Asklemmy

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

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.

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.

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.

Zero tolerance. No conversation. No benefit of the doubt. Zero.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.