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?
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.
a healthy independent media cycle
Is that the one that tried to get democrats to support the gaza genocide? Or did you have a better one in mind?
Is that the one that tried to get democrats to support the gaza genocide?
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.
why would you think this
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have no hope of ever having a normal relationship with them. I avoid talking about myself, my thoughts and feelings, and just nod and bite my tongue. The world won’t change if I make them see the truth, so I’m not going to bother trying, just to bring more issues between us and risk being alienated even further.
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
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”.
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.
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 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.
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.
Why are people surprised that their parents are fascists? My parents have always been obvious christian fascists with a notable amount of local influence in their cult. My dad unironically relished “arbeit macht frei” when we went to Dachau. My patrilineage is an impressive pedigree of anti-communism backed with service in American wars. My grandfather privately referred to POC as savages until his death. Perhaps my experience is more unique than I believe, but I refuse to be naive.
I have broken relations with my family in part because of all this. Also because they hate my chosen family and I won’t tolerate it. I feel no responsibility to save them or correct them. I respect their very intentional decision to be monsters and hope they can be stopped asap. They are evil. They have always been evil.
It is VERY difficult to imagine there not being glaring red flags. This may be a result of my own baggage, but I am immediately skeptical of those who are blindsided by their family’s ideology. I fear many of you who are surprised would be shocked to know my family has always known that your family would belong to the imperial cause eventually. My family is not so obtuse as to believe they are any different now than they were during Clinton, 9/11, or the Tea Party, but somehow others give their own family a pass?
I am equally skeptical of numerous cliches used by ostensibly “leftist” folks including the use of problematic language or the reduction/commodification of identities. If you ironically say “neurospicy” for example, I assume you are willing to betray disabled people for your own gain. If you use “gay” as an insult, regardless of your identity, I will see you as my enemy. Period. These times will not reward naivety.
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.You can love someone and things dont work out. Family or otherwise.
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.
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.
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.
Fuck… You just provided me a glimpse into my future and I do not like it.
Dang…now I kinda’ wanna’ see that art.
Sorry for your loss
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.
he has started saying the N word to try to get a rise out of me
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.
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.
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.
