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

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!?

It’s like saying Gamergate was really about “ethics in games journalism”.

It’s...disingenuous, to say the least

Like on some level I think most of them know that’s not true and that they’re being foolish, but it gives their underdog/victim complex a patina of legitimacy while also taking the wind out of the sails of “SJWs” by adopting their lingo.

They love to claim they’re misunderstood and that the harassment/threats by comicsgaters are due to either a few bad apples or outright exaggerations and lies by the sinister SJWs. It can’t *possibly* be a logical outgrowth of the Comicsgaters’ rhetoric, no sir.

But but.. "Everyone should be welcome to make great comics!" is entirely what they're whinging about happening, right?

Read between the lines and what they’re really saying is, “sure, everyone should be free to make whatever comics they want, but leave that PC social justice shit out of my Spidey-Man wahhhhh”

They’re mad at Mom for making them share their toys with baby sis.

I think the only appropriate response is for creators to diversify representation in comics to the extent that there are no straight white male characters left at all.

(PS, from what I've been able to glean, the comicsgaters' rallying cry seems to be 'actually, it's about declining comic book sales.')

I think theres a question of what we react to and how we react. In the case of the comic guys last statement it appears that he is saying something ostensibly ok on the surface, "There is no place for harassment, racism, misogyny, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia or sexism in comics." but that latebloomer knows that really he is meaning something different that doesnt tally with the actual words.

this is common in my experience, and gets to the heart of a lot of the disconnect. In reverse I know, with my cousin, if I say anything that is say, two sentences long - he will interrupt after the first, "But thats not xyz". He's already decided what I'm going to say before I've spoken and is reacting to that. Its part of what makes the conversations draining, a sense of talking past each other, but it has made me more cognisant of trying to respond to whats actually said, not what i think/know is 'underneath', and just in general speaking less

but that latebloomer everybody in the fucking universe

Its not quite related but I couldn't find the appropriate thread, about the woman who pretends she has never heard of The Beatles, but is culturally aware or herself in relation to everything else. I'm not sure how seriously it was to be taken as a thing but I actually found it really useful!

The Beatles are a great example of something that a) I don't have any real interest in or particular opinion of, and b) that lots of other people really do, some of who may well categorize you based on your opinion to questions like "are they the best band of all time?". Which is a question I have no answer to

The only way not to take part in 'the beatles exercise' is to have never heard of them. I didn't really think about it until my cousin said something about burkas/niqabs. I can see this being one of those right wing brainworms / talking points. I said I'd no idea what he was talking about. Putting forward a counter-argument was just going to validate the whole thing, the brainworms are designed to work against resistance/opposition/reaction, not against neutrality/ignorance/apathy.

He's already decided what I'm going to say before I've spoken and is reacting to that.

I have often experienced this. If you do not make the argument they expect you to make, for which they have a ready-made answer, they still pretend you made that argument and deliver the same ready-made answer. It is fruitless to point out that you did not say what they pretend you said, and you do not need to answer their pat rejoinder, because it did not address your point.

Another approach I have frequently noted is that no matter what nuance or qualification you make in your statements about the world, they will be treated as if they were an extremely bald and simplistic. Then they proceed to demolish their version of your argument on the grounds that it is not accurate to the real world. Pointing out that their simplistic version of what you said is what is inaccurate, while what you did say is perfectly valid, does not penetrate their consciousness.

Lastly, they tend to think in dualities and constantly create false dichotomies, so to their minds, if any part of your worldview (which they have stripped down and warped to suit their prejudices) is false, it proves that the opposite is true.

It becomes maddening after a while. And it gets neither of you anywhere.

I guess its the faux-naif approach - I'm not saying its a good thing overall, but it DOES work with friends/relatives with brainworms as it takes the wind out of their sails. They have often turned up ready for battle, talking points honed and sharpened. Its powered by reaction, but not just words but feelings of irritation or annoyance. I noticed if i show any signs of annoyance this is perceived as good, that he must be on the right track. The value in his points is measured by the reaction if causes. If i counter anything about burkas it reinforces that he is in the right, and he takes energy from that.

I know from this thread and other like it, that many people avoid family members because they can't escape these kinds of conversations and end up in fights. I don't know why but certainly in my cousins case I feel he is looking for this to happen, because of the validation it provides. The existential fight between leave and remain, city and united, ronaldo and messi.

This misnomer that any of these things are about what is being said, when it is about who you are or identify as. He needs my reaction and he can't have it