People whose parents have become fascist, how are you dealing with it?
I have 2 GOP parents, one that voted Trump originally and one that did not. Over the last 9 years, I have watched them both travel down the MAGA pipeline to become visibly fascist. The parents who taught me racism was wrong and to have empathy for others, have become openly hostile about immigrants, Muslims, and even parrot the Nazi "great replacement" theory.
Part and parcel with this, they refuse to have any discussions about the facts -- like immigrants not stealing and eating people's pets. They won't hear it, they won't even engage in the conversation...they just get angry and loud the second they hear anything that doesn't fit into the Fox News narrative. Can you relate? How are you dealing with it in your relationships with your parents?
My dad was always conservative listening to Limbaugh and other talking heads as long as I can remember. He was always casually racist but then everything was ramped up in 2016. It grew to a point that he joined Facebook and every post was truly horrific. Gleefully enjoying violence. He was convinced Michelle Obama had to be a man. Every crude meme he could find he reposted.
It came to a head when I realized that I'm passively letting him say all of this, while at the same time I have mentors and people I care about that he actively wants harm to come to. It became a true moral thing, by letting him just say all of this, I felt like I was saying it was okay.
So I told him that he could either have these posts on facebook and his hate or he could have a relationship with me, but that I couldn't have a relationship with him while he had this much hatred towards people I care about.
That was the last time I spoke to him, he never reached out after that. It's been 7 years now since I've heard from him. He knows how to get hold of me if he should ever choose, but I've never heard anything from him.
From the rumors, 1 by 1 he alienated everyone else in the family, even coming to a screaming match with his elderly mother as she asked him to please be calm. Last I heard he picked up a new MAGA girlfriend and moved somewhere in the rust belt away from all the libs in the Midwest. I have no idea where beyond that.
I almost feel like it would easier if my parents would go full shitbag, then it would be easier to just not have relationships with them...my dad is a good dad otherwise, and my mom isn't bad, she kind of just acts like an angsty teenager. I want to have relationships with them, but I'm the full-on antifa super-solidier that Trump is trying to outlaw...the Venn diagram of things that are safe to talk about between us has a very small sliver in the middle...mostly, how's the weather?
Man, I feel you buddy. I really feel for you. My parents are middle of the road Democrats. They think they’re leftists but in reality they’re just Mitt Romney Bill Clinton types. and although they are not fascists, they are certain that positive change is just around the corner, none of this is too bad, the pendulum will swing back fully in the other direction in just a couple of years, just you wait.
They don’t seem to recognize that the pendulum has been dismantled and that the people in charge don’t give a shit on both sides. they get viscerally, angry, and upset when I try to point out to them that best case scenario America will take a generation to fix. And it’ll only get fixed if it’s filled with decent people, governed by decent people. And we all know that is not the case. So in reality, America will probably not get fixed in my lifetime. Maybe in my kids lifetime. My parents cannot understand that concept they think the good times are just around the corner.
I keep them at arms length I let them engage with my children and beyond that, it’s how’s the weather.
But I’ve also decided that because I don’t feel America can be fixed In a timeline, I find a reasonable as a relates to the raising of my children. I am leaving America.
i’ve already begun the process and my family and I will be moving near other family in a different country. Maybe my children will come back to these shores but aside from a few funerals I don’t think I’ll be back here.
good luck, buddy. We all need it.
Yeah. Reagan fucked The US for the last 40 years, and Trump fucked us for the next 40. If I were in a position where I could reasonably move to Western Europe, I would...I guess I'll just have to live vicariously through you. You're doing the right thing by your kids, I'm rooting for you/them!
thank you, that means a lot. But don’t give up hope. There’s lots of nations in Western Europe that have programs that allow for immigration and permanent residency. There’s also programs to immigrate to Canada, depending on what type of work you’re in. And if all else fails, There’s good lives to be lived in South America and Central America. You’re not trapped. It may take you five or 10 years, but you can do it. Don’t let the empire crush you in its gears.
That's fair weather friend stuff. I won't be the good man who does nothing, the good man who runs away. If Evil triumphs, it will be despite me, not because of me.
Your parents are the prime example of what's wrong with Democrats and why America is probably fucked. MAGA/Fascists are the minority in our politics but the adage "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing" rings true.
What kids lifetime? You think the human race will survive this? You understand there is no way they aren't driving us extinct. We are like the crew in the debts on a sub, waiting for the hull to give way. We talk about "solutions", but truth is, we are already dead, fantasizing about escape.
A thousand times, yes.
I pity your dad. May he either turn back and no longer be a slave to fascism, or die as swiftly as possible.
There is no place in the world for fascism.
Well, one of them died of COVID-19 without telling me that they even had it, and I don't speak to the other one.
My dad did not tell me because he knew I would tell him I told you so when I was like, wear a mask, keep your distance, maintain safety protocols at all times, follow what the CDC is saying, treat this seriously.
It was literally weeks before the vaccine became available. Like if he had just, like, two more months, I would still have my dad.
Ah I’m sorry to hear that. My parent swung hard into the same propaganda and obviously ended up catching a severe case, multiple times in fact. Survived, but they’re like a totally different person now. Extremely hair triggered and aggressive, easily confused about things that always used to come naturally.
I think it’s literally a case of brain damage from catching the virus so many times. Been pretty awful to watch. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive the conspiracists. Sorry again for your loss, hope things are moving in a good direction for you and yours
My parents were both... medium-core republicans. Didn't go to rallies or buy swag, but they weren't interested in non-R candidates or ideas. Dad died of covid before the vaccine was available. Pre-existing immune deficiencies. He was one of the ones they couldn't fit in the morgues because they were all full. My mom watched all this happen, still refused to get vaccinated, got covid twice (that she told me of) and died of "complications from asthma" two years after the vaccines were generally available. IDK what role covid played in her death but I doubt it helped much. I really don't know what I could have said to her if watching dad pass in isolation wasn't enough. I think about it a lot though.
God fucking shit it breaks me heart to hear that. I'm so sorry for your loss.
My mom is quite pro science and my dad became a bit spiritual, conspiratorial and anti-science, but none of them were hit that hard. I feel like I'm in the opposite situation where I technically can try to convince him to change his mind every time I see him but he is extremely stubborn and there's no way. In fact it will make him dig in deeper and the only way for him to change is by himself.
Fuck this timeline I want a reroll.
Thanks ❤️ I really wish I knew what to do, because I still have relatives on both sides that are deep in the cult. Not to mention my inlaws 🤦 They occupy a spectrum of dangerous / crazy and some of them I don't talk to at all, some I still talk to occasionally but it's hard to figure out where the cutoff line is. I think I've had some productive conversations around how dangerous Trump / MAGA are, but it's hard to tell because I think the effects only manifest in the long term really and it's hard to tell whether I'm helping or just pushing them away. I don't think anyone suddenly has a lightbulb and thinks "Oh god, I'm in a cult", at least not in my experience. It's more gradual and requires sustained conversations, which incidentally is why cults generally encourage victims to cut off family members who aren't also in the groupthink. So, I just try to meet the ones I don't think would likely try to kill me for being trans where they are and do my best to be a good influence in the sphere of influence I have.
As for the reroll, lol I hear ya, but as a wise wizard once said, "so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
So you're saying this planet's DND party just has bad dm?
I don't think we have one. I think we're all just players, and we make up the game as we go along.
You think he would have taken the vaccine?
Yeah, he was pro-vaccine.
He believed in medicine, he just hated any politician that wasn't Donald Trump, and believed the news when they said that it's just a cold.
My parents actually went the other way. They were very conservative while I was growing up until my mid twenties, and nowadays they are the complete opposite.
When they were conservative, I generally didn't bring up politics, but if it came up I didn't argue. I would just say I thought something was mean spirited and just shrug if they tried to argue. I think I accidentally psychologically fucked with them. I think being mean was against a core value of theirs and me repeating that idea slightly tweaked their thought process.
Eventually I started hearing the "mean spirited" comment from them as a reason they disliked a policy or conservative person. And they now vote for liberal or labour parties.
I think that's what I'm going to have to do. Not sure if they care if something is mean-spirited now...will have to find out.
This sounds like my (more reasonable) extended family.
Unfortunately, my parents are still deep in the cult.
Credit where it is due. My parents are willing to question things. And that is half the battle.
That's pretty much the extent of how it worked with my family. I don't throw out mean-spirited too often, because that tends to bring out defensive combativeness.
@West_of_West @pep for those I don't care enough about to fight with this seems like an awesome approach for me to consider. No one wants to be considered the asshole and a lot of them try to use religious language which is very anti-asshole by its nature
Could always do a more aggressive WWJD, "thats not very Jesus Christ of you"
I'm from the UK so my answer will be mostly UK centric.
My dad has become very right-wing in recent years. He supports Reform UK, he uncritically supports everything Israel does, he thinks that refugee boats should be sunk by the Navy without regard for the lives of the people on board. He hates LGBTQ+ people and thinks same sex marriage should be outlawed. He hates Islam and Muslims, and thinks that all mosques in the UK should be shut down. He wants the death penalty to return and for it to be applied very frequently. He thinks protestors and activists should be shot and killed by the police if they cause even minor disturbance. He thinks COVID was a hoax and that the vaccines are dangerous. He thinks Trump is great, except for his stance on Russia (my dad despises Putin).
It's very sad how far down the rabbit hole he's gone. I always thought of my dad as an intelligent man, because he was pretty accomplished academically and was always interested in science and technology. He always put logic before dogma and emotion.
But the shit he's been absorbing on the internet over the past 10 or so years has changed him entirely. He believes every far-right conspiracy going, and has a violent attitude towards everything, seemingly thinking that everyone that doesn't conform to right-wing standards should be harmed.
I don't bring up politics anymore, but if the topic does come up somehow, I will tell him why he's talking bullshit. In my opinion, social media and online propaganda has done a serious number on the psyche of older people. They fall for every lie hook, line, and sinker. It's made them fucking insane.
The worst is when you find out that they actually do know what's going on, and have been following the news, and yet they STILL support it.
Heartbreaking.
The only answer is to cut off the access to that hateful propaganda entirely.
A cold comfort, but in expressing his distaste for the current government he would be hoist by his own petard.
The solution will always be communication. You have to tell them that they are pushing you away; how they are hurting you; how you can't live with the hate.
Keep away from the talking points. Talk about your feelings with them. Talk about your fear that if they continue you will lose them. If they still care about you, the thought that they are causing you pain should be horrific to them. Tell them that you fear losing them to hate.
...but keep away from the facts. Don't try to prove them wrong. If they bring stuff up... "I don't care if that's true or not. It makes you angry, and full of hate, and I can't live with that level of hate in my life".
Share emotions. Don't worry who's right or wrong. It'll be hard, but that's the only way to start. Their rational brain is corrupted. It doesn't work and appealing to it won't work.
Really good advice, thank you.
I'm fortunate enough to not have anyone that close to me become part of the cult. Those who have, I've just stopped reaching out. Though that may not be an option for you in this case.
The best advice I can offer is to try to understand what a cult is, and how to work with that situation. A cult like MAGA is inherently irrational, so trying to win people over with rational arguments doesn't work. Here's one resource for how to talk with people like this.
I stopped arguing which made them dig in and our relationship worse, and asked a thoughtful question or two. Then dropped the matter and moved on to something different or removed myself from immediate proximity. I mean they're not red/black flag-waving revolutionaries, but people grow at their own pace or not. To use the old idiom, pulling on carrot tops doesn't make them grow.
Don't let them have any peace with those opinions. My mother became a cop when I was a kid and she went from tree hugging hippie to loud and proud racist so fast. It took YEARS of arguing and fighting every time she said something racist before I could finally get through to her. Don't let up. My sister got sucked into transphobic bs too and she finally stopped talking about it after getting a lot of pushback over a couple of years. My husband got sucked into the alt right pipeline in the late 2010s after a lifetime of being hard left. That also took a couple years of never letting anything slide and fighting about every stupid video he watched. Don't give up on your family and cut them out, either, though, please. I know it's tempting but I feel we all have the responsibility to pull our loved ones out of the cult. It's the only way for society to move forward. It's hard. I know. I've done it three times.
How is your husband now? I can’t believe how many people you pulled back from the abyss. Does fighting them on everything actually work?
He is back to normal now thankfully. I can't say it would always work but it has worked for me. It's just exhausting and really hard. By the time my sister was going through it (she was the most recent), I was burnt out and did have to stop talking to her for a few months. I don't regret it though because I still have all of them in my life and they aren't driving me insane anymore.
I don't think i could do it. I don't have the patience. So irritating.
I have not spoken with my fascist father in 11 months. Before that I spent years trying to reverse the brain washing. My mother moved out in 2021 because of his trump isolation. He told me that was the worst day of his life, I said if only there was a way to change that. He thought I meant make my mom become a fascist too.
This sounds a lot like my dad...minus the mom moving out bit...everything in the world, he looks at through MAGA-colored glasses. When groceries were expensive under Biden, he said it was all Biden's fault. Now that it's actually Trump's fault from all the tariffs, all of a sudden grocery prices are "complicated."
Like you, I spent a lot of time trying to un-brainwash him, and eventually gave up...he's probably only got 1-2 years left, so I feel like I'm just riding it out, it's just a shame that his final years have twisted him into something I think he wouldn't have even recognized 25 years ago (it would be easier if it were dementia, but other than this MAGA cult shit, he's still pretty sharp).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brainwashing_of_My_Dad?wprov=sfla1
In this particular case, the answer was to - quite literally - turn off the TV.
I don't imagine this is a good option for many, but shutting off the incoming flow of hate can make a difference.
"You are what you eat". If someone only consumes
fascist propagandaright-wing media, then they will become morefascistright-winged.To OOP: You might not be able to turn off their TV. But you should share unbiased or left-leaning articles, shows, news, etc. And try to get them to "eat" a more balanced diet.
My parents have always been conservative, to the point where in high school I was very much the same because my dad would always play right wing radio on the drive to school.
I graduated high school and went to college, where I was no longer stuck in such an echo chamber, and I slowly stopped believing in that horseshit.
But my parents never left that bubble, and when Trump came around it got worse. We fought each other on it occasionally, but still had a relationship. Then Biden came, and things got slightly better. I was less anxious at the state of the world. I knew things were still fucked, but there was at least a glimmer of a shred of hope that the Trump era was fading, and at the very least it wasn't something I had to immediately worry about.
Then the second Trump administration came, and our relationship fell apart. I was and am beyond pissed at them for voting at for an obvious nazi, among a number of other issues.
So we tried therapy for a bit, and it fell apart after about 2-3 months. So I was even more pissed off at them, and they were oblivious as to why I was pissed, despite explaining it to them numerous times. So now I'm low contact with them both.
"low contact" yeah, that's where I am. Like you, I'm pissed that they brought this Nazi in, and I know that the effects of all the things in government he is destroying will last for decades to come. They'll be dead and gone and I'll still be dealing with a country with worse healthcare, national parks turned into private logging and oil fields, defunded public education, on and on...I hate it. I love them, but to say that I'm mad at them, is a grave understatement...because I (and millions of others) will be feeling this shit for a long time to come.
Meta: Lemmy doesn't seem to have something akin to Reddit's "QAnonCasualties" subreddit. That's kind of surprising as I think there'd be plenty of interest in such a thing. I can imagine it might be a lot of work to moderate though.
OP: the abovementioned subreddit might help you understand what's going on and if you tell your story you will definitely get a lot of support from people who have lost friends and loved-ones to MAGA/QAnon. Don't let the "QAnon" part of the sub name deter you, there's a big overlap between QAnon and MAGA and the sub has content from people affected by both/either.
I just wish someone had come up with a novel approach to mend relationships between leftists and their MAGA-brainwashed parents, but reading the 40 or so replies here and taking your advice and popping over to my favorite redlib instance to read some of that community...it looks like success at improving these relationships is incredibly rare.
I do quite like the approach laid out by Honkology in their "why facts don't change people's minds" video and have been taking that approach for the last 9 years, but not only has it failed to move them one inch out of the cult, they have only gone deeper and deeper. Mentally, I have accepted the fact that it's not my responsibility to fix them, but emotionally, it's difficult to accept.
On one hand, all the replies here from people in similar situations has made me feel less alone in the situation. On the other, it has also made me really sad about how easily tens of millions of people could be turned against anyone who doesn't look like them, think like them, or belong to their same economic stratum.
I've looked briefly into the equivalent of antifascist projects, and former neo-Nazis talking about how their minds were changed. From what I've seen:
Obviously these are just second-hand observations, I don't have much personal experience with this, so if any of it sounds wrong then I'd like to know.
All 3 are great points. Thank you!
I am so thankful my mom is still just a stoner that likes high fashion, pun intended. I am so sorry you all have to go through this. It is mind boggling the change that the poison propaganda has brought. I lost some other relatives to it, but it's nothing like a parent. Hugs for all.
Remember how the far right likes to chant that facts dont care about your feelings?
Its projection. They go off of feelings above all else. And whatever sky daddy tells them to think.
You're free to start one. This is the people's internet after all.
Zero tolerance. No conversation. No benefit of the doubt. Zero.
I did the same. Basically said you didn't raise me like this. Fix your shit or I'll block you and never contact you again, I don't associate with trump supporters. It went into more detail, but basically said I'm out.
Oh hey look a block button.
Cut off, and I realized just how much toxicity they brought into my house. No regrets. I’ve heard from others that without other people to blame their problems on they eventually turned on each other and are divorcing. The family is now safe from them.
Don't argue with them. Don't give them facts or anything else.
Ask them questions, Let them explain themselves, they'll see it as trying to convert you or explain MAGA to you.
In the process of that, by asking the right question at the right time, they will slowly over the course of multiple years change their mind.
Eventually they'll ask you about your viewpoint and you'll know youve made it the half way point
This is probably the best answer based on the stuff that I've heard.
During the first term, a local talk radio show had a woman on who grew up in a cult. She was born into it. She described her own story about how she learned what was happening and eventually got out. IIRC, her parents cut all ties with her, as that was the way of the cult. Anyhow, she described the process of "deprogramming" someone and it is basically along the same lines of what you describe.
Sadly, it's easy to "mass convert" people to cults, but deprogramming is a one on one conversation over a long period of time.
Good luck. Logic didn't get them where they are, probably won't get them out.
I cut all magas out of my life and tell them why.
This actually seams like a really good stratergy, I might try that.
My mom is liberal enough, but my brother fell down the pipeline. He recently tried to convince my mom i was brainwashed to be a LGBTQ Muslim extremist by my wife (note, I am a man, and my wife is an ex-muslim whose sect is persecuted by Muslim extremists) and he made 51st state memes on canada day. I don't really know what to do, I just try not to be alone with him.
Wow, that's pretty next-level.
My grandfather and his family supported Hitler and were Nazi sympathisers. He admitted to admiring Hitler on his literal death bed. My mom never denounced or condemned him for his beliefs. She is currently ignoring the fact that my grandfather was Jewish and most of his family died in concentration camps. I brought up how Nazis were upset at the game Wolfenstein. She tried to defend the literal Nazis upset at a game famouse for it's Nazi killings.
I provided climate change proof from NASA data and she claimed it wasn't credible because the data came from NASA. SHE PAINTED A PICTURE OF TRUMP HUGGING JESUS. In her infamous extremely bad painting style. Off topic but my son had a portrait from her. He asked us to throw it away because his portrait was giving him nightmares. Made contact with an estranged aunt and found out that literally everyone in my family hates her art because it really is just that bad. Art is subjective, but in this case please make an exception.
Turns out my mother was always a Nazi, I just didn't notice the signs until I cut her out of my life.
Dang....now I kinda' wanna' see that art.
Fuck... You just provided me a glimpse into my future and I do not like it.
I broke up with my parents about 9 months ago.
I need to mourn the good, morally centered parents, who taught me all of the principles that are now being sacrificed by my parents, or by the creatures they have turned into. The parents that raised me are essentially gone.
Haven’t had any contact with them since. Makes it a bit awkward with my siblings, since they generally feel the same but haven’t taken as drastic a step yet.
Similar vibe here. I mourned the loss of the dad I thought I had. Not going to maintain a relationship with the person he is now.
Man, I feel this.
How am I dealing with it? Not well. I don't feel like I can talk to my parents anymore. They're completely disengaged from politics 100% of the time until it comes time to blindly vote Republican. They don't care that the world is dying because they'll be dead before it would impact them. Even though they have children and grandchildren. It sickens me and I have no idea how to grapple with that
This is a painful topic for me. I empathize with you all.
I'm lucky. My parents flipped in 2016. My dad became a Democrat at 60 years old and hasn't looked back.
I was talking to him the other day and said, "Sometimes I wish you were still Republican, so I'd have someone to yell at." Like it's frustrating in a way, because I want to shake these people, like, how can you be this shitty? My dad laughed and said: "Sorry, it turns out I have morals."
Meanwhile my mother-in-law is still a conservative but refuses to talk about it, and it's not my place to push too hard. She'll be cut off eventually, when we have to flee the regime, but for now I point out the insane shit that's going on and she just giggles nervously, because she's incapable of confrontation. If she were my mother she'd have been cut off by now.
It's a shame, because in every other respect she's a wonderful lady. She always welcomed me into her family, and she's such an active, loving grandmother. Except for the part where she sold out her grandchildren's future because minorities make her nervous, of course.
I'm happy for you and your dad but you say
as if there weren't still plenty of very good reasons to yell at Democrats...
It's 2025. The US government is under the complete control of a fascist regime.
Yelling at Democrats would be a silly thing to do.
Well Democrats aren't fully committed to fighting a fascist regime so not yelling at Democrats would be a silly thing to do
My parents are not MAGA (They are more "centre-left"), but I do feel very sorry for anyone who has to deal with parents like that. I have other family members who support MAGA, and I simply don't talk to them, because I cannot look them in their eyes, knowing that they support pure evil. Their Facebook profiles make my blood boil, but I try my best just to watch the meme my father sent me, so I can carry on with my day, without it being ruined by my Neo-Nazi fascist family members. We aren't even American, but you know the saying by now - "When America sneezes, the whole world catches a cold".
the world is learning how important a healthy independent media cycle is, right now as it is going extinct with no sign of returning. it's the thing that defines all of the average person's opinions and values.
Rely depressing how so many people just....don't think
I can't tell you how many times I was ignorant of a topic and spent 10-15 minutes learning about it then see hordes of people on reddit or facebook asking other people about it or spreading misinformation about the most basic things cause they're incapable or unwilling to spend 10-15 minutes learning about it.
there's plenty of studies which point to the fact that exposure to media is indeed irrelevant to determine political opinions.
Is that the one that tried to get democrats to support the gaza genocide? Or did you have a better one in mind?
why would you think this
No, that's not at all what they stated, or even implied, from my perception.
At this point, for example, a healthy media would be calling Israel's actions what they have been determined to be, by experts in the field: A right wing state engaged in a genocide. Several parts of the UN have determined it, as well as a number of independent human rights organizations.
Additionally, the same would apply to all countries, just in case someone is thinking I'm just anti-Israel, or anti-US... China should be called out by all news outlets for their human rights abuses. Britain should be called out for their trampling of human rights too. Same goes for India, Canada, Australia, Germany, Austria, France, etc.
I endlessly have to correct people, both the ignorant and the malicious. I'm not pro-hamas or anti-israel, I'm anti-genocide regardless of who the victim is and regardless of who the perpetrator is.
I used to have political arguments with my dad all the time, but like in a fun debate team way. It really was a fun part of our relationship until 2020... and then shit got real when I moved to a big city and the fun was gone.
When I moved home for a year, the first few months were rough. Lots of anger, lots of pain, but eventually I came to realize nothing I could say would do anything- to my family I was just woke end of story. So I stopped talking politics at all with them, and started talking about music, or yard work, or how we like our coffee. Honestly that opened things up later on to have more honest conversations that were more level headed. Frankly I got him to agree with DEI as a concept so long as I avoided buzzwords or call it DEI by name.
My dad is still the same guy- still funny, he's still bright, he's still kind and would absolutely help a child on the side of the road, he just listened to too much patriot radio. I still call him, but we had to realize our relationship and who we are to each other comes first. Politics might change but he's always my dad and I'm always his son. Besides, when I came out as bi at 16 he was the only one who told me he loved me so that's gotta mean something. He's still in there.
goddamn this murdoch rot has gotten deep...how the fuck do you even begin to deprogram half (1/3rd, atleast) of an entire country?
It weighs heavily on me, to say the least. It's nearly impossible to have an even slightly tangentially political conversation with them that doesn't leave me deeply disturbed and/or infuriated, so I pretty much avoid it altogether. Now the deepest conversation I allow is "how's the weather" and "what are you having for dinner tonight?", and that's sad.
But it's absolutely the case that engaging with them on political stuff is destructive to my psyche. And even worse, they have a way of turning otherwise entirely non-political topics into something political. These are not the people who raised me or the values they raised me with. And there's no real logical consistency to any of it other than it's definitely going to be in agreement with whatever the latest opinions are on Fox News and Facebook.
As a kid, the only particularly "conservative" view point they shared was on immigration. They absolutely believed the whole "Mexicans are taking our jobs" bullshit. I remember even asking them why they aren't mad at their bosses for giving their jobs to the "Mexicans" and never getting a satisfactory answer for why that was given a pass.
And then from that one little common thread, the rest of the conservative/Republican agenda has wormed its way in. So, naturally as the conservative agenda morphed into a more fascist agenda, so have my parents' beliefs. With age and health related mental declines, these ideals have become more cemented. These are people who will never forget or forgive Democrats for NAFTA, but also believe that Republicans wanted universal healthcare for all yet Democrats gave us Obamacare instead. They grew up growing and selling weed to make ends meet, and yet still believe it should be illegal and people deserve to be in jail for it. They have a gay kid but believe gay marriage is wrong, because the Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman, and the government shouldn't be involved at all.
They honestly buy into the idea that police officers and pastors are infallible. If someone is arrested, it's because they are guilty of something. No pastor would ever sexually abuse a child, they are a pastor after all. If the president says something is true, it must be true. And again, none of this is how they raised me or the ideals they expressed when I was growing up, so it's definitely like living in some kind of bizarre reality that's tough to come to terms with.
Agreed. The version of my parents that I loved is already dead and gone.
And Fox News killed them.
They believe they are part of the 'in-group' rather than the out-group, which they actually are. It's the tragedy of the commoners.
Did you come up with that play on words? Because it is absolutely brilliant!
i only have my father left, but both my parents were always latin-american leftists and so were most of my siblings.
most of my siblings married maga-white people and their children (as well as their children) are maga and my father and siblings have become maga-sympathetic as a result.
only my sister and i remain leftists and i'm convinced it was entirely because we were the only ones to marry other latinos. we both keep our distance for the rest of our family. it's been 10 years since she's seen the rest of the family and i decided to do the same thing last xmas. we only visit cousins/aunts/uncles that have maintained ties with our latin-american origins and that luckily happens to coincide with our politics.
my father still tries to maintain our relationship; but i suspect that it has more to do w my aunts/uncles prodding him to do so and it didn't start happening until i told them about my decision last xmas.
Fuck man, that sucks. Hang in there.
i appreciate the well wishing, but i don't need it. my closeted grand nephew (assuming that my gaydar is right) and my grand nieces need it.
their parents are several fold more homophobic & sexist than my parents ever were, so i feel sorry for whatever maga/christo-fascist torture that my nephews/nieces will inflict upon them and this is coming from someone who was disowned and dis-invited from the family for years when i came out of the closet.
i was lucky in that i was an adult when it happened and also lucky that i remained employed the last time the economy when to shit like this in 2009, so it forced them to come grovel to me for financial assistance under threat of losing their homes from prolonged unemployment and that forced the lines of communication to open back up again.
i fear that my grand nephew and nieces will not be so lucky.
it's also a bizarre to recognize that the younger generations are so much more conservative than the older generations; the maga influence has infested white american culture like a sickness and it's growing since americans are too indoctrinated in american capitalism and ethos to fight it.
The media are deeply insidious and dangerous. What needs to be done, is cutting off access to Twitter, to Facebook, to any of those media that sow hatred.
those are just tips of the iceberg; american indoctrination has a bigger impact.
I had a funeral for the one that went MAGA in my mind. I gave a great eulogy. All my favorite food was served at the meal following the wake. Easily in my top 10 funerals.
I kind of want to do this for my mom...it would be weird though when she called me about Thanksgiving after 🤷♂️
I didn't realize it until after she died, but I mourned my relationship with my mom for years before she actually kicked the bucket. I had long since accepted that she didn't want to have any kind of relationship with me and that I would almost certainly never have any meaningful relationship with her, unless she had a serious change of heart. So I just assumed that I would never speak to her again. Then when she actually died, it just kinda... ticked from 0.1% chance to 0.0% chance. Still felt shitty to have it finally close on that note, but I hadn't really expected anything different. I still sometimes wonder if I could have had some kind of breakthrough conversation with her but the reality is that she made her choices and there was nothing I could do to change her mind.
But seriously Dad stopped talking to me and I followed suit. That was about 2 years ago. I missed him at first and worried about missing out on what little time he had left.
I eventually realized that I was missing something that no longer existed. My Dad either never was what I thought or became something I didn’t want in my life.
So I buried him. This way I can preserve what good memories I had and learn to live life without that relationship.
Make Thanksgiving seance themed!
looooool ☠️ done.
We only see each other two or three times a year and have mutually agreed not to discuss politics since the unfortunate Christmas dinner of 2016, just after the brexit referendum, when I'd had a few drinks and rose to the bait. And they always liked to bait me, knowing I was involved with direct action and am pretty hard left. They got more blowback than they anticipated. I love them, I can even understand their positions, but they're not going to change and neither am I, so we just don't discuss it anymore.
Username checks out.
How old are your parents? If they are retired, that might explain a lot. People say you become broad minded, wise and knowledgeable if you have ample time to read and educate yourself, instead of working more (that's why many people say society's obsession with work is a distraction tool to prevent people thinking that the system is rigged). However, it also goes the inverse towards extreme radicalisation.
I don't have a practical advise to give to de-redicalise your parents, but typically radicalisation is not just you have too much time to consume so many contents, but also loneliness is a factor which most people overlook. Hannah Arendt made a conclusion in her book, Origins of Totalitarianism, that loneliness is a precursor to totalitarianism. The far right (and far left as well) sell the snake oil that only they can bring people together again.
A lot of old people who are lonely are vulnerable to extremist propaganda because their minds are not in the right place. This is something to consider imo when you have to interact with your parents. Genuine human connection is the missing ingredient. A friend of mine has also become far right. He moved to London many years ago, and my guess is that because big cities tend to be individualistic, this made him lonely. The far right rabbithole created a sense of togetherness and purpose for listless individuals.
Edit: wording
Interesting food for thought. Feels like a catch 22 that they need more human interaction to help with their ideologies, but their ideologies make people not want to be around them (except for other people in the cult). It's also vexing that they can know a Muslim or an undocumented immigrant, and have that "oh no, they're one of the good ones" logic and still demonize the rest of the people from those groups. I wonder how many people they need to know from an out-group before they stop demonizing the whole group.
That book sounds interesting, I'm adding it to my list at the library. Thanks for the recommendation and also all the thoughtful advice!
Bedrock based
I mean lots of old people go quietly insane… the world moves on and doesn’t want their “wisdom.” MAGA feels like a club or a religion, it’s accepting as long as you want to own the libs or whatever.
It’s a simple version of America that feels like the good old 50/60’s… family values, beating the communists.
To answer your question, I tell myself they will be dead soon. We need to focus on saving the country, not our folks. Let them go.
I had a friend who said there's good in the natural order of people getting old and dying so that their bad ideologies can die with them. I've always appreciated that viewpoint. Unfortunately, I have a brother who still lives at home...and he gets that shit ideology from our parents and shit ideology from Stephen Crowder (and even Alex Jones!) and the like online.
And now, he just models my parents where, even when I try to approach him with understanding and empathy, he refuses to even discuss why we should give a shit about immigrants or anyone else. To mash together two of your points, it's like religion in the 50s...there's entire swaths of the US where it can be dangerous to even believe otherwise because everyone around you has their beliefs so intertwined with beating their enemy (communists/the left/atheism, etc.) that at best, you will lose your family, your friends, all your support networks, and at worst, you'll have the devil beaten out of you if you even entertain leaving.
If there's something that religion has refined more than anything else, it's giving people a 'group' to belong to that very easily erects a wall against anyone who isn't in the belief system. The mormons weaponize it, jehovah's witnesses use it as a ball-and-chain, the muslims use weapons (and honor killings) to enforce it, christians (in america) have the social groups that are only loosely tied to the church and should be completely independent wrapped in the silk of a few powerful members of both and use the soft power of withholding charity to keep people in, (zionist) jews have israel... it's all sickening.
Yeah, can’t say I’ve ever seen the sense in it.
That sucks… but you hit the nail on the head at the end. He doesn’t have much choice, he’s surrounded by it, marinated in it… it will always be easier to choose hate and ignorance. Understanding and compromising take work, MAGA lets you hate almost anything and still be welcomed.
Bingo, fascism is a very easy comfortable place for their old brains to rest. It takes zero thought or effort, just do what you are told and regurgitate a few simple catch phrases.
Right, until suddenly their Medicare is gone.
I mean… neurodegenerative diseases suck. To be fair 60ish percent of them were always going to end up yelling at children to get off their lawns.
Exactly, the vast majority of them are in piss-poor health anyways.
After eating dinner I’m not feeling great about my comment… but yeah, waiting for them to die and trying to fix the damage is basically my plan.
My dad was in the military, but I never heard the sorts of things from him that I do now. He has started saying the N word to try to get a rise out of me, thinks Trump is going to “fix” everything, and every time I talk to him on the phone, I can hear fascist talk radio in the background.
We have learned not to bring up politics with each other. The last time I challenged him on it, he said I was being disrespectful, but I don’t accept that. He just thought I was supposed to sit quietly and listen to crazy ranting.
I have learned that in general it’s best to change the subject if someone wants to talk politics who I know I don’t agree with. Most people have gotten the point. We still get along great! We just have polar opposite politics.
Now I know that some people would question why I remain friendly with those people. The answer is that we have more in common than not. Someday, when everyone finally comes to the conclusion that the powerful and foreign are manipulating our political discourse to sow discord, we will finally be at peace again.
omg, I caught my mom telling a joke with the n-word to my brother, then when I got mad and told them how unacceptable that was, my dad tried to gaslight me by telling me I shouldn't overreact and get upset at jokes.
I don't see that day ever coming for my parents, and I struggle to think many of the tens of millions of people who have accepted literal Nazi ideology (eugenics, great replacement, etc.) will ever be able to admit that to themselves. I hope you're right though.
My dad has always been. I went no contact for a few years during the first few months of covid. Since then we occasionally chat over signal but it's surface level shit and I don't really feel like trying anymore.
This is fair.
It's exhausting to try to have a conversation with someone who isn't engaging in good faith.
It's perfectly understandable if you don't want to spend your time and energy in that way. And (as I argued at length here) it isn't your responsibility.
Talk to them. Education goes both ways: they educated you when you where an enfant, now's your turn.
ha ha ha cute
Dude I wish it were this easy but how you just explained they educated us as an infant, they still see me as an infant. There isn't a thing I can say to make them question their billions of dollars of propaganda because I am simply younger.
Much easier said than done. Some people have a difficult time accepting that their children are adults with different opinions. My Dad still sees me as the little boy he raised, sometimes that's nice and I treasure it. Sometimes it's still the most frustrating thing in the world. I'm fortunate that my parents haven't fallen down the MAGA pipeline but they're definitely more conservative than they were 5 years ago. I couldn't educate my Dad on anything, he just doesn't see me that way. Mind you I don't have to, I'm fortunate.
My point being, for some people their relationship with their parents will never go both ways but that's okay. They're your parents and it's one of the relationships that rarely is symmetrical. My Dad is my father, I'm his son, and I've learned to accept the relationship we have (which is pretty good) rather than get upset about the few problematic beliefs he holds. For people who are not as fortunate as me, zero contact might be the answer. Sometimes it's okay to accept things that aren't perfect.
I call bullshit on this. Education does not, in fact, "go both ways."
Generally, in western society, we accept the idea that adults should be responsible for themselves, with exceptions for those who are physically or mentally unable to do so. We value principles of autonomy and personal responsibility, so we're generally expected to do the work of educating ourselves (or paying someone for their help) in adulthood.
When a person has a child, they make a choice to be a parent and to take on the responsibility to raise that child. Of course, we know that not everyone follows through on that responsibility.
That person's child has not been given any choice. They should not be required to take responsibility for their parent(s) just because of the accident of their birth. Many children choose to care for their parents in their old age for various reasons, usually for love or money.
As a society, we agree that we owe protection, education, and the fulfillment of needs to our children ... because we choose to bring those children into the world and because we need them to perpetuate the social order we rely on.
Those children do not, when they become adults, automatically owe the same things back to the full-grown adults who raised them. Generally, we expect them to provide stability for their elders by contributing to the social and economic order, mostly by paying taxes and keeping infrastructure functional.
Parents are able to control aspects of their children's lives in order to raise them in what they deem to be appropriate ways. Children don't get "a turn" to control all of the same aspects of their parents' lives. My mother kept me from playing video games and watching MTV as a teen because she thought it would "rot your brain." But as much as I'd love to, I can't keep her from watching Fox (or NewsMax, or OAN, or TBN, or whatever she's on this week).
Some people might choose to try to reverse the effects of 20+ years of a 24-hour propaganda machine brainwashing their parents out of love or a sense of familial duty, or whatever. And that's admirable.
But I absolutely reject the idea that it's somehow "my turn" to "educate" 20+ years of Fox News programming out of my aging conservative parents.
UUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH
i deal with it by just trying my goddamned hardest never to have to see them.
bury myself in setting up self hosted shit so maybe i barter a season of bobs burgers for an ounce of pepper once all the shareholders have extracted all value and moved on to the next planet.
i absolutely can't stand it.
deal with them because i want to use the pontoon boat? its just not worth it anymore
edit. did not realize it would format like that
For me, what has sort of worked it pointing out that both sides of the news are getting basic facts wrong - things where there shouldn't even be a debate. If the news was true, you could watch any channel - it would all be the same. Instead, we get things like one side claiming murders are up and the other claiming murders are down. Our current journalism is a failure of a system designed to drive engagement/viewership/clicks rather than convey knowledge.
I also find it helps to remind them that we're Americans first, party second. The other side isn't stupid, they're just getting a completely different set of 'news'.
I use these too. The "team sports" nature of it all is really deeply engrained, like a "water is invisible to a fish" kind of way. You can use that to surprise them and build some genuine curiosity sometimes.
It's really disarming and opens up convo when I seem to disagree with them on everything... but then just agree and help them attack whichever hideous Democrat they go after during a given conversation. Same for news, the conversation shifts in useful ways when they learn I dislike "their" (Fox and worse) news, as well as what they think of as "mine".
It's not enough to magically deprogram anyone, but it can start the gears turning. In my experience it usually takes the situation from two people standing across from each other fussing at one another, to two people standing together fussing at everything else. It's a start.
My dad has always been on the right and he’s a Trump voter, but he’s mostly avoided going full MAGA-proud. We have always had a tense relationship when it comes to politics and at times had very little personal relationship. Now we just avoid political discussions or keep them very high level, and it’s manageable. I talk to him a lot less than I would if he didn’t have those views. His health is declining significantly at this point so I have decided it’s not worth trying to change his mind.
My mom is still with him and she’s leftist and we talk all the time.
My dad’s two sisters are deep into MAGA (they were proud attendees of Trump’s first inauguration). They’ve been far-right fundamentalist Christians most, if not all, of my life, so I already had a strained relationship with them before 2016. I haven’t even tried in over a decade now. I was recently diagnosed with a chronic disease that one of them also has and I kept thinking about reaching out but ultimately decided I don’t even want her in my life for that so I haven’t bothered.
I try to take a page out of the playbook of a cult deprogrammer or a Darrel Davis type personality. My trips home are short (no more than a week) and I try to deescalate any hotbutton conversations. People do change, but unfortunately some people harden and shut off to new ideas as well. Hearing a different personality speak often helps open people up to hearing new ideas; a lot of the fascist ideology is born out of fear, miseducation, and selfishness.
A week?! I limit mine to half a day.
I feel for you. My parents also drank the Koolaid, but my mother is dead now, and my father has slipped even further down the rabbit hole. He's also a horrible person in general, and while I used to engage with him if he were behaving himself, I've effectively gone no contact now. I've only spoke with him once in the last few years, and when he launched into a racist anti-immigrant tirade I told him not to be a coward his entire life and hung up on him. It was on my birthday.
This is essentially the same story with my in laws. MIL is gone. FIL is getting angrier day by day without her to be his bullshit caller. He won't behave himself when he's 1 on 1 with my husband. It's tearing my husband to pieces.
And he's barely still able to live on his own. He's been hospitalized 3 times in the 10 months since MIL passed. I noticed that if we have more contact with him, he does better, we catch things and can intervene. But if we go low contact because of hateful behavior then we get blindsided by a hospital trip where we drop everything and screw our schedules all up to deal with his illness & recovery.
It fucking sucks. I think I've started treating him as I would a dementia patient just to be able to be around him. I like another poster's tactic of declaring something batshit "seems meanspirited". Maybe it will curb the worst of it. Who knows.
I'm sorry for you, me, anyone who struggles with whether to sever contact with a (formerly or currently) loved one.
There is no good answer, and you have to find what is right for you. I've been around too many toxic people for too long, and at this point I feel like I don't owe anyone my time or attention, family or not. Setting solid boundaries has worked wonders for my mental health. While I would love to have a good, healthy relationship with my family, I cannot make that happen by myself. They have to meet me halfway, and when they engage in behaviors that I wouldn't tolerate from anyone else, it reminds me that I shouldn't tolerate it from them either. People get so hung up on "but he's your father" or "it's your family," but the people that say that have no idea what I've been through and no frame of reference. It is absolutely 100% the right thing to minimize or eliminate contact with abusive people, even if they are your family.
I think that's a valid option for you, and may not be for others. But there can be other reasons besides "but they're family."
Went no contact in 2016. Was the right choice, my life blossomed without them. One of the last things my dad said to me was " guess I'm a fascist then" Still miss em tho, still not worth it to reach out. My aunt tells me however he turned on trump when his j6 crowd was yelling to hang mike pence. He would have always preferred a theocracy to a full blown white nationalist state tho.
We don't talk about politics or religion or health.
My parents have never been very well reasoned.
However, I've found that the best way to challenge people's beliefs is to just ask what it would take to change their mind.
You're still not going to win, but their answer will force you to acknowledge that they're nuts and can't be reasoned with.
My mother is a hard R republican and a self proclaimed Christian Nationalist and has been making excuses for the GOP since at least Nixon.
I spent about 20 some years of my life being subjected to Fox News, Limbaugh, Mike Savage, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity every single day. It was exhausting listening to all of the unhinged screaming. While I lived with her I did not seek to find who was telling the truth because I didn't want to know how bad it really was, and I had a pretty good idea of what she would do to me if she found out I was so much as questioning the Republican ethos. So I kept my head down and my "official" stance then was that I wasn't into politics.
I went no contact with her because she became physically abusive 16 years post-TBI. I have not spoken to her in 7 years. From what I gather from her Facebook posts, she's still an awful person who is also falling for all AI pictures, videos and scams that support her narrative.
I have no interest in speaking to her ever again.
who had the brain injury
Ope sorry if I wasn't clear; it was my mom that sustained a TBI and refused to get treatment or therapy. Always insisted everyone else had issues.
I think it was his mom. TBIs tend to change personalities if they’re bad enough.
Complete cut off.
Yep. Haven't talked to my dad since January.
Same with my grandmother, I'm distancing from my stepmom too as much as I can without saying anything and starting a fight
Anytime they bring up politics, I just tell them we can't discuss it.
If they press the matter, I say the same thing, except the second time I add: "...because it's going to make me hate you."
They've been borrowing my car to drive for DoorDash since April 2024 and still haven't figured out that this government they voted for is really fucking shitty.
They think I hate them but I promise you it's shame. If we do talk, it's Dishonest Harmony.
"Dishonest Harmony" is a term I've never heard but wow it is perfect.
Yeah, this is mostly where I am. Like you say, it's a shame.
I live in a place that could pass for MAGA Mecca and am literally surrounded on all fronts pretty much anywhere I go. It is extremely isolating. Thankfully my parents are sane; still Christian, but at least they look on with a similar confused horror - though they still "like a lot of what he's doing, just not how he's doing it."
What are your thoughts on moving out of MAGA Mecca, vs trying to survive surrounded by cultists?
Circumstances make the idea of moving feel a bit foolish, but things are quickly getting to the point where it doesn't matter; mental health should have no price tag.
The other factor is my general contrarian nature; why should I leave? I'm not the one that sucks. AKA, I'm a stubborn ass.
Yeah Michael Bolton, you tell 'em!
I was in your position not all that long ago. I became such a better person by simply moving. If you can, I would encourage you to do so. Being around people who are uplifting will take burdens off of your mind that you never realize are making you miserable.
They will pretend to have "discussions" with you, but in the end they will always vote R.
If my father can bring himself to not vote R, anyone can. All it takes is a willingness and ability to look at nuanced issues objectively. You know, the most rare thing on the planet!
How were you able to do it? The closest I think I've gotten was reminding them they they don't have to vote at all. Like I'm not trying to convince them to vote D, just to reconsider their support of a literal fascist.
well it sucks. It looks like he's going to die a Nazi. What the fuck dad?
My dad is awesome but my mom is scum. I told her to fuck off and stop talking to me but it wasn’t that hard cos she used to abuse me and didn’t raise me
I'm... lucky?... that my dad was a shitbag for other reasons. He was already on thin ice prior to 2016. My mom "isn't interested in politics" but even that's feeling unforgivable for me nowadays.
My parents have gone from seeing their 2 grandchildren biweekly, to me limiting visits with their 3 grandchildren to 3-4 times a year. Even those times are intentionally with my dad absent, and are only at extended family gatherings.
Fuck. Them. Both.
Yeah, definitely what they call a "mixed blessing" I have a buddy who decided he didn't need mountains of shit from his dad, and blocked him...and he's better for it. But it was easier because his dad is the world champion shit flinger...I have the mixed blessing that my dad cares about me and I care about him...but damn near everything else about his personality really hurts. You've got my empathy, and I'm proud of you for looking out for your kids and limiting their exposure to that poison.
My dad always leaned center-left, and he's only gotten slightly lefter as I reach middle age and get very left. I'm very fortunate. My mom is long dead but I would like to think she would be on board too.
The real bugbear is my extended family, typified by dad's sister and her family. Always leaned into the Rush Limbaugh right, but really she isn't so much visibly MAGA as she is aggressively Zionist. It happens with a lot of Jewish boomers; Does 'Never again' mean for everyone, or just for the Jews?
Anyways, I was a protest at our local holocaust center in 2018, protesting the detention camps on the border. The proudboys and others were counter protesting. I told her about it, and she just said,
"They cant use that word, thats our word!" "You know who would agree with you? The nazis?" "What do you mean?" "They were there! I have pictures!"
Anyways, shes been surface level cordial ever since.
The takeaway that alot of people had from the holocaust was "genocide is bad". The takeaway that most Israelis and alot of other Jews had was "Genocide against God's chosen people is bad".
ITT: Really depressing stories of society's decline into ChristoFascist mania and delusion.
What's the cause for it? Media manipulation can't be the only one.
End stage capitalism.
Don't think it will happen to your country? Neither did most of the people in the USA.
Yup. 72 percent of the world's population now live under authoritarian rule -- the last time it was that bad was 1986. And the scary thing is that for the most part, people are voting away their rights, rather than the authoritarians rising to power through invasions and tanks.
Most people in US probably didn't think at all.
That is not true, I had a thought last week
Extreme inequality, easy scapegoat, control of virtually most large media by a few oligarchs, algorithms, lack of education on recognising desinformation... they also think they're part of the in-group rather than realising they will never be considered 'one of them' by the oligarchs.
The one answer is to cut off all hateful news from them, by any means possible.
Changing people's mind is like quitting smoking. Very difficult.
The ultimate cause is an economic system which is failing to meet the needs of the majority (combined with media run by, and for the minority who the economic system does serve.)
The media's real purpose at this point is to distract the majority from the real issues, and deflect any movement towards a real solution.
My parents are normal but I don't speak to any other relatives anymore.
Yeah, my parents are still basically the same liberal Democrats they were when I was a kid. Meanwhile I've gone farther left and the rest of the family mutated into a virulent strain of fascist.
I'm from rural alberta and a lot of my family have embraced the separatist rhetoric. I can't speak to people that I'll be at war against if this actually comes to fruition
Parent #1 is christian, and has all the mental faculties that come with that. #1 gets dragged into the current republican bullshit by proximity to the fusion of christofascism. I can still talk to that one about most things, as long as neither of us brings up anything about current government. Seeing as I live with #1 to make sure medicine is taken and quality of life doesn't deteriorate, the days are... strained at best. We talk for a moment, I check up on the health, and then it's either off to work and back to my portion of the house, or I avoid the other portion of the house and try to carry on my hobbies.
Parent #2 was once, so I thought, the logical, reserved one who didn't care for politics. Then it turned out #2 just thought because #2 worked for the government, it was best to never really hold beliefs. As soon as #2 retired, fox news was turned on 24/7, and suddenly the mild distaste for people 'not like me' turned into full fledged rants. I try to keep all contact to a minimum, because I still love my parent and I'm sure #2 loves me, but I think that's just deep roots from childhood. All of the good characteristics are still there, just buried beneath that vile layer of filth that manifests as hate. Every now and then you see the good qualities shine through, and it kills me knowing they're likely going to never be the main character traits again. I can't break contact because there's a part of me that just can't give up hope, but it hurts that I can't come and actually talk through the much deeper thoughts on the world I have now like we did when I was still considering what musical tastes I had.
Same, and I fucking hate it
got their numbers blocked and stopped checking FB because they are there. they kept trying to make me maga-like, i avoided saying anything mean, i have come to terms with just cocooning, just want to be left alone
No contact. I tried. I tried so hard to point out the wrongs committed by the regime that I thought that they would disagree with, but MAGAs just bend reality around it all.
It's painful, given that most of us don't do this out of a sense of right or wrong, but because we care. You get used to it eventually though.
My parents are consuming more red media. This seems to happen in immigrant non-english circles.
Fascist Propaganda plays super hard on the fears and nagging doubts that come with being an immigrant. The fears of deportation, imprisonment, or worse, not fitting in. The fear that everything is for nothing because someone is always poised to steal it out from under you. The fear that you are simply too weak to make it in the world, that there are things you don't understand and never will.
It's truly insidious.
Not great.
You can love someone and things dont work out. Family or otherwise.
I cut my Mom off. Dad was pretty deep in it too, he'd voted for Regan and Nixon, but he died before I couldn't take it anymore.
You're better off asking them questions. "what makes a person eat someone else's pet?" or do simple definitions of what they say, as if you're trying to understand. "so white people deserve to travel and others don't?" (that's a stupid example, but all of the talking points boil down to these types of statements). Apparently getting them to debate facts doesn't work, getting them to question what they're blindly believing, does, but I haven't put it to practice. I want to go and get a refresher on critical thinking, so I can more easily break down, the way to properly ascertain if, what is being sold to you is truth or propaganda, and then make it into a question / statement and rather than addressing any topic, add a where did that come from, who sold you that, who profits from that, kinda thing, but I want a better statement / question than that. My parents are really similar, I have to avoid a lot of topics, I'm the black sheep of the family, I've always been much more earth conscious than them, it's gotten so much worse lately. It's the news they're being fed. They believe it, wholeheartedly. It's how they've always known what's happening. And it's why they're panic buying out tiktok, currently, they (those creating the propaganda and distributing it) can't have a narrative out there that doesn't align with their agenda.
This sounds very familiar. I don't often try to talk politics around my family anymore, but they still feel free to regurgitate whatever nonsense conservative news has riled them up about around me. Its way to annoying to ignore, so I try to set the record straight when they do that. It doesnt matter though. I've completely laid out all the details on a topic, and they just stare at me. When I try to get a response its usually along the lines of "I don't know about all that, but I'm not going to acknowledge that anything you said was right". Its like they have to go check fox news before they know how to respond. They just assume I'm wrong about everything before I even start talking. Its rich coming from people who are constantly misinformed, and by their own admission don't know much about any topic I've tried discussing. I'm on the verge of telling my dad "I want to think of you as a good person, but I'm running out of excuses for you".
I guess at the root of this, I realize my parents are deeply selfish people. My dad, at least, includes his children in the things he's selfish for...that is to say he cares about his kids, and extends the "in-group" to us (but then fuck everyone who ain't us). My mom doesn't even go that far. She pretty much only cares about herself. She never hit us, she doesn't root for the Empire in Star Wars...part of me tries not to judge her too harshly for her behavior. She grew up in a time where women weren't expected to do much, think much, say much...just be moms...and so even though she's kind of a shitty mom, she never really wanted more than that, and I think it impacted how much she read or thought about things.
So while I tend to think of that kind of selfishness as a type of evil, she lacks the critical thinking skills to see outside of herself, and at her age, it's too late to assume she can. I don't know, I have this mixture of anger and pity, anger that she's not a good person, and pity because I don't think she's able to learn how to become one.
I have thought about this very topic quite a bit over the years. Maybe I'm more judgemental than you but I don't think anyone who doesn't have a few specific handicaps is incapable of developing critical thinking skills. The people who don't develop them simply don't want to and that's something I feel more than justified in blaming them for. That may not be accurate in reality but I don't know how you could prove which one of our views is more correct.
Ignore them and tell them trump is an idiot if you do talk to them and they bring it up. Watch them freak out.
Sorry, the brainwashing was too successful. You wont save them. They domt care that he raped children. They wont change their minds.
Before Trump, we’re get republican still? My parents were always super republican, but won’t vote for Trump. Also won’t vote for a democrat….
I don't keep in contact with my family, but I'd have no problem telling trump supporters that they're dumbasses straight to their faces.
Probably cooler than you, yeah.
Not quite fascist but voting for the most right party there is.
Luckily I don't live there so I don't have to deal with it.
Sorry for your loss
Are they twits? A twit is someone who cant process more than 512 characters at once.
We don’t talk about partisan infected topics
I deal with it pretty easily, I don’t have contact with them lol.
Great quote, do you know what she wrote that in?
No, I got it from someone quoting it on some talk or podcast. Tried to low-effort-verify it but couldn't. So I just rolled with it. :)
I try to ignore them. Live my own life
I try my best not to talk with them. End up talking with them more than I'd like.
five years ago i cut those fuckers outta my life entirely and never looked back (despite their repeated attempts to stalk me after that)
I do have friends that I certainly wouldn't call fascists but definetly follow the narrative of communism is when big govenment and no toothbrushes and Donald trump is like a communist dictator.
....
This and not this at the same time.
Definitely don't go so far that you only use drugs and alcohol to cope. Speaking from experience the pain and anxiety just grows and festers unfortunately. I took up weed as a vice to keep these exact thoughts from plaguing my existence: "How could the people who taught me empathy and love believe that CEOs are the minority; and victims of the greedy poor while they're sitting on stacks of money."
It doesn't make sense how their logic got so twisted... but then it does.
Like my parents would confiscate my phone and my laptop and comb through my texts and search history to dig for proof I was sinning behind their backs (Key logger gang wya?) ≈ Similarly, the Patriot Act passed 2 years after I was born it robbed individuals of their freedom to online privacy.
Seems like my parents were actually the deep state all along (and my dependence on weed is justified imo)
My parents are happy I got a divorce from my husband because we are two men and their bible says thats a sin (we had other problems like he cheated on me)
I wonder if maga people are having the exact same, conversation about there parents becoming leftists.
You will never be able to change your parents. You are just a kid to them, and they wont take advice from you how to live their life, just like you wouldnt change your own opinions if your kid tells you to do something you dont want.
The wise thing to do is to peacefully coexist and not fall into the trap thinking your parents are your enemy. They are not fascists because they dont like immigrants for gods sake.
Humans gather together with people who are similar to them. All animals also do this. Its difficult to see immigrants coming into your country when you have grown up without any immigrants. This is completely natural and happens in every single country.
With time, new generations like yourself grow up with immigrants around you, and it becomes natural and becomes what you are used to.
Strongly disagree here. It might not be possible to change them, but that's never for sure. OP should not let them say hateful shit just to keep the peace, and should instead keep countering it with facts even if it doesn't help. Don't make them feel like hatred should just be accepted. If they stop, maybe stop bringing it up as well.
I'm not from the US, and I've had to counter the dumb Facebook brainrot that got to my parents quite a few times. It's insane to see how gullible they've become, so it is important to keep challenging them. Recently I was hit with some nonsense about the moon landing being faked. Even some simple statements like "we still have those computers and programs, anyone could've checked whether those could viably land something on the moon" and "so many people would've had to remain silent for such a thing to be successful" was enough to counter the nonsense. But I just keep wondering how they keep falling for it. It's important to keep fighting (with words). Any seed of doubt may break their indoctrination, even if it's not immediately
I think it can only lead to a very bad relationship with lots of fighting both ways. Following your advice leads to eternal fighting and no parental relationship at all. Absolutely not worth fighting inside your family for whatever opinions they may have about this.
I think it's important to talk (not argue) with them because they are family. Its not a healthy relationships if you are afraid to talk to them. Whats the value in having a relationship like that?
Unless money are inheritance is involved then ill shut up and tell them to take crystals and herbal medicine lol.
Yeah of course talk to them. But I dont think its worth fighting inside the family over these things.
Everyone needs to understand that there is a massive psy-ops to damage how we see ourselves, our neighbours, girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever. Everything is about making people fight eachother instead of the common enemy that is pulling the strings in the name of profit and power : big tech algorithms.
Of course parents will fall pray to all of this. The social media algorithms will reinforce what they believe, weather its true or false. It doesnt matter to the tech company what they believe as long as they keep using the site.
My advice is to not let this shit affect your family relationships.
Most of you people need to come to terms with the fact that your parents are pieces of shit and hopefully the next pandemic claims them as they are wasting oxygen by existing.
As my friend @[email protected] would say, that sounds kind of mean spirited. 🤷♂️
I try not to waste empathy on the worthless (conservatives).
I agree with you. Once a fascist and unwilling to change (even in the face of deradicalisation programs), always a fascist.
I pity them, but at the same time, reserve no compassion for those who would kill everyone.
If you sit at the table and have a good time with the fascists, it can't be helped if others think you are one.
Hating gays and minorities isn't a political view. So jump into a piss puddle with that.
The party they vote for isn't the biggest indicating factor here