She’s almost 70, spend all day watching q-anon style of videos (but in Spanish) and every day she’s anguished about something new, last week was asking us to start digging a nuclear shelter because Russia was dropped a nuclear bomb over Ukraine. Before that she was begging us to install reinforced doors because the indigenous population were about to invade the cities and kill everyone with poisonous arrows. I have access to her YouTube account and I’m trying to unsubscribe and report the videos, but the reccomended videos keep feeding her more crazy shit.

  • masquenox@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You can’t “de-radicalize” your mom because your mom has never been “radicalized” in the first place - if she was, she’d be spray-painting ACAB on the walls and quoting Bakunin or Marx at everyone.

    Your mom has been turned into a reactionary - pretty much the opposite of that which is radical. And since you have access to your mom’s youtube account, it’s radical content that is required to start levering open the cognitive dissonance that right-wing content attempts to paper over.

    However, it can’t just be any radical content - it has to be radical content that specifically addresses things that are relevant to your mom. I’ll use my own mom as an example… she has always been angry about the fact that my (late) father essentially tossed away the family’s nest-egg in his obsessive attempts to become a successful business owner - I showed her some videos explaining how this neolib cult of business-ownership was popularized by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher (which she had no difficulty believing because my dad was a rabid right-winger who constantly brought these two fuckheads up in conversation during the 80s) which led to a lot of good conversations.

    Obviously, your mom will not be as receptive to new information as mine is - so you may have to be a bit sneakier about it. But I don’t see too many other options for you at this point.

    • aidan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Radicalization !== Radical Marxist. Don’t forget radicalism the ideology!. But yes, definitions can change: etymolically and in modern language radicalism politically is to be pushing for a change at the root of something. I think it is pretty fair to say OPs mom could fit this. Radicalism does not have to be and often is not leftist.

      Furthermore, in my opinion, reactionary is not a descriptive word- it is wholely used as an insult. It doesn’t describe an ideology, it is just a prejorative used to insult ideological opponents. You can again tell by the fact that nobody uninronically considers themselves a reactionary.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        radicalism politically is to be pushing for a change at the root of something

        You mean that thing right-wing ideology exists to prevent? There is no such thing as a “right-wing radical” - right-wing ideology exists to protect the status quo and destroy or co-opt that which advocates “change at the root…” it has no reason to exist otherwise.

        I think it is pretty fair to say OPs mom could fit this.

        The paranoid racism displayed by OP’s mom isn’t “radical” - it’s bog-standard right-wing white supremacist colonialist paranoia.

        You can again tell by the fact that nobody uninronically considers themselves a reactionary.

        They also generally do not self-identify as fascists or white supremacists, and you can easily anger most right-wingers even by just calling them right-wingers - so your point is… what?

        • aidan@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You mean that thing right-wing ideology exists to prevent?

          Right wing !== The status quo

          There is no such thing as a “right-wing radical”

          You did not click the link. You did forget Radicalism.

          right-wing ideology exists to protect the status quo and destroy or co-opt that which advocates “change at the root…”

          So in a socialist country is advocating for liberalism or monarchism or whatever left-wing and advocating for socialism right wing? Were the Nazi’s left-wing in the Weimar Republic?

          The paranoid racism displayed by OP’s mom isn’t “radical”

          Iirc there was no mention of racism, and I assume based on the mention of “videos in Spanish” that OPs mom is more than likely Latina. But yeah, QAnon is pretty radical seeing as they definitely aren’t the status quo.

          They also generally do not self-identify as fascists or white supremacists

          There are plenty who do, but I’ve never heard of someone identifying as reactionary.

          you can easily anger most right-wingers even by just calling them right-wingers

          I’ve never seen a right-winger being upset by that. Maybe because your definition of right-wing differs a lot from what most people would consider right-wing, they feel they are being mislabeled or mischaracterized.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Right wing !== The status quo

            Riiight… I forgot the status quo requires centrists - not right-wingers - to do all the dirty work of violently maintaining the status quo. Because… reasons.

            Were the Nazi’s left-wing in the Weimar Republic?

            Did you see the Nazis promising capitalists that they would dismantle capitalism? No? How many of those Weimar capitalists got rich and fat off all the slave labor the Nazis provided them? You seem to have a weird idea what the term status quo means.

            But yeah, QAnon is pretty radical seeing as they definitely aren’t the status quo.

            There is nothing “radical” about QAnon - again, there is no such thing as a “radical right-winger.”

            I’ve never seen a right-winger being upset by that.

            Lol! Why do you think they refer to themselves as “conservatives” and not right-wingers?