weight, health and diet culture as instruments of political and racial oppression rather than matters of individual health.

The four-day conference, organised by Haymarket Books at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, featured over a hundred talks and workshops; the "Health Fascism" panel drew more than 200 attendees and also included podcast hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant. Harrison contended that diet culture trains "obedience" and "self-denial," and separately criticised GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, linking public-health efforts around obesity to racial control and state power over bodies. Clips were shared by Manhattan Institute analyst Stu Smith, and psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert countered to Fox News Digital that while some criticisms of BMI are valid, describing it as "body fascism" reflects ideology being applied to areas where it doesn't belong.