To consider ending a friendship over differing political beliefs?

[HelloBridesmaidLiketheBeard]

If a friend suddenly voiced political beliefs that you strongly disagree with, do you think the friendship can survive?

I have friends with varying beliefs, some like mine, some not, but if someone has a HUGELY different opinion and is vehement in it, do you think it's possible to maintain that friendship?

I'm feeling very conflicted after a rather eye-opening conversation the other day with a friend, and I can't get her words out of my mind.

it depends on the political view.... I have to be totally honest, I couldn't be real friends with someone who is a trump or brexit supporters for example... I could certainly be civil.... and have a polite discussion about our different views, and wouldn't want to socialise and spend my chill time with them...

different religions are not an issue, really enjoy having friends of different religious and cultural backgrounds mainly because of the extensive eating opportunities.... but not if they still go on about how brexit is amazing and trump is wonderful

For me it would depend on what those beliefs were.

No two people have the exact same political beliefs. There are nuances and variations even between staunch followers of particular ideologies.
Find what you have in common rather than focussing on your differences. Unless the difference is too big for you.

Lots of really good points already made so I won't repeat them. Personally I think it's really healthy to have friends with different views and opinions. Agreeing to disagree is a much better way for me.
If a friend, whose opinion I would generally value has a totally different take on an issue to me I would be curious as to why. One of my best friends was pro Brexit (and did lose friends over it) but her reasons were actually sound and I couldn't disagree with them. I could still hold the view that I would prefer to vote differently without us falling out over it. We had a mature conversation with lots of listening and agreed each other had valid points. No falling out happened and then we talked about other stuff.

It depends whether you and they are dogmatic or wish to change each others minds or not. If you can respect a different point of view then it should be fine

Depends what it is really. And also how much they go on about it.

Yes I would. Anyone with any socialist or far left or even just left wing views would not make for a compatible relationship as far as I'm concerned.

I suppose it depends what sort of friend and what sort of views. I'm on the left, but I have friends who are conservative. But I don't think I could remain friends with anyone who would vote for the current Tory party. I couldn't be friends with a MRA, a racist or an anti Semite.

I'm another for whom it depends, and it all comes down to values. Is it the political opinion you disagree with, or is the values that underpin them that you can't reconcile?

I disagree politically with loads of my friends, from
housing policy and VAT on school fees through to immigration policy (for context, I'm an immigrant); however none lf my friends have underlying value systems that disgust me.

YABU

It’s acceptable for someone to have different political beliefs than you. They may have done different research to you, be impacted by different policies, plus it’s tricky for everyone in terms of knowing what to believe, as let’s face it, a lot of what the different parties promise is bollocks.

I actually parted ways with a close friend who was a labour voter and was utterly shocked that I was planning to vote tory (this about 7 years ago) as if I was acting like a badly-behaved child. I was able to explain my rationale, and actually debunk some of her reasonings, but I would never inflict my political views on anyone else like that. It’s also worth noting that people can also change their political views.

Tbh I have had more issues with religious differences than political differences.

It depends on what the political difference is. I'd struggle if the beliefs effectively meant dehumanising or removing rights from a group or category of people (e.g. racism/sexism/homophobia etc).
As someone else said I respect other peoples political views when they're reasoned and make sense to them, but there's no logical way to support any of the above without holding some fundamental principles that I would judge as completely unacceptable.

I have friends I don't agree with on everything, but I would struggle with someone whose core values were offensive to me. I lost a friend over Brexit, we tried to keep it going and find common ground but it wasn't possible. He was a passionate socialist when I met him. He gradually turned into a racist, xenophobic conspiracy theorist and I was flinching every time I saw him regurgitating crap from Breitbart and Nigel Farage. I still write and ask him how he's doing every so often, but the easy companionship is gone.

Politics bleeds into other things. Two of my closes friends would vote the opposite to me but regarding core values we are mostly aligned.

Someone whose political beliefs included letting refugee boats sink, agreeing with the Rwanda policy then no, I couldn’t be friends with someone like that.

I think the culture wars have created really deep divisions which didn’t seem as strong before. I used to rub along with people of all sorts of beliefs and now I find it impossible because the arguments are so fierce and without nuance these days so you never really debate but end up fighting. I can’t stand being torn to shreds for my ideas because it makes me want to retaliate in kind, which is essentially futile.

Never discuss politics.
I'm not interested in anyone elses view. Whatever they say won't change my mind regarding my views.
There are more interestings subjects to talk about than the state of politics

It depends on what you mean by political as a PP has said but generally if it's a mainstream political belief that passes the 'worthy of respect in a democratic society' test then no of course not. How ridiculous. Many of my friends are Tories, TWAW and Sturgeon fans.

Friendship IMO is a deep, interpersonal relationship that should be beyond political and personal trivia. Also surrounding yourself with an echo chamber is very bad for you emotionally, intellectually and for society.

I stand with EM Forster on this: "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."

Human beings aren't robots that follow a set program of beliefs. We borrow from different political viewpoints, have varying religious views and embrace aspects of varying cultures. I think people have forgotten this and embraced black and white thinking where it's 'Us' and 'Them'.
I don't know how many labels we're supposed to have now. Everything that's happened recently has put a label on us.

I live in Scotland and I lost a very close friendship over political beliefs.

Friend (very opinionated) put on Facebook that she was disgusted over election results and she would unfriend anyone who she found out had voted for the winning party. I informed her that we live in a democracy and I had voted for the winning party, as was my democratic right and she could unfriend me if she wished. She didn’t.

In 2020, as Covid was spreading, she again got on her high horse (again via Facebook) and disagreed about how it was being dealt with. She followed this up with an unforgivable post, saying she hoped it would be those who had put the Government in power that got Covid, as it would serve them right!

I lost my husband in 2020, at the height of Covid. She completely ignored his passing, no message, no card, no flowers, nothing. We have never spoken since.

OP, we are so lucky, to live in a democracy and not somewhere like North Korea, China etc., where not supporting or demonstrating against the ruling party means prison, execution or just never being heard of again. I don’t know the ins and outs of your friendship, but I really hope it is a strong enough friendship for you to find some neutral ground and get over your differences.

The values thing is important. I can imagine maintaining a close friendship with an old fashioned One Nation Tory. But not at all with any of the current lot or their supporters.

It depends. If they were racist or bigoted then it’s a no our values are two far apart - to be fair there no one in my life that would ever be in that circle. I discovered recently that until the last few years my sister didn’t believe climate change was a thing - we’d never discussed it - we wouldn’t have fallen out if I had known but I’d have disagreed quite profoundly.

I agree with previous posters on the values point. I also think it depends to a degree on the friend. I have a very old and close friend who in recent years has revealed values I really struggle with (or perhaps we’ve just gone very different ways in life) and I think it has threatened our friendship at times certainly. But our history runs extremely deep, more like family really, so because of that I now just try and swerve those discussions and focus on the good, of which there is also a great deal. If I just met someone now with those same values we wouldn’t be friends tbh, and there are questions I just wouldn’t ask them about their views as I don’t want to know! Whether that will work forever remains to be seen…

I agree with this, I have a friend from school who I really really don’t agree with about so many things, our lives are very different and I’m fairly sure we wouldn’t be friends if we met now. But we went through our teenage years together, have seen each other behave incredibly badly on occasion, supported each other through milestones and when we get together we revert to a bickering teenage type friendship and the years just roll away. It would have to be a major thing before I’d end it. I also think that as our lives change again over the next few years we might find we have more in common and less that we disagree on.

Everyone’s red line is different I suppose and, as I say to my children, if someone is making you feel bad a lot of the time then they’re not a friend and it’s ok not to spend time with them. Converse of that is what I see as an increasing tendency of people to require purity of thought on certain issues not tolerate any form of disagreement and surround themselves with an echo chamber (and I don’t particularly mean the trans debate). This is easier to do in an age of social media, pre internet it wasn’t possible to find people who thought just like you. It occurred to me the other day that lots of my actual real life friends have views that if expressed by a stranger on Twitter would have me clicking unfollow.

I don’t discuss politics if it’s going to be contentious. I do downgrade people in my mind if they have extreme right wing views/believe in conspiracy theories etc. There are several people I don’t see anymore due to this, though luckily there have been no rows just us no longer meeting up.

Depends. Are they basing their opinions on things they've actually experienced, or what they've read in the tabloids?

My first bf and I had polar political views. It wasn't what split us up but it did cause hot debate and is likely to have affected our relationship at some point.

Funny thing is, he was right. Over the years I've moved into his political camp. Possibly not as far left as he was, but im definitely on the left of centre.

I wonder if he's mellowed a bit too and we would probably now agree?