Friend is now full on Trump-supporting, QAnon-believing conspiracy theorist

[Offskki]

I just can't believe it and I'm a bit gutted to be honest. Any advice on how to deal with this?

@blueangel19

all Gabite Try harder. I am not asking for it. More like they will end up there themselves by shutting down freedom of speech.

You are hoping for it.

My mums like this, and I've lost alot of respect for her. If you don't agree with her she'll flip out on you.
She believes the votes were fraud and Trump will get back in. She believes this virus is fake or it's just the flu.
She actually called me a couple of months ago and said 'I don't want to alarm you, but it's likely the power may go off' when I asked why she said, 'well if Trump doesn't get back in he has the power to do that'
It's got to the point were I don't want to hear anything about it from her, it's embarrassing. Se says she 'woke' on 9/11.

haha some halfwit mentions china for some reason so jump all over that. For what purpose? still no names.

I've been through similar but with Brexit. I suppose it comes down to belief and if you can't see each other points, well you can only agree to disagree. The consequences of Brexit are far from clear and I suspect will take years as to who was right or wrong! In between time I have found that we aren't as friendly as we were before! Such is life!

I have an acquaintance like this I've distanced from. Reels out a load of nonsense based on watching YT clips.

Like most of these YT "gurus" he doesn't do much with his life at all so he's plenty of time to chill, going further down the YouTube rabbit hole. 5g, The Royals, Covid-19 is a hoax blah blah blah.

Basic local job. Doesn't travel much, not even outside London much less abroad. Doesn't study or have hobbies but knows more than scientists, professors etc just like that.

Yet this do-nothing go-nowhere man now loftily believes himself to be learned, special, and that we are all sheep who need to "Do The Research!!" If we don't agree with all that he says.

ie follow his way of spending hours daily on YouTube becoming a follower of randoms and spouting their views. I think he's going to change the world from the comfort of his chair (lazy - they never want to actually get up and do much) by alienating family and friends, just moaning at people via the internet really. Google & YT have consumed them.

I've no faith in this government and 1 or 2 theories may hold some truth, I think. But I'm not self-absorbed enough to chat my way or the highway bullshit and condemn people as sheep on the one hand, yet on the other it's ok for them to be the kind of sheep that is obsessed by the utterings of some bloke who's stuck a camera in his face and filmed himself for YouTube.

These University of Life, School of Hard Knocks people are aimless, craving a way to feel special, validated, that they matter above most. & In YouTube/social media they've found it. In their own heads, at least.

Chookie that seems true. In that How my Dad was Brainwashed documentary his laptop broke and he stopped getting these crazy far right emails, he didnt bother to get it fixed and his views just naturally veered back to the centre (as they once had been). Once he started checking back into real life he became reasonable again. This stuff is literal poison.

xoxoxo and yet China is still free market neo liberalism with the highest proportion of billionaires. Seriously animal farm is the worst thing to ever happen to politics. Its simplistic garbage when taught badly.

Not sure I agree with all of these, Trotsky should be higher north and I think theres a problem between marking Chinas authoritarianism along with its extreme liberal economics on there but its better than most.

(Is it me or does some of this thread read as though half of the conversation is missing?).

Because your average trump supporter has half their brain missing.

I've just unfriended a mate on social media tonight who's drifted to the right over the years. I don't need it in my life. I'm sad because he was a fun mate, funny and intelligent. But he considers himself a libertarian in the American sense of the word, and is increasingly misogynistic.

They're used to just going off about China or some shit among themselves when they get confused or shown up (which is often) I think. Seems a bit odd to norms.

Hamas and Hezbollah? give me strength. Where do you even begin?

Radical left does not mean 'anything I dont like'.

Ursula have you even read your list? I mean, the German 'die Linke', the Dutch Socialist party? Yes, they're left - but they have never incited violence in any way. If you follow the links, you will see they are Social Democratic parties who believe in government control of the economy rather than unfettered capitalism, and support things like a living wage. Scary! I wouldn't describe Sinn Fein as very left at all. I mean, that Wikipedia list is just basically a compilation of any party that has 'Socialist' or 'Worker' in their name somewhere.

Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists, but not left wing in the traditional sense.

We asked for examples of extremist left wing world leaders who had openly incited violence on the Internet. We're still waiting.

Op, do you believe in democracy ? Do you believe that person a can have different perspectives from person b, and lastly are there believes causing distress ? As long as they are not an advocate of anything that would cause harm or distress to anyone, then other than there newly formed views are they any different from the person you knew ?

Hawkins but let's be honest - some beliefs are harmful. Look at COVID deniers in the USA, gathering in large numbers without masks or social distancing. Lots of people ending up ill, some dead.

OP states that her friend's beliefs focus on COVID and Trump - given what happened on Wednesday, the Trump belief is also harmful.

Personally I couldn't care less if someone believes the Earth is flat, however. I'd just ask why cats haven't shoved everything off the edge yet.

Well five people have just died when a mob stormed the Capitol in Washington DC because they (incorrectly) believed that Mike Pence could refuse to certify the votes from the Electoral College.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#Modern_mechanics

They also believed false stories about Donald Trump and the 2020 US election (stories which have now been tested multiple times in court and found baseless).

All of which was pumped by "Trump-supporting, QAnon-believing conspiracy theorists" of the type the OP is describing.

So it's pretty clear harm and distress is being caused.

I mean, if someone wants to believe there was no moon-landing, I'll (usually) shrug and leave them to it, but what the OP describes isn't harmless.

Governor Schwarzenegger's Message Following this Week's Attack on the Capitol

@user1471565182 thanks for clearing up the China thing for people who can't be bothered thinking properly from themselves.

@UrsulaVdL if you seriously believe only left wing governments have a problem with totalitarian governments... ... well the Cold War propaganda is continuing to do a number on you.

This is the problem. People banging on about 'evil leftists' and 'free speech' are strangely silent on the matter of the scores of right-wing dictatorships who have been installed by the US and its allies in Latin America, Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa. Which of course took the violent overthrow of democratically elected left wing governments who dared the challenge the West's exploitative foreign investment schemes in their own country. The historic behaviour of western corporations like BP (yes, British petroleum) in particular has been dreadful in this area.

It is extremely unwise to use Hamas as an example, given it developed in the context of violent settler colonial domination of Palestinians by right-wing Israeli governments. This all thanks for the UK and US's oil interests in the region.

So unless you were out their participating in the Arab Spring, or have been supporting your local Palestinian resistance groups, or furiously writing letters to your local MP about the barbarities inflicted on many West and Central Africans, and protesting the appalling response of the American government to its economic colony Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, perhaps you should question your commitment to 'freedom' and 'free speech.'

Perhaps you should also consider why it took the example of a serial sexual harasser, racist, alleged rapist, fascist to get you upset about the topic, given your government's complicity with ALWAYS right-wing totalitarian regimes since the end of WW2 to suit its own interests.

(just as Qanon types are also strangely silent/inactive on child sexual abuse prevention in their own communities - better to sit behind your screen and complain about the sheeple than actually doing something about it).

@DeeCeeCherry nailed it!