Asklemmy

This is a painful topic for me. I empathize with you all.

ITT: Really depressing stories of society's decline into ChristoFascist mania and delusion.

i only have my father left, but both my parents were always latin-american leftists and so were most of my siblings.

most of my siblings married maga-white people and their children (as well as their children) are maga and my father and siblings have become maga-sympathetic as a result.

only my sister and i remain leftists and i'm convinced it was entirely because we were the only ones to marry other latinos. we both keep our distance for the rest of our family. it's been 10 years since she's seen the rest of the family and i decided to do the same thing last xmas. we only visit cousins/aunts/uncles that have maintained ties with our latin-american origins and that luckily happens to coincide with our politics.

my father still tries to maintain our relationship; but i suspect that it has more to do w my aunts/uncles prodding him to do so and it didn't start happening until i told them about my decision last xmas.

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 mother is a hard R republican and a self proclaimed Christian Nationalist and has been making excuses for the GOP since at least Nixon.

I spent about 20 some years of my life being subjected to Fox News, Limbaugh, Mike Savage, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity every single day. It was exhausting listening to all of the unhinged screaming. While I lived with her I did not seek to find who was telling the truth because I didn't want to know how bad it really was, and I had a pretty good idea of what she would do to me if she found out I was so much as questioning the Republican ethos. So I kept my head down and my "official" stance then was that I wasn't into politics.

I went no contact with her because she became physically abusive 16 years post-TBI. I have not spoken to her in 7 years. From what I gather from her Facebook posts, she's still an awful person who is also falling for all AI pictures, videos and scams that support her narrative.

I have no interest in speaking to her ever again.

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.

My dad has always been on the right and he’s a Trump voter, but he’s mostly avoided going full MAGA-proud. We have always had a tense relationship when it comes to politics and at times had very little personal relationship. Now we just avoid political discussions or keep them very high level, and it’s manageable. I talk to him a lot less than I would if he didn’t have those views. His health is declining significantly at this point so I have decided it’s not worth trying to change his mind.

My mom is still with him and she’s leftist and we talk all the time.

My dad’s two sisters are deep into MAGA (they were proud attendees of Trump’s first inauguration). They’ve been far-right fundamentalist Christians most, if not all, of my life, so I already had a strained relationship with them before 2016. I haven’t even tried in over a decade now. I was recently diagnosed with a chronic disease that one of them also has and I kept thinking about reaching out but ultimately decided I don’t even want her in my life for that so I haven’t bothered.

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.

Not great.

I try to take a page out of the playbook of a cult deprogrammer or a Darrel Davis type personality. My trips home are short (no more than a week) and I try to deescalate any hotbutton conversations. People do change, but unfortunately some people harden and shut off to new ideas as well. Hearing a different personality speak often helps open people up to hearing new ideas; a lot of the fascist ideology is born out of fear, miseducation, and selfishness.

well it sucks. It looks like he's going to die a Nazi. What the fuck dad?

I he’d a funeral for the one that went MAGA in my mind. I gave a great eulogy. All my favorite food was served at the meal following the wake. Easily in my top 10 funerals.

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.

I'm... lucky?... that my dad was a shitbag for other reasons. He was already on thin ice prior to 2016. My mom "isn't interested in politics" but even that's feeling unforgivable for me nowadays.

My parents have gone from seeing their 2 grandchildren biweekly, to me limiting visits with their 3 grandchildren to 3-4 times a year. Even those times are intentionally with my dad absent, and are only at extended family gatherings.

Fuck. Them. Both.

You're better off asking them questions. "what makes a person eat someone else's pet?" or do simple definitions of what they say, as if you're trying to understand. "so white people deserve to travel and others don't?" (that's a stupid example, but all of the talking points boil down to these types of statements). Apparently getting them to debate facts doesn't work, getting them to question what they're blindly believing, does, but I haven't put it to practice. I want to go and get a refresher on critical thinking, so I can more easily break down, the way to properly ascertain if, what is being sold to you is truth or propaganda, and then make it into a question / statement and rather than addressing any topic, add a where did that come from, who sold you that, who profits from that, kinda thing, but I want a better statement / question than that. My parents are really similar, I have to avoid a lot of topics, I'm the black sheep of the family, I've always been much more earth conscious than them, it's gotten so much worse lately. It's the news they're being fed. They believe it, wholeheartedly. It's how they've always known what's happening. And it's why they're panic buying out tiktok, currently, they (those creating the propaganda and distributing it) can't have a narrative out there that doesn't align with their agenda.

I feel for you. My parents also drank the Koolaid, but my mother is dead now, and my father has slipped even further down the rabbit hole. He's also a horrible person in general, and while I used to engage with him if he were behaving himself, I've effectively gone no contact now. I've only spoke with him once in the last few years, and when he launched into a racist anti-immigrant tirade I told him not to be a coward his entire life and hung up on him. It was on my birthday.

Ignore them and tell them trump is an idiot if you do talk to them and they bring it up. Watch them freak out.

Sorry, the brainwashing was too successful. You wont save them. They domt care that he raped children. They wont change their minds.

I live in a place that could pass for MAGA Mecca and am literally surrounded on all fronts pretty much anywhere I go. It is extremely isolating. Thankfully my parents are sane; still Christian, but at least they look on with a similar confused horror - though they still "like a lot of what he's doing, just not how he's doing it."