Husband has got extreme views

I think you need to have the well-being of your children's minds very much at the forefront of yours.

You come across as thoughtful and considered, @UnsureDifferences - and like you, I too would struggle as to why I would react viscerally to a conspiracy theory belief/beliefs but not to religious ones.

Several observations:

1. I'm told by my sister - one of whose intelligent and successful in-laws has now become a conspiracy theorist - that when you go to the dark side, it tends not just to be just one conspiracy theory you subscribe to but a whole cluster;

2. given that you're otherwise happy with the relationship - apart from this red flag elephant in the room - I would suggest relationship counselling rather than heading to LTB;

3. I don't knowingly subscribe to any conspiracy theories. However, given some things that have happened in recent enough history I would have dismissed as wild conspiracy theories were it not acknowledged they were true and constituting some disgraceful episodes (eg US deliberately infecting black men with syphilis as part of a medical experiment; the fake polio vaccine programme in Pakistan as part of the efforts to flush out Bin Laden), I get how people can find conspiracy theories actually not that preposterous;

4. there is a difference, I think, between meeting someone for the first time who has conspiracy theories and where you shy away from because of that fundamental mismatch. And someone you know quite well who then subscribes to a conspiracy theory where you can get over it. I am still close with an in-law who believes homeopathy is a real thing, outside a placebo effect, and still regard her as intelligent and credible, despite her belief in homeopathy. Ditto a friend who believes covid was a conspiracy of sorts;

5. finally, there is a difference, I think, between subscribing to an 'extreme' conspiracy theory that is not inherently evil (eg flat earthers etc) and subscribing to an 'extreme view'. When you referenced 'extreme views' by your DH in your thread's heading, I was thinking like extreme racism or supporting the abolition of the age of consent. Which would be a LTB. So I have terminated a friendship with someone I've known for many years because I find their stated view that Israel should exterminate all Palestinians in Gaza (kill, not 'ethnically cleanse') so repugnant.

It doesn't sound like your DH is in the racist/Nazi/genocide camp - so I think the question may be whether you can sever his current flat earther tendencies from the man you love or whether your view of him is irrevocably changed and there's no going back

Just get rid - honestly, life is just too short to waste on this prize nutter.

This isn't about a difference of views - this is about sanity vs not sanity and you have your children to consider.

My guess is that the need to feel like someone is in control is so great that that surpasses everything. So if everything's a bit rubbish, it must be part of someone's plan. Not a million miles away from 'it's all part of God's plan' I suppose.

@Slimtoddy maybe. In all fairness I don't have many close friends who are religious and the ones I know who are have discovered religion in later life (or reapplied themselves to a previously lapsed family faith) and are self-aware enough to understand that they need to approach with care in a secular society.

But people with faith seem to understand that while they may privately believe themselves to be "right", its not acceptable to go around telling everyone else they are wrong.

Conspiracy theorists, or people with extreme political views (I see them as part of the same tendency) seem to have this sense of zeal that not only are they right but they need to constantly assert to other people all the time that they are wrong and misguided and just need to "see the light".

I could possibly tolerate this in someone if they were able to keep it as one side of their personality and be self-aware about it. But all the people I've met in this category can talk about very little else. It just becomes incredibly tiring and boring.

In my experience some religious people don't compartmentalise their beliefs. Perhaps I am unusual in that I have a few religious friends who to my mind are very similar to my conspiracy theory friend in how they engage. I have other friends who I didn't find out for years that they had a faith so I do know the type you mean.

I think the difference between belief in conspiracy theories and belief in religion is that by and large people with faith accept that their faith is a parallel aspect of their life. Even if they are fundamentalist, they compartmentalise it. It's something which sustains them spiritually and guides aspects of their life and sometimes they proselytize about it but they don't see it as a worldview which underpins everything, or if they do they tend to keep it to themselves.

Conspiracy theorists in my experience want to talk about their "theories" all the time and feel on some sort of mission to push them at people all the time and without any sort of respect for the other person's intellectual agency or emotional space. It's draining to be around, partly because its impossible to talk about anything else and also because its very hard to argue with the warped logic.

I personally couldn't deal with this in an intimate relationship. I've just cut ties with a friend who did a 180 degree volte face recently over the space of about a year from having been very left wing to being a hard right "anti woke" crusader (triggered mainly by the trans debate and elements of what's happening in the Middle East). Overnight she went from being someone with strong views but with whom it was possible to have a healthy debate, to being someone who would rant at you about the trans movement and how it was an attempt by men to kill women for hours without any sense of self-awareness.

It's often said that conspiracy theorists are all thick. Some are, for sure, and some conspiracy theories (moon landings/flat earth/lizard people) are palpably bullshit. Others are superficially more plausible but allied to the same tendency of relentless intellectual arrogance. But I don't think its stupidity, it's an obsessional desire to be right all the time, to put yourself and your views above all other people and to feel this messianic, paranoid sense of having to believe stuff which you know other people find hard to tolerate. I don't think its consistent with healthy relationships.

I can't speak for all adherents to every religion. Of course there are many who are rigid and uncompromising. That doesn't mean "the religion" is such or that the holy book IS one thing or another. It's a very interesting area of study ...to what extent is a personal faith ones own interpretation of a particular set of ideas and how far can you go from the approved doctrine before tipping into "error".

Yep. We have many an interesting debate.

Ok.

You're bang on the money. He should have informed himself of what life was really like in days before we had a police force as we've known it in our lifetime. Your comment reminded me of a book, 'The Maul and the Pear Tree', about a series of murders in 1811, which gives a vivid sense of conditions then. Scary times indeed.

I have already written to my MP and got nowhere.
Happy to be outside town hall/council though.

@RhaenysRocks My experience growing up in a religious family/society exposed me to quite rigid factual thinking around Christianity. I saw very little of the nuanced, intellectually humble approach you describe. People I knew believed as literal fact that Jesus existed, that God existed, that Jesus was the son of God, that the Bible was a factual historical account. They were presented and believed as absolute facts - not up for debate. And I saw the consequences of this approach to religion. Admittedly I think the approach in the UK is more nuanced.

So you are there to intimidate, or you don’t care, or you believe in tit for tat, intimidating all the residents because of individuals…

You could write to your MP. Demonstrate outside yourTown Hall.

Why do you think these events are planned outside the hotels rather than outside the agencies in control?

Some of us find it easier to get to the buildings rather than Parliament as they are local to us: that is the whole point.

No one wants to scare the individuals inside. I'd prefer anything to be elsewhere for that reason. But many people there - or their kids - have found the immigrants to be intimidating previously. And the protests started at the hotels because locals were protesting at a resident at the Bell attacking a teenage girl.

Then why are they outside the buildings where migrants are housed rather than outside parliament?

Of course I realise that the majority of demonstrators are not set on homicidal arson, but gathering and chanting outside the accommodation targets the migrants awaiting assessment and must obviously be intimidating.

That is turning a political opinion into intimidating behaviour.

Do you march on hotels and stand outside chanting at the occupants?

And sometimes there are marched on Parliament. A couple of years ago I was in Central London when R Wing groups were ‘defending the Cenotaph’. Against what I’m not sure, but all the stations were full of men in aggressive groups, blocking roads, grunting chants at non white families. Didn’t make me feel they were defending or protecting my country.

I don't agree with this at all. It's not really the views that are the problem it is the accompanying obsession and the 'no debate' attitude that is the real issue. It's like two people of different political persuasions discussing the relative merits of the parties they support. Each knows that they won't change the other's mind, but once the discussion is over, they can think, talk about and engage in other things together without rancour, because at the end of it, politics only plays a small part in their daily lives. However, with the conspiracy theorists, their ideas engulf them and colour every aspect of their lives, the way they live and how they communicate with others.

My friend's adult son has gone down this path and conspiracies are the only thing he can think about or talk about and he is always coming up with new and outlandish theories in relation to things that are happening nationally and internationally. He won't brook any argument and becomes angry when people don't agree with him. I think he has obvious mental health issues that are exacerbated by the fact that he lives alone and WFH and is thus quite isolated. His views and attitudes also make it difficult for him to make friends with anyone who doesn't share his obsessions.

I certainly couldn't live with someone like this OP - it's impossible to have a proper relationship with someone who prioritises their crazy theories over everyone and everything else. I would suggest to him that he must see a doctor and try to unpick what's really behind all of this. If he won't, or can't, then I really would consider leaving him as soon as is viable, because without some sort of intervention this really won't get any better.

It depends on how you define God. As an atheist, I acknowledge i can't prove there isn't a God(depending how 'god' is defined). You can't prove a negative. So of course i may be wrong.

On the other hand, you can.prove the earth is round. And the Bible is not the literal truth - though if it is an allegory then literal truth isn't relevant.

Life is too short to live like this.

Leave him.

Ha, that's brilliant!

It was a bit hard to read your image so I looked it up

https://conspiracychart.com/

Sounds like he’s reached the, “Detached from reality” section of the Conspiracy Pyramid, sadly. I’m not sure even a psychiatrist could get through to people who are that far gone. I couldn’t live with it.

For heavens sake. It doesn't follow that because some of them 'are prepared to set fire to buildings that have people inside', everyone on the march does. I'd be there saying 'stop that', phoning 999 on them, and/or avoiding them. The others ARE there for a political opinion.

Almost no GC people are joining baying mobs against trans people!

You have no point. Both believe in fiction. There is no evidence for a flat earth, there is no evidence for any gods. We can see the world is round, we can see there is not "god". Both are at least the same. But I think one is worse because it uses that fiction to drive hatred and war.

I was commenting on a PP asking another PP (an "atheist RS teacher") whether their colleagues knew s/he was atheist.