Meet the Leader of the #SwoleLeft
These liberal guys are weightlifting so they can be strong enough to fight Nazis
At 6-foot-2, with 217 pounds of hulking muscle, Poncho Martinez made for an imposing serf, dressed like a literal peasant  leather arm bracers over a baggy, cotton workers shirt  for last Octobers Medieval Festival in Manhattan. He had spent the last year powerlifting, adding more than 20 pounds of muscle and transforming his frame from doughy to swole  a daunting physical presence that proved useful in the altercation he was about to witness.
As Martinez and his girlfriend stepped onto the downtown A-train, they noticed a big burly man screaming homophobic invective at a tiny, skinny gay kid.
Dont look at me or Ill fuck you up! the guy yelled at the teenager.
Without speaking, Martinez and his girlfriend sprang to the boys defense. She went to the boys side, speaking to him as if he were an old friend, while Martinez stood beside them and stared down the harasser, rendering the man silent and causing him to sit down. The man eventually left the train without incident, but Martinez remained unnerved by the experience. It was the first time he had witnessed someone directly threatening someone else in his five years in New York City.
That kind of incident has only become more common since the fall. Hate crimes were already on the rise in New York in 2016, and spiked after Donald Trumps election electrified the radical right, as the Southern Poverty Law Center put it. Nearly 900 hate incidents were reported to the SPLC immediately after Trumps victory, and harassment remained above pre-election levels well into January. Just this week theres been a rash of bomb threats made to Jewish Community Centers throughout the country.
I thought, That man was larger than the other guy, and he didnt deserve to be. Leftists should be bigger than Republicans. As in, physically larger, so as to deter would-be attackers.
Four months later, Martinez now trains 30 politically active liberal men in powerlifting, so they can be strong enough to defend themselves against attacks by far-right extremists, and to intervene in potential hate crimes like the one Martinez encountered on the train. Some have called it the #SwoleLeft.
[Conservatives] thinks were weak, were snowflakes, were hiding in our safe spaces. Thats not the case, one Martinez trainee said over Twitter. Liberals are finally standing up for themselves.
If youre a Nazi, you should be looking over your shoulder.
...
Martinezs secondary goal is to instill patience in his trainees, a necessary skill for the grueling, often-unrewarding work of political activism. [Because of weightlifting,] Im really good at standing around being bored and dealing with bureaucracy, he says. And thats what will help leftists more than combat ability.
Theres also a symbolic benefit to Martinezs activism, Roa says. Liberal men are regarded by the right as emotionally and physically feeble cucks, whereas the ideal conservative man is the burly guy who can lift a truck. Powerlifting actively defies that stereotype, and projects a message that the left will not back down  ideologically or physically.
