Confessions of a Right-Wing Bodybuilder (Part 1)

In 2024, I wrote a 60K-word draft for a novel called *Scrambled*, an absurd satire of my time as a “right-wing bodybuilder” (RWBB) in a house full of other right-wing bodybuilders. Although it currently collects dust somewhere in my drawer, unpublished, recent news revolving around an up-and-coming internet celebrity—looksmaxxer “Clavicular” running over a stalker in his Tesla—has renewed my interest in what made me want to write *Scrambled* in the first place.

There is a sphere of internet political discourse largely unheard of (and likely now defunct), but which fuels much of the discourse (and civil war) we see on the Right today.

The RWBB movement began with the publication of *Bronze Age Mindset* (BAM), a satirical work of political theory by Bronze Age Pervert (BAP). To have a “Bronze Age Mindset” essentially meant to shirk the contrived moral finger-wagging of the modern-day leviathan—the “nanny state”—in favor of a sort of Nietzschean revivalist mode of operation in which “the strong do what they will, while the weak suffer what they must.” The idea here is to be Nietzsche’s Übermensch in a world full of consumerist “bugmen.” What is the fundamental difference between Übermenschen and bugmen? Vitality and hormonal dominance. In the words of BAP: “You are your hormones.”

In short, the movement was a microcosm of various personalities cast from the “Alt-Right” (a term not so useful in my opinion, seeing that it contains such a magnitude of thought diversity as to be sort of meaningless) who were 1) non-mainstream conservative personalities who 2) were interested in alternative health, bodybuilding, and aesthetics. These were essentially anonymous, conservative, male communities centered around self-improvement, hierarchy, self-transformation, and status.

There is a good book by my friends George Boreas and Charlie Deist, *Modern Malaise*, in which they capture much of the psychopathology of this movement. We will reference their findings throughout this essay. But you must understand essentially all of the “modern malaise” in terms of mimetic theory and mimetic crisis. This essay assumes a basic level of familiarity with René Girard’s mimetic theory. But if this is your first time hearing of it, it’s enough for you to understand this: humans are by nature imitative, and desire begets desire. In Girard’s theory, this cycle is enough to cause a frenzied sort of envy in which even murder (in the form of scapegoating) is found to be the only momentary catharsis. It’s easy to see how, in a situation like this, a subculture built on displays of superiority, recognition, physical and intellectual dominance, excellence, political vying, etc. can quickly devolve into a vicious cycle characterizing the passionate throes of desire—eventually resulting in murder.

But our time online was a fun, irreverent romp for the most part. In real life, my friends and I spent most of our time lounging poolside reading Nietzsche (or at least I did), weightlifting, and cultivating physiques we would later show off online—stunning physiques lent credibility to our political claims. The pinnacle of this was “mogging,” in which you look better than someone. Whether it be dietary advice, economic policy proposals, or religious debate, it was settled within the sphere by a simple challenge to “poast physique.” To refuse was to admit defeat, essentially. It was a status competition centered around looks, and it was very intoxicating to frequently come out on top, as evidenced by the praise you received from others who vicariously lived through your superiority.

When I wrote *Scrambled*, it was my goal to capture the pathological nature of this RWBB sphere from a firsthand perspective, as I had spent a great deal of time interacting with (and gaining clout within) the sphere. Except at the time I was completely focused on bodybuilding and had no idea about “looksmaxxing,” the arguably more pathological offshoot of RWBB.

They share a great deal in common, the RWBB and looksmaxxer: a general disdain for left-wing politics; usually disaffected males; narcissistic; highly conscientious; usually dissatisfied with the state of the dating market and modern women—hence, the desire to “transcend” by increasing one’s perceived status so as to become more desirable.

A pop-cultural symbol utilized in both these forums was actually Patrick Bateman of *American Psycho*. He was a comical figure that, to the chagrin of his creators, many in the sphere identified with: cold, cunning, cruel, but above all physically beautiful. A true “mogger.” There’s a reason a gender-swapped *American Psycho* is an impossibility (yes, I am aware of the 2002 flop, which is my point exactly), and it’s because the premise of *American Psycho* is precisely this: what if the pettiest aspects of female intrasexual conflict were played out by a bunch of Wall Street finance bros?

In the bodybuilding scenario, even though it was highly neurotic and catty, there were at least some masculine tendencies which kept the train on the track—most notably, the obsession with strength as a real utility. What you have with the looksmaxxing situation, however, is essentially the male objective-driven psychology applied to a frankly feminine obsession with cosmetic beauty and enhancement.

Now we move to discuss the personality (and the event) which inspired me to even begin working on this piece in the first place: Clavicular. Clavicular is a looksmaxxer whose sole obsession is, self-admittedly, “not to get girls, but to just mog all the time.” Since fourteen, he has employed a great number of strategies to “ascend.” To ascend means to have reached the point at which one begins to reap the rewards you’d hope to achieve from investment in your looks: physical beauty, attention from others, material success, and ease of opportunity afforded to the physically attractive. At nineteen and now famous, he has admitted to some of the strategies he has used to ascend: black-market steroids for muscular gains, methamphetamine for a slimmer look, bonesmashing (hitting your face with a hammer) to create microfractures that grow your bones back thicker and fuller.

All of this culminates in his current fame, and the recent event in which he, followed for days on end by a “stream sniper” (a stalker harassing him to get attention for his own content), finally puts an end to his harassment by running the stalker over with his Tesla Cybertruck while the stalker is bouncing up and down on the hood of said Tesla. The clip of the event is online—it ends with Clav saying, “Is he dead? … hopefully.”

After this, my interest in him as a personality emblematic of my own time as a RWBB (a proto-looksmaxxer of sorts) led me to take interest in his actual views and psychology. His interview with Michael Knowles of *The Daily Wire* proved very revealing.

First, the interview exposed the deep disconnect between current right-wing mainstream media and the disgruntled male Zoomers of the Right. Number one, Clav is not a political idiot. He may be unwise, he may be irrational, but his analysis of the state of the Right in 2025 is not wrong. He claims that he would rather vote for Gavin Newsom than J.D. Vance in 2028, citing the failure of the Trump presidency to deliver on its promises (a take Knowles pushes back on). “Newsom mogs Vance” is cited by Clav as a reason to vote Newsom instead. Knowles, a millennial, takes this at face value and can’t see it for the ironic troll that it is.

What Clav essentially means is: “I am aware that Vance is a Thiel plant, and therefore I feel uncomfortable giving my allegiance to him because I feel like he has private allegiances which have not been disclosed and are not necessarily in my interest.” On top of this, there is the feeling that political pragmatism (something Knowles has settled into) is somehow not enough for Clav’s essentially idealistic view of politics. What we have here is not so much a disagreement on policy, but rather temperament. Both believe immigration needs to happen—but one is Catholic, has made his money, has a wife and kids, and a popular show; the other is smashing his face with a hammer and taking meth for hollower cheeks.

To make it worse, there is an impossible divide between Michael’s brand of conservatism and what Clav stands for. The divide is impossible because the single biggest issue young right-wing men want to talk about—the one issue all other issues are contingent upon if they are to be solved in any substantive sense, the only issue that both left and right seem to agree on—is the only issue *The Daily Wire* and the establishment at large have agreed to pretend does not in any way exist. This is maddening—it produces a scenario in which no good will can exist.

On another note, I want to clarify that I’m certainly not here to bash Clav. At times I find him funny and even endearing, though I pretty much disagree with all his takes. Lord knows if I’d had his success at nineteen, I would have gone much further off the rails, much faster. But to me he is incredibly emblematic of who I was and how I thought while I was still very much entrenched in the RWBB sphere—before I had a very serious confrontation with Christianity that left me completely changed.

The internal contradiction in Clav’s ethics is common among the Nietzschean Right. Examples abound.

I won’t claim Clav to be the ideal representative of Nietzschean morality, namely because this is a sort of oxymoron, and any attempt to systematize Nietzsche’s ethics is to misunderstand the Nietzschean view of ethics and epistemology. Clav is simply a product of a very Nietzschean right-wing community. In Nietzsche, there is no belief in objective truth or morality—everything is relative. Clav is definitely operating within this “will to power,” where right and wrong depend on your perspective and only really matter if you’re a “winner.” Clav frequently, in his conversation with Knowles, says things like “well, that depends on your perspective…” and “I can see from your perspective why x…”

For example, Michael says something along the lines of, “Don’t you think pursuit of beauty, beyond a certain point, leads to vanity?” And Clav, rather than asserting that it does or does not, simply accepts that in one view this is true, but in another view (his view) it isn’t. In the Nietzschean view, the Übermensch differs from the Untermensch in his transcendence of all previously assigned moral and value structures—the Übermensch “creates his own values.”

Again, we move through each issue and find Clav contradicting himself, sometimes in a single breath, but with zero care. The world is insane: we must adapt to it. Virginity is good, but I will pursue one-night stands. I want to be traditional, but I am tragically modern. To be ugly is “subhuman,” so I inject myself with supraphysiological drugs. I hate degeneracy; I do meth. Might makes right, but the Left has no right to wield power over me. Homosexuality is bad, but I obsess over how I compare to other men. Women are worthless, but they determine my value.

I would say this is very confusing, but I’ve been there. I know the schizophrenia inherent in this disposition. Desire is a hell of a drug. It’ll take you for a ride.

The problem is in trying to assert a morality devoid of any transcendental. The modern world is gross and pagan and godless, and so we fight it with… pagan revivalism? I guess? Really, it gets down to this: which flavor of godlessness do you want? Strawberry or vanilla?

This clearly has not entered into Clav’s view. And fair enough—I didn’t start considering the reality of the spiritual dimension of life until later. Up until that point, it was a pure “will to power” dynamic I was concerned with.

But in Clav’s conversation with Knowles, I realize just how difficult it is to get across to someone who is in the throes of this pathology that the spiritual dimension is necessary to reckon with. Clav’s reference to spirituality as “just one more dimension” a person can opt into for self-improvement, if they see it as high ROI, betrays the notion that he sees spirituality as just another metric, and also as something optionally opted into rather than involuntarily experienced. That was what I had to realize after my time in the RWBB sphere: we ignore the spiritual dimension of our life at our own peril.

Nietzsche has this line: “You may be done with the past, but that doesn’t mean it’s done with you.” It conveys the tyranny of the Real. Whether you are able to psychologically compartmentalize some aspect of experience is irrelevant to whether it actually exists and acts upon you. The trajectory I see Clav taking—especially in the wake of his Cybertruck incident—worries me because I’ve seen a microcosm of what’s coming.

The thing about vanity is that it is actually incredibly intoxicating and totalizing in the moment. There’s a sense in which nothing matters but this immediate moment. If I can only get all my chips into place for even a second, everything else will have been worth it. Except this is only partially true. Pain can pay off, yes. But in a similar fashion, we can be plunged into such a dark darkness that even the memory of what good was left in the past is corroded by the pain of what was lost.

In one part of the interview, Clav says that looks are a totalizing dimension of life improvement, citing the male models who were rescued from jail—some of them even human traffickers—because of their beauty. The lesson is: “If you look good enough, you can get away with anything.”

In my opinion, this may betray the motivational factor behind the Cybertruck incident. Let me explain.

In *Crime and Punishment*, Raskolnikov concocts the perfect crime. He plans to kill and rob a jeweler hated by the whole town, and he actually succeeds in getting away with it. Over the course of the novel, despite having perfectly planned and reasoned out for himself an explanation of the act that morally exonerates him, he is eaten away steadily by guilt. Finally, he finds that the only relief afforded to him is to pay for his crime. Similarly, in *American Psycho*, Bateman admits at the end of the film to every crime he’d committed—all the countless people slain. But what causes him to completely spiral is the insistence of everyone around him that he is innocent; no one will accept his confession.

What I see in this Clav incident is a sort of continuation of this theme. He has an explicitly stated desire to be so “transcended”—so beautiful—that he is capable of getting away with anything. Perhaps in this incident, and his likely exoneration imminent, he’ll find he already possesses what he has for so long sought after. The question and the issue is not “can he get away with it?” but rather: what is left for a man to desire when he has everything he thought he wanted, up to and including a total transcendence of the moral law in the eyes of man?

What we see today on the Right is a necessary grappling between the Nietzschean and Christian Right.

The Christian Right essentially says: “There is a universal law we must not transgress, even in our dealings with our enemies.” They understand, at least implicitly, that crucifixion and self-sacrifice are inextricable moral requirements imposed on us from without—a standard we must rise up to with the fullness of our being.

The Nietzschean Right, on the other hand, sees everything in a very leftist fashion: “There is no truth, only power.” Granted, they hate Leftism, but only because it’s the wrong flavor of paganism. There is no reason, within this framework, that we ought to be Nietzschean vitalists rather than Marxist communists. After all, Nietzscheans believe in choosing your own values.

What leftists think Christians are, in their vehement and unceasing attack on Christianity, is actually what the Christian Right is holding at bay with the Nietzschean Right: a totalizing, remorseless bloodlust and repaganization.

My only purpose in pointing out the distinction between these two modes of right-wing thought is to show that personalities like Clavicular are not some strange Zoomer phenomenon, but rather the product of a very particular ethos which has been around on the Right for some time and is very close to rearing its beautifully manicured head in full—especially if the moral force of Christianity begins to wane. If this happens, leftists will beg and yearn for the days when they viewed “Christian Nationalism” as the greatest threat to their way of life. After all, right-wing Nietzscheans, looksmaxxers, and bodybuilders are, in most cases, not “fringe” phenomena, but rather the endpoint of a society divorced from any sense of metaphysical realities, objective truth, and, most importantly, repentance.