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?
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.
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.
Hurr durrrrr
Oh hey look a block button.
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?
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.
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”.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
You can love someone and things dont work out. Family or otherwise.
I wonder if maga people are having the exact same, conversation about there parents becoming leftists.
I deal with it pretty easily, I don’t have contact with them lol.
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.
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.
