To think my mum has fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole and I can't get her out

My brother in law is up on all the new conspiracy theories - so new no one else knows about them. He is coming over for a pre Christmas family lunch for the extended family and he asked if I am doing anything besides turkey - turns out he has some conspiracy theory about turkey and cranberry sauce and won't be touching it!

It's true, but those of us who have been "educated" are also, the evidence suggests, not above such brainwashing and propaganda efforts. In fact, we are MORE likely to find ourselves inducted into cults than the general population. Why? Precisely because we assume we are 'too intelligent' to be silly enough to be caught up in cults We assume that our 'questioning' has better answers and solutions than found by mere uneducated masses. We assume we are more enlightened than the average, and that assumption makes us MORE susceptible to gaslighting.

So I think people should be VERY careful with that assumption, as there is plenty of evidence that refutes it. A university education is no guarantee that you are miraculously immune to propaganda; I get why people think it should be, but the opposite is very often the case.

I'm not conflating the two, you are. The grooming gangs aren't refugees.

Your ramped up hysteria over your own conflation shows who you are, to use your rather ridiculous phrase.

Does she know he served time for beating up a female cop? What a patriot.

My mums the same but the other way, massive lefty, convinced the trump shooting was fake, everyone is thick and racist now, constantly getting into pointless arguments with racists on Facebook. You have my sympathy.

Except the borders were not wide open in the US.

It took Trump moths to overtake Bidens monthly number of deportations. It was not until he got ICE working at full pace.

And yes, Trump torpedoed the bi-partisan border bill by threatening to have GOP congressman primaried, using his MAGA power.

No they came here legally under fhe refugee act. im not splitting hairs. I’m stating facts. The reason we have this problem is because we’re not interpreting the law as it’s meant to be. We need more hair splitting. I also said the first safe country. They need not travel the length & breadth of Europe to make sure they’re safe.

So this really is misinformation isn't it? You have posted this with snark but no analysis.

We all know, even the people that produce that site page, that the boats can't launch in high wind and big seas.

So what exactly are you saying? Are you deliberately polarising the issue by posting misleading statistics?

I will say it again, whatever you think about mass migration, for or against, it's led to half the country hating the other half and vice versa, in a way I have never seen before in my life, and as the numbers are increasing this is only going to get worse.

I wouldn't take talk of civil war too lightly, I've already lived through one war on these shores, it's not as far fetched as you think.

Trump was the opposition. He held no power over the decisions Biden made other than that of public opinion. Biden did have the borders wide open. It wasn’t a secret that trump exposed it was widely known that the Mexican border was weak. Same with here. People can see the change in demographics & culture in our city centres. We aren’t blind or stupid. Farage isn’t acting like a tourist board for illegal migrants. He categorically says he doesn’t want them here. It’s not exactly rolling out the red carpet & encouraging them over with promsies of unlimited free housing and food. Which is exactly what past governments have promised with their actions. I think having a robust opposition pointing out the flaws in how our country is run is paramount to its success. To think they should shut up because they’re advertising how easy it is makes zero sense. They already know. You know who didn’t know. Us. We didn’t, we didn’t know the extent it was happening & the perks in which they receive. They get access to dentists which by all accounts is quite the luxury nowadays to most hardworking tax payers

Oh come on. You are splitting hairs.

The original point of origin is the country they are escaping. They would need to travel across territories to get away. That's like saying ALL Ukrainian people who are refugees can only seek asylum from their direct neighbour countries.

Don't be obtuse.

They aren’t illegal if you’re travelling directly from a war torn country. They come here via France so anyone coming here not directly from a war torn country is indeed an illegal immigrant. They have the right to claim asylum in the first safe country they enter.

But what was Trump saying when Biden was in the house ?

That's what I mean.

Of course, when he got in, he claimed the border were closed.

And Farage, he yells open borders when the tories or labour are are at the helm, but if he gets in, then he will say all closed.

It's also why they feed the likes of " the great replacement theory with dog whistles. They feed the conspiracies.

Recall Trump during Bidens term. When he sabotaged a bill targeting immigration. Trump wanted the glory. He wanted Bidens numbers to be bad for his re-election campaign. Link here:

You can probably guess why Trump is dead set against the border bill - ABC News (go.com)

Clear language will fix everything?

We have 200 languages spoken by 14 million immigrants (estimates very, no-one actually knows how many people are in Britain)

Clear language? Not a hope in hells chance ever. That ship has sailed.

Your post is a good example why words and facts matter.

People keep mixing up “refugee,” “asylum seeker,” “immigrant,” and “illegal immigrant” as if they’re all the same thing, and that confusion is exactly what drags these debates into panic territory.

A refugee is someone who has already been assessed and recognised as needing protection.
An asylum seeker is someone asking for that protection whose claim hasn’t been decided yet.
An immigrant is someone who moves by choice for work, study, or family.
An “illegal” or irregular migrant is someone who enters or stays without the required visa — but seeking asylum, even by irregular entry, is not illegal under international law.

When people roll these categories into one blob — “they’re all just immigrants” or “they’re all illegal” — it muddies the waters. It erases the legal distinctions and hands an easy platform to politicians like Trump and Farage who rely on that confusion to paint everyone with the worst possible brush.

And the same goes for the “boatloads of young men coming to prey on white women” trope that gets thrown around. Yes, a lot of asylum seekers are men — because in many conflict zones they’re the first ones targeted for forced recruitment, imprisonment, or execution. Families often send one member ahead; it’s not a conspiracy, it’s survival. Crime data doesn’t show refugees as more dangerous than locals, and the idea that men arriving from conflict zones come here with sexual motives is an old recycled panic narrative used historically against almost every migrant group: Irish, Italians, Jews, Asians, Eastern Europeans, and now Middle Eastern and African men.

If the real concern is safety, then have a conversation about policing, sentencing, prevention, and community integration — not vague fears attached to broad categories of people most of us have never met.

Clear language doesn’t solve every issue, but it stops the debate being driven by fear and slogans. If we want a grown-up discussion about borders, safety, and fairness, step one is using the right words and ditching the myths that keep being repeated as if they’re facts.

Nah @Birthdaysocks is right. The fact that you blankety call people who come here illegally refugees is proving her point. And ironic in a way

How do we know some of these refugees aren’t the perpetrators of conflicts? We do not know who these people are.

And putting forward a slightly different view. I’m the child of a 1st gen migrant. I’m sick of hearing the horrifying stories coming from my country and others in the region. By allowing any Tom, Dick and Harry here, we’re denying the people who truly deserve to be here a chance at life and would be so grateful to be here

The judges and the members of the public who defend criminals even when they show us who they are!

I’m so sick of the suicidal empathy.

That makes no sense. Trump always said don’t come because if you do you’ll be out. He literally stopped illegal crossings within a week of taking office, your argument just doesn’t stand up to fact. The border is sealed tight & he’s deporting people daily. It’s no shock this has happened as he said it would do. The democrats were doing nothing to secure their borders & the facts support that, pleading with people not to come is idiocy & such a dumb policy that wreaks of weakness.

I don’t like Farage but the fact he’s possibly the influential politician we’ve had in recent times is the fault of the governments not the general population to keep voting the same people in & expecting a different outcome is lunacy. We need alternatives.

Fears confirmed? What are you talking about? Farage caused a problem and it’s difficult to fix it. The Tories couldn’t, Labour are trying but not achieving much, Reform won’t be able to either, but they’ll tank the economy and ruin all our lives into the mix, particularly as women.
Asylum seekers aren’t even our biggest concern. The only people who are obsessed with it are the ones suckling on Farage/Putin’s teat by reading the Daily Heil and watched GB Lies.

Yup. Wanting the opposition party to fail is an unfortunate feature of confrontational democratic systems. Likes of Farage and Trump play it well.

For Farage and Trump to get in, they need people to think things are really bad. So they try to do all they can to make things look bad.

While the UK government, Tories or Labour, are off doing negotiations to try to slow illegal immigration, for example by trying to get the message out " don't try to come to the UK illegally", Farage and the his ilk are out broadcasting " come to Britain, the doors are open and there is free 4 star hotels for all".

Same as Trump done. While Harris was in South America, doing radio interviews to say don't try and come, Trump and his pals at Fox were yelling " The doors are open".

Farage needs as many illegal folk as he can get, because his message is that only he can fix it.

He done the same at the EU. He yelled all the time about EU fisheries policy. So the EU put him on the fisheries committee, and he did not attend a single meeting.

Farage does not want to fix things. He is setting fires, while dangling his limp hosepipe, " Look here, see wot I got".

No idea what " too much BBC and Guardian" means sorry.

And double sorry, cos my post was aimed at who I quoted :-)

A reference to another thread.

But yeah. In context, "brainwashing" is a word used an awful lot by conspiracists. It can be a good indicator to identify one.

Too much BBC and Guardian

So... to be clear... you want anyone that disagrees with conspiracy theorists, that you have arbitrarily declared to be 'leftist', to provide evidence that:

• Illegal immigrants AREN'T amassing an army that will rise up in 2027 and trigger a civil war, that the military already know about - I would ask someone that believes this to provide evidence that they are. It's not on anyone else to provide an evidence-based argument against a non-evidence based claim. If you or anyone else can't prove they are, there's no need for me or anyone else to prove they're not. And if you or anyone else can't prove they are, it's not something that should be put out there as fact, because it scares old ladies like the OP's mum. Why do people want to scare old ladies?
• The people arriving on boats aren't asylum seekers - since 2018, 65% of arrivals have been genuine asylum seekers. The numbers become less clear as time goes on, because the last government stopped processing arrivals and just sat them in hotels, and we had a problem with illegal immigration from Albania that drove the numbers up but that has been largely resolved. It is estimated that, at the moment, anywhere between 80 and 90% of arrivals are genuine asylum seekers. This doesn't mean we should accept them - separate conversation - but it does deflate the argument that they are all here for economic reasons. They're not - they're desperate people.
• The UK is the rape capital of the world - tried to debunk that earlier, no one really seems to care, facts getting in the way of feelings is inconvenient. It should be noted that, even if we were the rape capital of the world, the data being used to support that claim does not link the rapes to immigration, legal or otherwise. That's a leap that has been made by the people spreading the total nonsense - and, in that entirely fictitious universe where we are indeed the rape capital of the world, I'd want to see the evidence that it's immigrants driving that statistic, rather than dark mutterings about incompatible cultures and individual cases of horrific crimes being committed by immigrants being used to tar the whole population, because what I DO know is that the data we have on the criminality of minority populations is very shaky, based on census information which foreign nationals don't engage with, and no one bandying about wild claims adjusts any of the data for age: https://news.sky.com/story/fact-checking-farage-are-foreigners-more-likely-than-britons-to-commit-sexual-offences-13407029 Again, when information is put out like this, with no evidence base, it scares people. Why do people want to scare their friends, neighbours and families? I'm fairly risk averse - if I think there's a danger, I'll alert people. But I don't just willy nilly spread bullshit without checking the danger out first. Who does that?

Are there any other points you'd like me to make a counter argument for? I'm assuming you've already discounted the international law-based counter-argument for 'France is a safe country'...

The Times (that well-known leftie rag) recently did a good video on how, far from being lawless, the UK has actually got safer over the last few years, with serious crimes reducing: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOtxN8aCDyJ/ The same link also explores the foreign nationals/sex crime myth.

Would you like me to explain why it is statistically invalid to use the case of, say, a woman raped by immigrants on Brighton beach as a way to suggest that all immigrants are a threat to women? Even if a different immigrant also assaulted a girl in Birmingham? This link helps to explain. It also usefully describes why correlation doesn't equal causation: www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp89xfr/revision/1

We could discuss why immigration isn't the reason public services are on their knees - it does increase demand, but immigrants are more likely to pay tax as they are more likely to be working age, so in theory more immigrants should equal more money for public services. It doesn't though, because the pandemic and subsequent Russian war wiped out our economy after a decade of ideological austerity that had cut public services to the bone. Immigration isn't the reason folk can't see their GP or whatever.

Anything else you would like addressing?

I'm not going to apologise for making decisions based on data rather than anecdote, fear, feelings or propaganda, and I don't believe I am part of some sort of exclusive 'intelligentsia' and better able to think than anyone else.

It is precisely because I know I don't know everything that I take the time to look at the source data.

Aye.

This is what happens when folk don't do forced singing of traditional hymns.

And all that bad parenting stuff has an impact. Not wanting kids to do nativity and the like. Tut tut.

Anyway, I always find the word " brainwashed" a trifle strong.

It's a word conspiracists use a lot. It invokes images of a spinning helix and confusing white noise, eyelids pried open with matchsticks.