Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

also that objectivity and his own subjectivity are broadly the same thing

this is a concept that's really hard to get past, and drives a lot of the dialogue about how some groups (mysteriously, the ones with valid complaints) are more driven by "emotion" as opposed to some objectivity

it's really easy to fall into rhetorical arguments where every fringe case comes in and it's evident in every stupid debate about human rights. "if we let people define their own terms, what's to stop me from marrying my dog?"-style flourishes. rather than addressing specific concerns, the "objective" mindset tends to question the entire validity of discussion, not the validity of argument. and that's where it becomes clear the so-called objectivity is a thin veneer over very subjective ideas about the status quo

the recurring concept that comes up as more objective is the idea of meritocracy. the word was coined in a satirical context, and that's been completely lost in its wholesale adoption. the entire point is that a meritocracy is like a utopia: a hypothetical perfect state that's never attainable, a nowhere. the reality is that human cognitive and social biases will always be at the forefront, and you have to identify and question those biases. but objective dudes, again, claim that they're above bias

I don't think the "drift rightwards" comes with aging so much as cohort -- there are relatives of mine well into their 60s, and their political views are still incredibly malleable. sometimes it seems like they depend entirely on who's in their circle of friends this year.

most definitely

my parents seem to have gotten tired of several of their neighbors who have gotten more defensive but are relatively open to whatever far-left political thing I bring up. there seems to be more groupthink among the others and they're just not into it

I decided not to go to my (ex)friend’s wedding. I tried to engage with him of Facebook, but it was fruitless. He keeps sharing pro far-right stuff. ‘Free Tommy’ stuff, pro- French NF, anti-gay right’s, anti- feminism. He’s started sending me #walkaway crap. I want him to be happy, but I can’t imagine being in his company without it kicking off into a huge argument, which would not be great at a wedding.

― Leaghaidh am brón an t-anam bochd (dowd), Monday, August 13, 2018 9:38 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's really easy to fall into rhetorical arguments where every fringe case comes in and it's evident in every stupid debate about human rights. "if we let people define their own terms, what's to stop me from marrying my dog?"-style flourishes

― mh, Monday, August 13, 2018 10:10 AM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good god I just realized dowd's ex-friend is marrying a dog to own the libs

I think people become "right-wing" because of real-life trauma and/or the terrors of aging-- I instinctively believe it's a neurological thing.

Older conservatives have a saying they like to toss around, that if you aren't a liberal at age 20 you have no heart, but if you aren't a conservative by age 50 you have no brain. This is bullshit, but somewhat revealing bullshit, in that it reflects the fact that many older conservatives were liberals when they were young and this formula allows them to reconcile the two and even claim it is evidence of their excellence as humans to be endowed with a heart and a brain. (Note: you will never see them describing Young Republican types as "heartless".)

My theory is simple enough. Young people base their politics largely upon theory, because the majority of their lives they have been spectators on the fringe of the adult world and they've spent their young lives trying to piece together explanations for what they see. The 'liberal' point of view is based on explanations of society that allow room for social change and improvement. This is very appealing to a young person, who ardently hopes the world won't be so messed up in the future, and has confidence that everyone naturally wants to fix what is so clearly broken. This aligns well with the "heart" rubric cited above.

As one ages, it becomes excessively obvious that fixing the world is beyond their power. If progress is made is one area, it is just as easy to find regress in another. The stubborn fixity of greed, ignorance, selfishness and fear in society seem insurmountable. The apparent hopelessness of improving anything leads them to abandon hope and ideals. In the absence of hope comes cynicism, fear and selfishness. Thus, a conservative is born.

This is a very old story, but no matter what the aging conservative wants to believe, this does NOT align with "having a brain", but rather from stopping thinking because the problems got too hard and complicated. If you are turn conservative at age 50 it doesn't mean you gained a brain, but that you've lost heart.

Having kids makes you selfish. Mortgages and all that shit.

(should have kept that for the controversial opinions thread)

I think that premise comes from people who were always concentrated on their own interests, but their circumstances changed and they attribute most of it to their own success -- or lack thereof, but claim an understanding that self-agency is important.

like great, old guy, you're no longer going to get drafted to fight in a war and you own a house. worked for you, so I guess it works for everyone

a bunch of my parents' peers are late-era baby boomers who did reasonably well working in businesses started by their own parents' generation, and they've reached retirement age or are near retirement just as the industries they worked in have become irrelevant or defunct

"c ya! have fun with your 'renegotiated' pensions!!"

As one ages, it becomes excessively obvious that fixing the world is beyond their power. If progress is made is one area, it is just as easy to find regress in another. The stubborn fixity of greed, ignorance, selfishness and fear in society seem insurmountable. The apparent hopelessness of improving anything leads them to abandon hope and ideals. In the absence of hope comes cynicism, fear and selfishness. Thus, a conservative is born.

well, it's probably simpler:

"I'm older and I miss life in my twenties, it can't be that I'm not in my twenties anymore, it must be that the world has gotten worse since then," and then finding a scapegoat in people they didn't like anyway

also I don't think that "liberals are liberals because they're young and think the world will be better in the future" works anymore -- like, to take the big one, climate change virtually guarantees it will not.

The goalposts seem to have moved to something different, the 'friends(/relatives) infected with brain worms' were 20/30 something at the beginning of the thread, which implies a much quicker transformation. Older generations being more right wing is surely something separate from this

The world is changing faster and faster and faster and not for the better in many ways (austerity, climate, automation, etc). I can totally understand anyone wanting to accept ‘objective’ ‘facts’, hierarchies, etc etc in the face of instability and uncertainty. Can’t condone it though.

Aimless your assessment is spot on, from where I'm sitting

id imagine simply having the good shit as opposed to wanting all the good shit you dont have is worth about 60% of converts

So turns out that he is a genuine concern that the breakdown of society is imminent, due to 'activists'

On surface it feels like the stereotype of the 73 year old Fox Viewer somewhere in the US who lives in a world created and sustained by media. But this is a 31 year old who lives in a UK city and has a good job and no obvious potholes. The created world at some point seems to have taken over the experienced world

I can understand it if someone lives in the sticks and rely on the media to tell them what the world is beyond the end of the driveway, but its disconcerting to see it happen to someone who's lived experience doesn't tally with this increasingly apocalyptic vision. There are so many different 'theys' that are on the cusp of destroying society, but each 'they' is never really explained, where they are, how many they are, how - it feels incredibly existential

Another thing that is striking is the source of any story

CR: Some people did a bad thing why is no one talking about it

A: Where did it happen? Not heard about this story, where did you read it?
CR: Internet

A: Where on the internet?
CR: Twitter

A: What twitter, do you have a link?

I;m then given someones name, but no url, no specific story. that i have to find for myself, which i dont want to spend my time doing. But its like blood out of a stone, and invariably when/if the story is located, it doesnt say what it was purported to say at all. its almost like the facts of a story are window dressing around some more fundamental truth. 'a crime is happening', 'where is this crime happening"? 'i dont know but you can be sure there is one happening somewhere'

People want to belong. Orthodoxies supply rules for belonging. There are some orthodoxies on display in this thread that I strongly agree with that aren't self-evidently true, and if I questioned them I'd be 51'd so fast your head would swim (and there aren't 51 individuals left on ILX). Folks these days find the orthodoxy that fits their bias -- I don't like that trend and think it's dangerous regardless of your ideology, but it's not currently worth alienating people and getting labelled to talk about it.

On surface it feels like the stereotype of the 73 year old Fox Viewer somewhere in the US who lives in a world created and sustained by media. But this is a 31 year old who lives in a UK city and has a good job and no obvious potholes. The created world at some point seems to have taken over the experienced world

I had to sit through some LBC the other day and one of the callers started every sentence with a panicked "the far left agenda"; it struck me that a generation or two ago, the rhetoric would've been more along the lines of "bloody kids, why won't they get a job, why aren't they thankful for the society we've given them"...reactionary but much more mundane in its outview, activists seen as spoiled children. But now I much more often hear this cast as, like, apocalyptic.

there are always people who think they're not only living in the end times, but that the complete breakdown is imminent. it's a very self-centered view, in my experience, in that the person who's invested in this crap wants to think their time is somehow more important than any other in history

there are major crises that happen on a daily basis, both local and global, but they're not easily grasped or connected to a single cause. so they're only paid lip service in roll-up conspiracies claiming that there's a shadowy cabal

i'm very suspicious of conspiracy theories in general, but on the other hand that peter thiel sure does get around

as far as I can tell he's participated in a few really obvious conspiracies. they're all public knowledge and not theoretical!

Because the right has historically been pretty good at suppressing their minor differences in the service of the greater evil, they're under the laughable impression that the left can get over their intramural squabbles enough to comprise a unified coalition. 'The far left agenda,' lol.

Has the in-fighting among the pro-Qanon and anti-Qanon mobs changed anything I wonder? They've suddenly been quiet(er) since the whole thing was being roundly laughed out of the room on CNN etc

it's a very self-centered view, in my experience

lol, I enjoyed that

there are always people who think they're not only living in the end times, but that the complete breakdown is imminent. it's a very self-centered view, in my experience, in that the person who's invested in this crap wants to think their time is somehow more important than any other in history

A certain narcissism is part of this but there's also a very real not so well repressed desire for the world to end. Surely some clever Freudian has written on both the utopian left and apocalyptic right being complementary manifestations of the death drive.

Eric Voegelin has approached this from a no-freudian perspective as well I think.

I mean, I get the death drive. But it's better a solo journey.

they're under the laughable impression that the left can get over their intramural squabbles enough to comprise a unified coalition

I mean, no, not at all, if you actually read their posts/comments/plans for hoaxes (which I don't recommend) it's full of encouraging and/or mocking infighting

(enough, in fact, that commenting about "infighting" in the left is almost a tell)

Late to this thread but it my take on original question is, this situation as described in op isn't about 'friends who have different political opinions' but about lifestyles. It's about the poster's friend getting involved in online groups, adding to their swell by sharing and posting stuff, adopting lingo and jargon; it's about lifestyle in that sense and it's also about lifestyle in the sense that the poster's friend is getting closer to people whose lifestyle includes harassing and assaulting people. Because of this I think the take of, why can't friends be friends despite diff political opinions doesn't work here it's about whether you can or should maintain friendships with someone whose lifestyle is turning toxic. 'Infected with R/W brainworms' is an appropriate phrase for this reason.

The joining of many facebook groups, the sharing of alt-right clickbait, the getting on hashtags, re-statement of reified talking points ... this isn't the same thing as 'holding a political opinion'. That is something that people used to do in the old days.

I mean, there are those who vote republican but don't pay attention to things that are political but maybe tend toward fox news and other outlets

then there are the people who were glued to AM talk radio and their progeny who came up on 4chan and they unite by wearing Qanon t-shirts

one of my now-retired coworkers was one of the talk radio guys and was insufferable any time a conversation delved even vaguely into politics. apparently one of my work friends has bumped into him in recent years and the first thing he asks, every time, is "so you STILL think global warming is real?!"

xp Probably latebloomer's friend needs to think hard about how viable it is to have a career as a comic book illustrator or writer (not quite sure what the friend was intending to do exactly but it was comic artist of some sort). The answer of course is not very viable at all, this is a terrible career plan, like wanting to be a dramatist or movie director etc. Creative work is a difficult thing to get into, high probability of talent going unrecognised. Especially in a recession and especially in comics. Every comic fan reckons they can do some drawing and writing, there will be millions of people wanting to get into it as a career, and the companies can simply filter out all but the very, very best and most marketable and best connected artists and writers.

The sensible advice to the friend would be to rethink the 'creative career' aim and adjust expectations sharply. Easy to give, never easy to take as I'm sure most people here know. Probably more sensible and effective to give this advice than 'you are statistically privileged' (yes, and 'the earth is round', 'most chairs have four legs')

One thing I've noticed about 'these people', in my thankfully brief encounters with them, is they cannot wait to blow your minds with some inane garbage they've picked up second/third/fourthhand on the internet, they will shoehorn stuff in anywhere because they can't shut up about this amazing insight they've borrowed off someone else. I'm reading "The Authoritarian Personality" right now and it describes as a characteristic of fascists is they love to let everyone know that We've Discovered A Secret And We Are Now Going To Tell You About It Though You Probably Won't Understand It Or Appreciate It... Yet.

i was radicalised by ilxor dot com and now i don't see zings

Responding the OP and I haven't read the whole thread but my angle would be to never engage the right wing ideas but engage the notion that spending this amount of time doing any kind of online activism is a waste of time. No great comic book writer career started with feuding online with social justice warriors.

responding to OP again, the most nefarious aspect i have seen of this in my friend lately (who is a trump supporter) is that he does not always accept everything trump does, but he has found ways to justify pretty much anything he does, and also he focuses on weird political issues like
the time transgender individuals felt ousted from a women-only club, as if to say - this is PC gone mad. He has kind of tried to find ways around being an out and out conservative while still clearly being one

Tom D, how is that book - was thinking of giving it a go

I don’t know why you don’t just murder them

Too much lost productivity, when calculated using potential lifetime earnings and the multiplier effect.

There's a helluva of a lot explaining of the methodology used in the surveys and interviews carried out but once you skip past all that you're past that it's extremely compelling - it's dated, of course, and I'm not enough of a Freudian to be entirely convinced by all the arguments. (xxxp)

Some updates on this situation:

I told him what I thought and we had a mostly civil conversation but it became apparent that we are operating from different baseline assumptions about a lot of things. I still don’t think he realizes how much this stuff hurts and angers me.

Part of what makes it hard to explain my position to my friend is that I can’t point to anything overtly offensive that he has posted, apart from some stuff about “SJWs”. For me it’s more about who he’s supporting and making common cause with.

Another factor is that networking within Comicsgate twitter has actually paid off for him. He got his graphic novel funded very quickly once it was signal boosted by the right influencers. He’s now fully incentivized to continue participating in the Comicsgate “community”, which is depressing as hell.

It's hard to argue against shitty ideas when they're also lucrative (see: the history western civilization).

^ of

A key theme to the whole thing innit - cf Stephen Yaxley Lennon

This is what my friend posted on twitter recently

“Comics are for everyone.

There is no place for harassment, racism, misogyny, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia or sexism in comics.

Everyone should be welcome to make great comics!

I am #Comicsgate - this is what we believe.”

I give up. My friend is deluded if he genuinely believes this is what his “movement” stands for

I... dont get how the first part of his comment marries to the second lol isnt it the opposite of that!?