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

He sends them to Spain for use during Holy Week. They just go so well with the capirotes.

seems legit

Publicly responding to an asshole sharing that video could help convince on the fence people. My mother has turned into a shocking FUCK THE POLICE proponent over time.

But in private? They're sharing the vid as a "haha gotcha lib", one word, defriend

I haven’t friended my mom but she sent that CO-vid.

yeah, and I wager most people aren't watching the vid, but are sharing it as a "haha see, I dont have to care about BLM/Floyd, this Black lady said it's ok! she also said it's ok to like Trump! win win!"

Neanderthal, that’s my take as well.

I spent a good hour breaking down why the video was terrible (which unfortunately, included watching it) because the person that posted it shared it on his Wall, and it was a shock to see it from him, as he's never seemed like this type of person before, and he's young. he wasn't moved by it, but I had to try.

what's really ugly about it is he's one of the people that is in charge for splicing the virtual singing videos we made for our Breast Cancer fundraiser that is streaming next week. One that has many Black performers who are devastated by the Floyd situation and are likely to be very upset by what he posted. Like a betrayal.

I’m not watching it either. CO is so dodgy and she’s now married to an aristocratic Brexit asshole, so UK people are familiar with her schtick.

I somehow wasn't familiar with her specifically so I had to see who she was. now that i got that out my system, never again

The guy who sent it to me doesn’t post much on Facebook at all, he’s not a Trump troll - although CO certainly is - so I was very surprised as well. He’s not a close friend, so no loss.

IME sending individual videos can be good but invites a familiar #bothsides trap. Look, here is a cop pulling down someone's mask and pepper-spraying him. Here are cops beating a person who's already down. Here's a cop just straight up killing a human being in broad daylight.

Yr right-wingnut goes but #whatabout and cherry-picks: whatabout these cops shot in St. Louis. whatabout these Asian shop owners being terrorized and losing everything. whatabout this antifa dude using an aerosol blowtorch on etc. etc. etc.

It is the trumpian "flood the zone" strategy. You hear enough conflicting information, you shrug and figure you don't know what to believe and you return to your tribal lens. It is, as a wise man once said, "sad."

The thing is not to get into anything protracted, not let yourself be dragged down that path. The first thing is just to show the videos which may or may not have been seen by them before. And just show one video not loads in a row. Say it's disturbing you, say you're frightened of the police. Say rioters will be arrested at least but the police probably not. Show them a video of a white person being beat. Show them whatever you think is most likely to do something. Don't give the answer for them, just say "I don't understand whats happening in this video it makes no sense to me, can you explain".

Agree with them about the rioters. Ask them why they are wasting their time swarming around a person sitting on the ground when there are rioters to catch. What kind of dumb ass pussy avoids arresting rioters to pick on individual people just sitting there. Are they even competent?

At the end of the day someone feels a visceral reaction when 10 police beat someone on the ground, or they don't. If there's a flicker of humanity there...it can come out in time, but it doesn't mean its going to be today. If there isn't, then there isn't

From social media it does seem some eyes are being opened. I don't know how true that is, or how many, but there are protests in Harlan County right now. Harlan County!

wow really? protests in harlan county about BLM?

A friend right in the middle of it all In Minneapolis has been staying up late on neighborhood watch and going after people from her tiny super white rural high school with long diatribes and breakdowns of their shitty FB posts including the CO video and it’s pretty great to see. Not sure it’s doing anything but she’s got credibility as both a local and as someone who has had her home and family under direct threat for the last week but still supports protests and BLM. At least one person did take down a BS article after getting called on it.

Personally I’ve seen a surprising number of people who I know lean conservative, some of whom certainly voted for trump but weren’t vocal about it, posting BLM information, memes and infographics about systemic racism and police brutality, pics of them or their kids at protests and marches, and so on. It’s really shocking because these people were never even remotely political before and it gives me a lot of hope

That’s awesome to hear.

I have determined my family 1) doesn't believe in systemic racism 2) barely believes in real racism unless it conforms to basic ideas of racism in the 50's and 60's 3) doesn't believe there are any grounds for anyone to protest at all 4) if you protest the status quo you should leave the country. I think I'm giving up.

wow really? protests in harlan county about BLM?

In lieu of a March, at least a hundred folks are lined up along the highway. Lots of honks of support. pic.twitter.com/WKCP5rBQgf

— Sydney Boles (@sydneyboles) June 2, 2020

I have determined my family 1) doesn't believe in systemic racism 2) barely believes in real racism unless it conforms to basic ideas of racism in the 50's and 60's 3) doesn't believe there are any grounds for anyone to protest at all 4) if you protest the status quo you should leave the country. I think I'm giving up.

Thats tough, were they anti-covid protests too? They're anti first amendment, you can't even reach them on that? A number of people are just TooFarGone's. Sometimes I wonder how many people would support pre-emptive live rounds into the homes of suspected protestors. 10%? Of every living person just to be on the safe side...1%?

I had someone I'm very close with and really care about start spamming me out of the blue with this Candace Owens shit this evening, and just very aggressively hammer me with a flood of dubious stats and say how disappointed they were with me that I wouldnt watch that video, that was being surprisingly close minded. And of course when I pointed out that she was racist and anti-BLM, got "she's a black lady!"

Idk where the fuck this came from. I've never thought of them as racist and we hadn't been talking about anything related to this. Now I have to rethink whether I want this person in my life.

Reading this thread and talking to other friends, I'm wondering if this shit is getting an extra big push or what the fuck is going on. It seems like it's reaching people that would usually not be paying attention.

This stuff is disconceting, when someone is suddenly a certain type of way and also quite intense about it, where has that come from?

That video has apparently had something like 50 million plays, probably more now. I don't know if thats a lot (tho it certainly appears to be a lot on the face of it)

Semi-hot take - if you think someone is reachable, you have to watch the nonsense they send, find 3 of the simplest things wrong with it and say. "video was ok, except I didn't understand point 1, point 2 didn't make any sense, point 3 was really confusing, its very muddled can you explain?"

I'm just so done with people wanting to debate shit and argue points. If they are showing their true self, I don't know that I can waste time in that shit.

The only response I can think of is, you are politically unengaged and you send me this stuff because it's the view point of a black lady, so presumably it's more legit to you, but you have never once in your life engaged with a black author, thinker, activist, journalist, politician who is actually aligned with the protests. So here's a list of people you can read, go knock yourself out.

Totally fair! I don't think its incumbent on anyone to go through this with people. And you're definitely right about not getting pulled into some fruitless "well, actually" sinkhole. The question of whether its worth it only each individual can know:/

Moodles, thank you. In my case I’m going to do what you advise and additionally ask my mother what friend of hers shared this, because she is not an Internet Person. All roads will lead to someone who shares racist things regularly, I am sure. I would also ask her - because she is someone who is happy to condemn white individuals for being wrong, and argue against collective punishment, but a black/Asian/Latinx individual is always some kind of representative of a larger Bad Group which needs punished in ways the white person is not.

It really seems like this video and similar stuff very suddenly landed today with a ton of people who are generally not very political or tuned in to what's going on, and it really is making me wonder how this came about. I'm not usually a paranoid person, but it feels really weird and suspicious.

It is. She has a lot of bad money behind her in the US and UK.

Soviets

There’s always been a market for speakers who base their entire career on assuaging the fears of white people who think they’re not racist. It makes people uncomfortable when they’re confronted with the scope of systemic racism, and instead of listening to the many, many people who are making it clear what is going on, they’re more likely to share something that reinforces their own view.

On the bright side, it’s good that they feel uncomfortable, but it’s depressing that instead of confronting that feeling and doing the slightest amount of work, they’d fall back to: No, it’s the protesters who are wrong. The nice black lady in the video told me so. I can go back to my life and change nothing.

This Is Wild: http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/04/20/social-autopsy-founder-candace-owen-channels-gamergate-in-bizarre-attack-on-zoe-quinn/

How did I not realize/remember that’s who she was?

I forgot that she was the person who started the wrong-headed public doxxing endeavor but, in retrospect, the idea she was just misguided but well-intentioned seem wrong.

That was one thing I kept hearing, "she seems like such a nice lady." Her whole thing is to use fake reasonableness to obscure just how extreme and contentious her views are.

Its a key part of how this stuff works, fake reasonableness or disdain, both drawing attention to the fact their opponents are losing it, have gone off the deep end, are histrionic.

I heard some British commentator going on about the statue in Bristol and how mob rule had taken root and the British way of life is at the end of the road. The poor soul clearly believed it, the emotion in his voice, the realization that it was this statue today, your car and family tomorrow. Real emotion, no grift. He should think himself lucky, he was at least true to himself, unlike Owens, Pool, Rubin and other grifters (though Owens seems to enjoy it, no signs of self hatred like Pim Tool)

I mean, if his car was a monument to a historical slave trader, I’d be all for pushing it into the ocean

that's exactly how Candace Owens wins over gullible people. she has a quiet, smooth tone, and a much more muted demeanor than the typical alt-right asshole, so people conflate that with being reasonable. before I knew who she was, in the first few minutes of the video, I just thought she was someone who held a different opinion within her own community, but two minutes later into the video, it was obvious it was a grift.

wow, i have no idea this was the same person from that Doxing crap

I was going to suggest she's benefitting from our collective forgetfulness, but really, the only reason her video went viral is that the words "Confession: I don't support George Floyd" appear in her video thumbnail, most people probably saw that and shared.

she's been on my radar for years now, it is mysterious to me what motivates her or how she forms her thinking but she has a knack for being wrong about absolutely everything.

My uncle finally blocked me on FB, I think it was me mentioning to someone that I had Muslim coworkers, friends, and family, and asked them how many Muslims they knew that did it. My aunt (his sister) hasn't yet, but she doesn't take kindly to being fact-checked; she was proclaiming a Dallas shopowner who was beaten to death by rioters died yesterday. My link fact-checking that garnered a "you don't know how to read" from her. Yes, too far gone.

the second season of Dear White People had a Candace Owens grifter character played by Tessa Thompson. It was good because she plays the protaganist in the movie so there's a scene with her confronting her movie character in the show about her selling out.

lol the "Dallas shopowner" was a) not a shopowner, but just a random citizen, and b) a piece of shit who charged protesters with a fucking machete. fuck that guy and anybody who cried over him.

the same dude has videos or pics of him with a sword, and it's one of those goofy-ass lord of the rings replicas

he is not trained in the sword

one of my Republican friends, who actually is the compassionate type and not a raging lunatic, even fell for the Dallas shopowner shit. when one of my other friends shared a link clarifying what really happened, she thanked her, yet five minutes later, said she was sobbing all day, saying "nobody intervened to stop or help him", as if she had forgotten hearing five minutes earlier that the man was a raging lunatic who attempted to inflict harm in a crowd and cut a skateboarder's arm.

I suspect it's less malice and more she still falls for viral bullshit too much (as do a lot of my liberal friends, tbf)

my dad texted me this morning: "Now Antifa wants to cancel Paw Patrol! They've gone too far!" - now, I know he's half joking, but this clearly means he's watching some FOX/OANN shit right?

paw patrol is copaganda for kids I hope they cancel it

Well, only one of the dogs is a police dog, and he's not involved in every mission - the water dog handles water-related stuff, the construction dog handles construction-related stuff, etc. That's not too far off from the defund-the-police goal of reducing the overreliance on cops in too many different kinds of situations.

I’m somewhat in hysterics that people are taking the Paw Patrol stuff at face value

They're good dogs Brent

Found on FB: All Dogs Go To Heaven Except for Those Class Traitors in the Paw Patrol pic.twitter.com/kJWyWQ1cQx

— cat benatar (@feliskathryn) June 9, 2019

HOW IS ANYONE KEEPING A STRAIGHT FACE!? Ventura County Board of Supervisors meeting. #shesings pic.twitter.com/Bkw3xcPxVA

— Katie (@Katiehugscats) June 16, 2020