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?
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.
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.
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 actually seams like a really good stratergy, I might try that.
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.
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).
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.
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:
- People can and do leave political cults
- There’s no universal recipe. A common factor among former neo-Nazis seems to be having someone close to them who doesn’t tolerate the bullshit, so to me it seems the best approach is to stand firm, but leave a door open in the rare case that they have a revelation on their own. (Historically, this sometimes happens if/when their own personal reality begins to clearly contradict the propaganda.)
- Many people simply don’t leave, so it’s unfair to demand those around them spend so much time and effort trying to make it happen. It can be a waste of time. It’s a gamble, really, so again that’s why I say leave a door open, as long as it’s safe.
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.
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.
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.
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
“Sometimes I wish you were still Republican, so I’d have someone to yell at.”
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.
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.
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
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.
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
there’s plenty of studies which point to the fact that exposure to media is indeed irrelevant to determine political opinions.
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?
why would you think this
This is a painful topic for me. I empathize with you all.
