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 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
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
ha ha ha cute
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.
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.
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 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 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.
He recently tried to convince my mom i was brainwashed to be a LGBTQ Muslim extremist by my wife (note, I am a man)
Wow, that’s pretty next-level.
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 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.
Fuck you’re cool
Probably cooler than you, yeah.
I deal with it pretty easily, I don’t have contact with them lol.
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 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”.
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.
