The mats do not care about your politics. For years that was enough. You bowed in, trained hard and left your world at the door. But something shifted after what happened to Alex Pretti, and now the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community is discovering that the old unspoken agreements about keeping politics out of the gym might not hold anymore.
“I’m a leader in this game. I teach class.”
“I can’t teach these guys how to better hold down people if they think that’s okay.”
The irony cuts deep, spending years perfecting control positions and submission techniques only to realize you are training people who might use those skills in ways that make you sick.
The internet destroyed anonymity in ways that changed everything. Ten years ago you might have trained next to someone whose politics would horrify you, but you would never know because their opinions stayed offline or hidden behind screen names. Now everyone has their real name attached to their takes, and algorithms make sure you see exactly what your training partners think about everything from immigration to use of force to who should be allowed in which bathroom. You cannot unknow what you know, and once you have seen someone celebrate something you find unconscionable, the trust required to let them train with you begins to fade.
Some people insist the solution is discipline, just do not talk about it. A purple belt shared their approach, shut down political conversations the moment they start, acknowledge disagreement exists and get back to drilling armbars. It is a reasonable strategy, maybe even the mature one. But others argue this particular moment transcends normal political disagreement.
“This is too big of a thing to just agree to disagree on.”
When you are letting someone put their hands on you, when you are vulnerable in ways that matter, finding out they hold certain views can break something fundamental.
The geographic divide makes it worse. In conservative areas, instructors who lean left find themselves outnumbered in their own gyms, surrounded by students who see the world completely differently.
“I live in a red area. It’s a lot of good people.”
“I never thought that propaganda could work on people like this.”
The flip side exists too, conservative practitioners in liberal cities facing the same isolation and the same sense of being judged before they even step on the mat.
When the disagreements are about fundamental questions of justice, safety and who deserves protection, the libertarian shrug starts to feel inadequate.
A practitioner from Spain chimed in with a different perspective.
“Glad to live in Spain where I can go for a drink with both Communists and Franco apologists at the same time and have a great time.”
Maybe that is easier in a country where political battles feel more historical than immediate, or maybe it is just a different culture around disagreement. Either way, it highlights how American BJJ has become a microcosm of larger American fractures, the same inability to be in the same room without tension and the same sense that the other side is not just wrong but dangerous. It’s also increasingly harder if your political spectrum is a dichotomy.
None of this comes with easy answers. Some practitioners will keep showing up, compartmentalizing their training from their values because the technique matters more than the company. Others will quietly switch gyms or quit altogether, unable to reconcile what they believe with who is on the other side of the mat. Some instructors will enforce strict no politics rules and hope that is enough. Others will decide their gym needs to stand for something, even if it costs them students.
The real point is this, no two dojos are exactly alike and what works for one person will not work for another. Finding a place where you can train without that gnawing feeling in your stomach matters. Whether that means seeking out a gym that shares your values or finding one where nobody talks about anything outside technique and competition is your call. If the environment feels wrong, if you cannot trust your training partners or your instructor makes your skin crawl or the culture just does not sit right, then it is wrong for you and that is reason enough to find somewhere else.
