Don’t let them have any peace with those opinions. My mother became a cop when I was a kid and she went from tree hugging hippie to loud and proud racist so fast. It took YEARS of arguing and fighting every time she said something racist before I could finally get through to her. Don’t let up. My sister got sucked into transphobic bs too and she finally stopped talking about it after getting a lot of pushback over a couple of years. My husband got sucked into the alt right pipeline in the late 2010s after a lifetime of being hard left. That also took a couple years of never letting anything slide and fighting about every stupid video he watched. Don’t give up on your family and cut them out, either, though, please. I know it’s tempting but I feel we all have the responsibility to pull our loved ones out of the cult. It’s the only way for society to move forward. It’s hard. I know. I’ve done it three times.

For me, what has sort of worked it pointing out that both sides of the news are getting basic facts wrong - things where there shouldn’t even be a debate. If the news was true, you could watch any channel - it would all be the same. Instead, we get things like one side claiming murders are up and the other claiming murders are down. Our current journalism is a failure of a system designed to drive engagement/viewership/clicks rather than convey knowledge.

I also find it helps to remind them that we’re Americans first, party second. The other side isn’t stupid, they’re just getting a completely different set of ‘news’.

My parents are not MAGA (They are more “centre-left”), but I do feel very sorry for anyone who has to deal with parents like that. I have other family members who support MAGA, and I simply don’t talk to them, because I cannot look them in their eyes, knowing that they support pure evil. Their Facebook profiles make my blood boil, but I try my best just to watch the meme my father sent me, so I can carry on with my day, without it being ruined by my Neo-Nazi fascist family members. We aren’t even American, but you know the saying by now - “When America sneezes, the whole world catches a cold”.

How old are your parents? If they are retired, that might explain a lot. People say you become broad minded, wise and knowledgeable if you have ample time to read and educate yourself, instead of working more (that’s why many people say society’s obsession with work is a distraction tool to prevent people thinking that the system is rigged). However, it also goes the inverse towards extreme radicalisation.

I don’t have a practical advise to give to de-redicalise your parents, but typically radicalisation is not just you have too much time to consume so many contents, but also loneliness is a factor which most people overlook. Hannah Arendt made a conclusion in her book, Origins of Totalitarianism, that loneliness is a precursor to totalitarianism. The far right (and far left as well) sell the snake oil that only they can bring people together again.

A lot of old people who are lonely are vulnerable to extremist propaganda because their minds are not in the right place. This is something to consider imo when you have to interact with your parents. Genuine human connection is the missing ingredient. A friend of mine has also become far right. He moved to London many years ago, and my guess is that because big cities tend to be individualistic, this made him lonely. The far right rabbithole created a sense of togetherness and purpose for listless individuals.

Edit: wording

You can love someone and things dont work out. Family or otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brainwashing_of_My_Dad?wprov=sfla1

In this particular case, the answer was to - quite literally - turn off the TV.

I don’t imagine this is a good option for many, but shutting off the incoming flow of hate can make a difference.

We only see each other two or three times a year and have mutually agreed not to discuss politics since the unfortunate Christmas dinner of 2016, just after the brexit referendum, when I’d had a few drinks and rose to the bait. And they always liked to bait me, knowing I was involved with direct action and am pretty hard left. They got more blowback than they anticipated. I love them, I can even understand their positions, but they’re not going to change and neither am I, so we just don’t discuss it anymore.

Cut off, and I realized just how much toxicity they brought into my house. No regrets. I’ve heard from others that without other people to blame their problems on they eventually turned on each other and are divorcing. The family is now safe from them.

I cut my Mom off. Dad was pretty deep in it too, he’d voted for Regan and Nixon, but he died before I couldn’t take it anymore.

I’m lucky. My parents flipped in 2016. My dad became a Democrat at 60 years old and hasn’t looked back.

I was talking to him the other day and said, “Sometimes I wish you were still Republican, so I’d have someone to yell at.” Like it’s frustrating in a way, because I want to shake these people, like, how can you be this shitty? My dad laughed and said: “Sorry, it turns out I have morals.”

Meanwhile my mother-in-law is still a conservative but refuses to talk about it, and it’s not my place to push too hard. She’ll be cut off eventually, when we have to flee the regime, but for now I point out the insane shit that’s going on and she just giggles nervously, because she’s incapable of confrontation. If she were my mother she’d have been cut off by now.

It’s a shame, because in every other respect she’s a wonderful lady. She always welcomed me into her family, and she’s such an active, loving grandmother. Except for the part where she sold out her grandchildren’s future because minorities make her nervous, of course.

I’m from the UK so my answer will be mostly UK centric.

My dad has become very right-wing in recent years. He supports Reform UK, he uncritically supports everything Israel does, he thinks that refugee boats should be sunk by the Navy without regard for the lives of the people on board. He hates LGBTQ+ people and thinks same sex marriage should be outlawed. He hates Islam and Muslims, and thinks that all mosques in the UK should be shut down. He wants the death penalty to return and for it to be applied very frequently. He thinks protestors and activists should be shot and killed by the police if they cause even minor disturbance. He thinks COVID was a hoax and that the vaccines are dangerous. He thinks Trump is great, except for his stance on Russia (my dad despises Putin).

It’s very sad how far down the rabbit hole he’s gone. I always thought of my dad as an intelligent man, because he was pretty accomplished academically and was always interested in science and technology. He always put logic before dogma and emotion.

But the shit he’s been absorbing on the internet over the past 10 or so years has changed him entirely. He believes every far-right conspiracy going, and has a violent attitude towards everything, seemingly thinking that everyone that doesn’t conform to right-wing standards should be harmed.

I don’t bring up politics anymore, but if the topic does come up somehow, I will tell him why he’s talking bullshit. In my opinion, social media and online propaganda has done a serious number on the psyche of older people. They fall for every lie hook, line, and sinker. It’s made them fucking insane.

the world is learning how important a healthy independent media cycle is, right now as it is going extinct with no sign of returning. it’s the thing that defines all of the average person’s opinions and values.

It weighs heavily on me, to say the least. It’s nearly impossible to have an even slightly tangentially political conversation with them that doesn’t leave me deeply disturbed and/or infuriated, so I pretty much avoid it altogether. Now the deepest conversation I allow is “how’s the weather” and “what are you having for dinner tonight?”, and that’s sad.

But it’s absolutely the case that engaging with them on political stuff is destructive to my psyche. And even worse, they have a way of turning otherwise entirely non-political topics into something political. These are not the people who raised me or the values they raised me with. And there’s no real logical consistency to any of it other than it’s definitely going to be in agreement with whatever the latest opinions are on Fox News and Facebook.

As a kid, the only particularly “conservative” view point they shared was on immigration. They absolutely believed the whole “Mexicans are taking our jobs” bullshit. I remember even asking them why they aren’t mad at their bosses for giving their jobs to the “Mexicans” and never getting a satisfactory answer for why that was given a pass.

And then from that one little common thread, the rest of the conservative/Republican agenda has wormed its way in. So, naturally as the conservative agenda morphed into a more fascist agenda, so have my parents’ beliefs. With age and health related mental declines, these ideals have become more cemented. These are people who will never forget or forgive Democrats for NAFTA, but also believe that Republicans wanted universal healthcare for all yet Democrats gave us Obamacare instead. They grew up growing and selling weed to make ends meet, and yet still believe it should be illegal and people deserve to be in jail for it. They have a gay kid but believe gay marriage is wrong, because the Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman, and the government shouldn’t be involved at all.

They honestly buy into the idea that police officers and pastors are infallible. If someone is arrested, it’s because they are guilty of something. No pastor would ever sexually abuse a child, they are a pastor after all. If the president says something is true, it must be true. And again, none of this is how they raised me or the ideals they expressed when I was growing up, so it’s definitely like living in some kind of bizarre reality that’s tough to come to terms with.

Anytime they bring up politics, I just tell them we can’t discuss it.

If they press the matter, I say the same thing, except the second time I add: “…because it’s going to make me hate you.”

They’ve been borrowing my car to drive for DoorDash since April 2024 and still haven’t figured out that this government they voted for is really fucking shitty.