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Karim Zidan - Ultimate Strongmen, Inbunden

Inbunden, Engelska, 2027

Ultimate Strongmen

MMA and the Rise of the New Authoritarian Right

Av Karim Zidan

Del i serien Atria/One Signal Publishers

219 kr

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Beskrivning
From Karim Zidan, award-winning investigative journalist who has spent the past decade embedded at the intersection of sports and politics, an “indispensable guide” (J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize) to the intertwined relationship between mixed martial arts, hypermasculinity, and authoritarianism.For those wondering why US politics feel more like an entertainment product than a democratic process, the alliance between Donald Trump and the UFC offers a crucial explanation. Trump didn’t just adopt the aesthetics of the UFC—he weaponized them to reshape political discourse, rally a new base, and redefine what it means to be a “strong” leader. It has helped shift the Overton window on acceptable political behavior, turning trash talk, and open hostility into presidential policy. Even for those who don’t care about sports, this shift matters: when politics becomes a bloodsport, democracy suffers a critical blow. But beyond the pro league, mixed martial arts writ large has itself helped lay the foundation for a countercultural movement—one that has evolved into the reactionary, conspiracy-fueled ecosystem the sport embodies today. From conservative pundits like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens; to influencers like Joe Rogan, and self-styled misogynists like Andrew Tate; to authoritarian backers like the Saudi and Emirati royal families; and even recent public support from the likes of practitioners Mark Zuckerberg, MMA has become synonymous with the “strongman”—an archetype of masculine domination, authoritarian culture, right-wing ideology, and state-sanctioned violence. The Ultimate Strongmen traces how MMA has become a powerful tool for political agendas, propaganda, and control, illuminating the wide-ranging impacts of MMA on our political moment. Through exclusive interviews, narrative storytelling, and in-depth reporting, Karim Zidan reveals how Donald Trump’s alliance with the UFC, as well as MMA’s emergence as a right-wing counter-culture ecosystem, isn’t just a footnote in American politics—it has fundamentally reshaped it.
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Karim Zidan is an award-winning investigative journalist from Cairo, Egypt, who has reported on the intersection of sports and politics for more than a decade. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian, and has been published by The New York Times, Foreign Policy, among others. His reporting on authoritarian states has led to numerous award nominations, and has been featured in documentaries for HBO, BBC, and CNN. In 2023, he launched Sports Politika, a reader-supported media platform and newsletter dedicated to his niche. He was awarded a 2026 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize for The Ultimate Strongmen.

Recensioner i media

"[THE ULTIMATE STRONGMEN] will be a vital and stylish work of reportage and memoir about mixed martial arts (MMA) and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), especially in the age of Trump, whose alliance with UFC has helped mainstream, in Zidan’s words, a ‘brand of aggressive nationalism and anti-establishment rhetoric that has since bled into broader American politics.’ Zidan’s work is an indispensable guide to a sport and culture not well known outside its fanbase, but which has, as his journalism has shown, links to neo-Nazis, Gulf autocrats, gendered propaganda, and much more. With deep sourcing and narrative command, Zidan’s story traces UFC from its outlaw origins—once denounced as ‘human cockfighting’ by Senator John McCain—to its emergence as a cultural arm of the MAGA movement, with its politics of dominance, spectacle, and grievance. He has a gift for illustrating these sweeping themes with intimate human stories, from a former UFC champion turned QAnon-peddling city councilman to the fighters who cheered Trump even while their own labor rights were gutted. Zidan, an award-winning, Cairo-born journalist, has reported on this beat for over a decade, despite bans, death threats, and the hostility of powerful institutions—demonstrating the same defiant persistence as the fighters he covers."—Judges Citation, 2026 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize

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