Why Are Conservatives Obsessed with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu?

Please stop ruining my favorite sport (and the country).

Mark Zuckerberg receives his blue belt from legendary coach Dave Camarillo.

Growing up as a pudgy Irish kid in a primarily Portuguese town, I was far from the cream of the athletic crop. Soccer games exhausted me by halftime, and my only positive contribution to team sports was as a lacrosse goalie, a conveniently stationary position. So when a friend asked me to join him at a Brazilian jiu jitsu class during my junior year of high school, I jumped at the chance for a sport in which running was illegal. A decade later, I can confidently say jiu jitsu is the only athletic pursuit I’m good at. A pile of tournament medals is stacked on my shelf at home, and I’m writing this at a jiu jitsu academy in between teaching classes. This sport means so much to me. It’s given me purpose during dark times and direction when I felt lost. It’s no exaggeration to say my life would be worse without it.

So, you can imagine my anger at the right-wing freaks who are trying to turn jiu jitsu into a vehicle for their detestable politics.

Me at the Colorado State jiu jitsu championship last summer.

If you’re unfamiliar with Brazilian jiu jitsu, it’s a combat sport derived from judo. It resembles wrestling, except competitors try to submit each other with joint locks and strangleholds. Initially developed in Japan and later brought to South America, jiu jitsu was introduced to America in the 1970s by the Gracie family. Two decades later, they founded (and won) the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), now the global pinnacle of mixed martial arts competition.

Royce Gracie (right) won the first UFC event in 1993.

While right-wing politics has always celebrated sports, especially violent, hyper-masculine ones, jiu jitsu has taken center stage in conservative circles over the past few years. Joe Rogan talks about it on every podcast episode, when there’s time left after glazing hedge fund managers and promoting brain pills; Mark Zuckerberg began training as part of his “masculine energy” lifestyle; and Elon Musk claims jiu jitsu is one weapon in his hand-to-hand combat arsenal, along with full contact karate and “no rules street fighting.” (Only the monkeys who had their brains fried by Musk’s Neurolink believe that.) Following Trump’s inauguration, a cadre of MAGA-obsessed jiu jitsu practitioners and MMA fighters were personally invited to the Mar-A-Lago celebrations.

Jiu-jitsu champion Gordon Ryan and UFC fighter Donald Cerrone at Mar-A-Lago.

While 21st-century American conservatives have claimed the sport, the jiu jitsu-practitioner-to-fascist pipeline is nothing new. Helio Gracie, the patriarch of the aforementioned Gracie family, was a tried-and-true fascist. He was a member of Brazil’s Catholic fascist party (the Ação Integralista Brasileira) in the 1930s and wore the fascist uniform during high-profile fights and public events.

Helio Gracie, wearing his fascist uniform, signs a contract to fight the Japanese judoka Yano.

While Helio died in 2009, his politics continued in the martial art he popularized, often through his direct descendants. Renzo Gracie, Helio’s grand nephew, openly admires the Nazis and praises their “accomplishments.” Gordon Ryan, the jiu jitsu champion invited to Mar-A-Lago pictured above, trained at Renzo’s gym in New York City.

Both within and without the Gracie family tree, fascist sympathies are common in jiu-jitsu and MMA. The sports are commonly used by reactionary movements and authoritarian governments to attract young men and sanitize their international images. Russia, Saudi Arabia, and even Ukrainian Neo-Nazi militias frequently promote their ideology through combative competition. After ex-Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro failed to assassinate the current leftist President, Lula da Silva, and coup Brazil’s government, he fled the country and stayed at the Florida home of MMA legend Jose Aldo.¹ While right-wing athletes are prominent in every sport, only the MMA/jiu jitsu world has former champions participating in international fascist coups. That should give you an idea of the base-level craziness at the highest level of the jiu jitsu world.

Jair Bolsonaro and Jose Aldo.

What makes jiu jitsu different from other sports is that conservatives frequently position the martial art as a model for their ideal society. In the below clip from his podcast, Joe Rogan claimed Mark Zuckerberg’s libertarian politics came from practicing jiu jitsu. (He also mentions he has terrible CTE, which people should remember when evaluating Rogan’s claims.)

“Mark Zuckerberg started doing jiu jitsu. Nothing turns you into a libertarian like jiu jitsu. Nothing turns you into someone who values hard work, discipline, and struggle like jiu jitsu. It's an exposure of character. Nothing else is like it. You expose character in a way that's almost impossible, even with other martial arts.”

Here, we see the right’s fondness for Brazilian jiu jitsu.