How to handle my son's troubling far-right views and online influence

you need to find someone who is expert in countering extremism and expert in autism. Autistic people are over represented in extremist groups. Probably due to finding community groups line and rigid, inflexible and black and white thinking.

If freedom means anything at all it means being able to tell people things that they may not wish to hear.
George Orwell.

It’s an advert technically but I found this quite moving and it made me do my own ancestry and DNA test (he might find his own history interesting?)

I am a pale (blue!) redhead with green eyes. I’m also 6% west African. Which doesn’t seem a lot but it’s my history - my GG grandfather (would have to check exactly how many great…) was a black slave who came to Scotland and married a white woman here

I agree with history education. However his views seem to be that the UK is a white Christian country - you can't force him to have an appreciation of multi-culturalism.
Also in learning the history of Bethnal Green and Whitechapel would that include leaning about the indigenous people, the Cockneys, who have been pushed out of the area altogether?

Putting aside the online issues, as other people have addressed this, if he like history you could watch Black and British with David Oloysoga. Shows v positively that there have been black people in the UK for hundreds of years

Racists won’t get far in the Catholic Church. Attendees are very high % Filipino, Indian and Eastern European.

I think people are a little disingenuous generally in both this and the thread about working women. I don’t want to derail OP’s thread but yes women have always worked, it’s just if we’re talking specifically about married women and paid work- very low levels of women worked prior to WW2. I’m also dubious about the historian on here who failed to mention the marriage bar… But anyway.

Also to the poster who mentioned a book on London being multicultural, London has been for hundreds of years but it’s always an outlier just as it’s currently only 50% white compared to, say, Edinburgh which is 85% white.

I’m saying this because I don’t want OP to give her DS more disinformation. He’s accurate about certain things. But yes, teenagers have always enjoyed being controversial. I’m half Jewish and went through a stage of being utterly fascinated by the Nazis, I was a Hitler expert at one stage.

Thanks for this. There are a high number of people who don’t realise this.

Jesus!! Glad he was too incompetent to make an effective device.

So sort of meet in the middle? Like, Hitler was only sort of bad?

I know a lot of ND people, the vast majority of whom, if not all, are quite left.

The vegan analogy is basically nonsense so I don't think it has disproved anything. A 14 year old who has got sucked into a Hitler rabbit hole and thinks women shouldn't be allowed to work might have intelligence in some ways - maybe he's great at Maths or something - but he has fallen into something very stupid which he's unable to question and criticise. That's a failing of intelligence. And if you don't think that flat vs round earthers is parallel to this situation then why did you bring it up in the first place? I'm referring to your comment on societal outcomes never having scientific backing, which seems unclear. Obviously, Nazis were searching for scientific proof of racial superiority (which does not exist). They did claim the societal outcomes they enforced had scientific backing, however, and likewise you have racists now who would like to claim there is a science to racial hierarchy, just as you have misogynists very tiresomely quoting flimsy 'evolutionary psychology' to claim that women are biologically unequipped to have equal rights to men. There is plenty of psuedo-science out there which people use to back up their preferred societal outcomes. It's based on bad understanding and wilful ignorance. Supporting Hitler and the removal of women's rights are not intelligent and valid positions to take that we can just attribute to a difference of opinion. Hate speech is illegal - that means that by law it is not considered worthy of listening to. There are some extreme positions which it is never acceptable to endorse or engage with.

First of all OP I would like to applaud you as you are facing up to the disturbing racist and sexist views that your son is expressing. Many people would try to bury their heads in the sand and ignore them. You aren't - you want to address them.

Please dont listen to people who try to defend these views. As you say they are troubling. You states he
*wants the UK to be all white
*thinks women need to stay at home
*doodles pictures of Hitler with worrying slogans

You know this is unacceptable. You don't need any 'facts' to understand that. It comes from valuing every person regardless of their ethnicity or sex and accepting that mass genocide and nazi ideology is wrong.

Stop 'gently challenging' or debating history and start explaining why his views are offensive to you every time he expresses them.

If he says he wants the UK to be white explain that people's citizenship is not dependent on ethnicity and that people of all ethnicities make valuable contributions to society. Talk about how wrong it would be to force people of different ethnicities to leave the UK. If this was my child I would talk about all the people of colour in our circle we value (friends, teachers, sports coaches etc.)

If he says women should stay at home explain that women are adults who can make their own choices and it is not up to him to make those choices for them. Women should be free to work outside the home if they choose to. Talk about all the women you know and the contributions they make at home and in the wider community.

If he doodles pictures or expresses views that are supportive of Hitler or Nazis. Explain about the holocaust and how jews and other groups were murdered. Show him pictures of the atrocities and explain how people were killed.

Challenge him every time. Do not let him shrug off responsibility by saying he is 'joking' or 'being controversal' etc. He needs to understand that what he says, writes and draws has meaning and impacts others.

You can't control everything, but you can communicate your values directly and relentlessly.

I would restrict access to social media.

He's not a young adult. He's 14.

One of your grandfathers and your mother's first husband both went to prison and you're bemoaning immigration? Honestly, you couldn't make this up.

Well, given his response to the recent war I don't think Pope Leo would in any way approve of the stuff your DS is embracing currently.

More importantly, what are you actually going to do about the free access this 14 year old seems to have to dark corners of the internet?

You should let his school safeguarding lead know and ask for him to be referred to Prevent.

Doodling pictures about Hitler? OP’s son seems to be in actual neo-nazi theory, which his comments about 1940ies gender roles (so presumably also access to abortion, contraception, the criminalisation of homosexuality etc.) would support.

I also believe in free speech and tolerance. But there are limits to what I can tolerate and or engage with on a good faith basis.

He's being radicalised, either deliberately targeted/ groomed by far right groups or as a result of algorithms - the result is the same. This kind of thing isn't within the normal range of pushing boundaries or a teenager rebelling against their parents' beliefs. It is a serious safeguarding concern and needs acting on. Op's ds is even more susceptible due to additional needs, his autism in particular is likely to mean he's researching all of this quite obsessively and getting in quite deep. If he were my son (and i do have a 15yo ds), I'd be putting in a report to Prevent now.

https://actearly.uk/

What is your point?

It’s an African country. It’s not like the black people were imported. They were there already.

It is the white people who colonised the country. Of course they should then expect to be in the minority.

What is your point?

Black people should not be the majority in their land of origin?

White people should expect to be over represented in countries that are not of their origin?

What is your point?

How utterly depressing.

https://mjhnyc.org/blog/autism-and-disability-in-nazi-vienna/
Good point. He could start with this.

The 'round earthers' had evidence to back up their position

Not to their detractors they hadn't. Their detractors quoted the Bible etc. Their detractors were the majority who considered them blasphemous.

This is my point. You are arguing from the position of a side you believe in at every opportunity. In this case you take the minority view which is right with hindsight. On other topics you're taking the majority view.

edgelords do not have scientific backing for their racist theories

Societal outcomes never have scientific validity. Do you understand what the scientific method is or just use the words to bolster your argument?

Failing to listen to anyone who thinks differently to you is a failure of intelligence, but so is giving space and credence to people spouting bigotry. I can listen to people on the other end of the political spectrum to me and appreciate their intellect even if I fundamentally disagree with their viewpoint. That doesn't extend to extremists, racists and misogynists.

You're committing another logic error. You've classified 3 things as "wrong-think" and won't listen to any such views, rather than listen and disagree. By definition you're not listening to people who think differently to you - you label them as too stupid to have intellect.

You're entitled to your views and to dismiss anyone else's. Just don't dress it up as being they're unintelligent - you can say they're wrong. You can say you can't understand how they think that way - that's valid. But please recognise your own prejudices.

And whether or not you fear "vegans" is irrelevant. I just gave you an example to counter your view that if you fear what they might do collectively, you must hate them individually. Your assertion is disproved.

I’d personally take the hard route and remind him that Hitler and the Nazi regime systematically targeted individuals with disabilities, including those like your son with autism, as part of their "racial hygiene" policies. Perhaps it will break his admiration of Hitler once he learns he too would be deemed (AND I QUOTE) "life unworthy of life" and as a "burden" to the state.

It might not be all "black" but at their last census from 2022, people of African origin accounted for 99.6% of the population. Which by any reckoning is an overwhelming majority.

Caucasian only 0.16%

https://www.zimstat.co.zw/wp-content/uploads/Demography/Census/2022_PHC_Report_27012023_Final.pdf

Like a lot of youngsters, he has no idea of what life was actually like, for most, in those times.

But, they usually get some intelligence and grow out of these views.