The first thing to know about Brian Johnson is that he has two. One is Brian with a y, the 46-year-old founder of the Blueprint Life Extension System. Brian Johnson spends his days undergoing full body scans, blood tests and something called “penis rejuvenation” in his quest for physical immortality. The other is Brian with the letter “i”, a 45-year-old influencer known as the “Liver King” who tends to spend his days indoors staring at a computer, something that modern humans would find impossible. He advocates a “ancestral lifestyle.'' and cook our food.
On the surface, the two Johnsons appear to be completely at odds. Brian is vegan, eats custom-made vegetable goo to avoid the sun, eats a pound of raw liver every day, and boasts a deeply bronzed physique. Brian is a tech billionaire who made his fortune through payment processing apps, and he channels introspection and sobriety, at least when he's not posting. inject His penis had vasodilators in it. Brian, who worked at his wife's dental office, is a self-described “dominant man” who sits on a luxurious throne and happily eats raw organ meat, while his children clearly dislike him. Family meals are often prepared as well.
While Brian attempts to regain the prehistoric greatness that humanity has lost through pull-ups and squats, Brian prepares his body for an AI-mediated techno-future. But their different views on exercise, nutrition, and even time itself contribute to the very same political project. Drawing on American individualism, Silicon Valley's insatiable thirst for “optimization,” and the self-help clichés of hippie culture that solidified in the late 1970s and 1980s, the support of the Johnson family and their ilk constitutes a right-wing politics that they call “lifestyle.” fascism. “
Unlike influencers in the so-called “health to fascism” pipeline, the Johnsons do not use skepticism about mainstream health expertise to steer viewers toward right-wing talking points. Instead, they begin with a fascist aesthetic tradition that celebrates hard young bodies, fuse it with the language of self-help culture, and promise eternal life to potential followers among a cadre of superior male specimens. Masu. The only criteria for participation is a willingness to take your destiny into your own hands and register while supplies last. Monetizing their worldview through the sale of raw liver supplements and $75 extra virgin olive oil further tame their Nietzscheanism.
The Johnson family's project is consistent with a defining feature of American capitalism since Ronald Reagan: the systematic platforming of fraudsters. Like many other wellness influencers, these two promote an ideal lifestyle while strategically eliminating things that are inaccessible to the average person. For example, in December 2022, it was revealed that Liver King had been using steroids for nearly $12,000 a month, and had achieved toned abs solely through an “ancestral” diet and exercise. His claim was overturned. Brian Johnson, on the other hand, refuses to disclose the supposed “scientific” basis of his Blueprint methodology, even to doctors and scientists who wish to collaborate with him. Either way, with a $2 million annual price tag, the Blueprint is only available to a select few, as Brian Johnson experienced.
In this way, the overlap in the Johnson family goes beyond superficial differences. Their attempt to reshape society by reshaping beleaguered male bodies capitalizes on the enduring popularity of self-improvement schemes, with unmistakably right-wing views. The Johnsons believe that all problems in life stem from personal choices. They claim that by modifying your diet, training patterns, and sleep schedule, you can overcome your worst urges, live virtually forever, and break free from the harmful aspects of modern life. There is no need for solidarity or institutional change. Both men place clear moral values on the lifestyles they consider optimal, and both condemn those who live contrary to their former selves and, by extension, their teachings, as inferior. Brian Johnson calls his pre-Blueprint thinking “rogue brain.” As far as Liver King is concerned, “Brian Johnson” no longer exists. Because his alter ego “ripped open the cage and ate” him.
without calling ourselves Ubermenschen The Johnsons are no strangers to countless online wellness trends, whether they decry the modern way of life as “decadent,” their intentions to recapture a lost golden age (Brian) or achieve a futuristic utopia (Brian). It is incorporated inside. Given this background, their contribution to right-wing masculinist discourse seems almost coincidental. It is true that Liver King forbids the consumption of seed oil as one of his “ancestral tenets,” and that his deliberate opposition to seed oil is correlated with conspiratorial right-wing ideology.
Similarly, Brian Johnson's belief in the life-prolonging effects of blood transfusions aligns with technofascists like Peter Thiel, but in and of itself proves nothing about his political views. But it is no coincidence that someone once “gathered them all” out of a particular personal initiative – paranoia about seed oil. Refusal of vaccines. The belief that biohacking, “data”, or artificial intelligence can make humans physically immortal. Nostalgia for “traditional” food and gender relations – you can pretty much predict what form of government they will support.
In a world of fraying metanarratives, fragmented sociality, and unaccountable oligarchic rule, the only remaining options seem to be consumer-oriented. The Bill Clinton era accelerated the commodification of politics through triangulation and focus groups, turning candidates into products and voting decisions into lifestyle choices. Politics and lifestyle have become even closer together since the advent of social media, which monetized extreme content and isolated users in filter bubbles. Not only do political decisions become lifestyle issues, but lifestyle choices accumulate into ideology.
If fascism glorified politics in the time of Walter Benjamin, modern fascism turned into a lifestyle that. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of health. In the realm of health, individualistic motivations for self-improvement easily overshadow the stigmatization of the suboptimal, the weak, and the inherently worthless.
Like the deranged newscaster in the 1976 media satire Communication network, The Johnson family is “very angry” about modern life and has no intention of “putting up with it any longer.” Their project, expressed in the hyperbolic language of online wellness gurus, connects the perfection of the physical self to building a better future for white men and those who love white men. The “robust energy and biological resilience” of the Liver King's “ancestral lifestyle” is as much underpinned by patriarchal values as raw liver. Brian Johnson says that while his Blueprint methodology “may appear” to be “about health, wellness, and aging,” it is actually “for you, me, the planet, and our common future with AI.” “A system for making tomorrow better.”
Adherents of these approaches do not have to follow the “health to fascism” pipeline that begins with vaccine skepticism and ends with QAnon and Alex Jones. In the Johnsons' case, the calls come from inside the house.fascism is already in Lifestyle.
