Husband has extreme right wing views

[HelpMeUnderstandPolitics]

Not sure if this is the right place to post as it's not an AIBU but more of I think my husband is being and I'm not sure what to do about it.

He's getting caught up in some quite extreme right wing views in regards to migrants. Complains about how they're coming in, being housed in hotels, paid allowances etc. with no checks and how crime rates such as rape are now ten fold etc. He thinks Trump is great 😪 He's very intelligent so I'm not sure how he's managed to get caught up in this extremist view point.

WWYD?

Was coming on to say this. His concerns are shared by many in the labour party and other centrists too, hence many of the announcements and actions being taken at the moment under government intervention. If he was standing outside hotels, shouting to burn them down, I’d be concerned but if he is simply concerned that does nto make him any more ‘extreme right wing’ than Starmer is!

Kier Starmer himself said that we've been running an open borders experiment which has caused incalculable damage to the country. OP's husband agrees with the current Labour Prime Minister and she's got Mumsnetters goading her into breaking her family up and wrecking her children's lives over it. And the people doing it will insist that they have the moral high ground. Reprehensible

They are illegal if they’ve crossed the channel. France is a safe country, they should be claiming asylum there, or in any of the other safe European countries they passed through to get there.

Nobody is goading her into anything. She is an adult and she can make her own decisions.

She asked what others would do, and people responded on the basis of their own beliefs. That's how forums tend to work.

As for Starmer, his comments were reprehensible. He has at least admitted that the speech was a mistake, but there will be many people who will struggle to forget what he said.

His methods and motivations in women’s rights are less relevant than the fact that he is reversing Bidens laws and policies that are extremely anti women. It’s not Americans fault that the Democrats got it so badly wrong that Trump was a preferable alternative.

It just illustrates how bad the Democrats were. Everyone knew how awful Trump was and chose him anyway.

Yes. A worrying number of people still have the rose tinted view that our government wouldn’t knowingly do anything to harm us and our society.

It comes to something when ex and moderate Muslims are warning us of what is in store and are getting dismissed and ignored by people on Mumsnet who obviously know the Koran far better than they do.

Can you explain how ‘common decency’ is a plan?

Do you think countries should be able to control how they let in? What do you think of Australia’s immigration policy?

...you want masked ICE agents kidnaping people at will...which so far has included citizens and tourists. No need to reply cruelty won you

If you have to start making up things that @RingoJuice hasn’t actually said to argue against then you haven’t actually got any arguments left. Managing your country’s borders to protect the human rights of your citizens isn’t cruelty.

Just a quick note; approximately 29% of the voting age population in the US voted for Trump in 2024.

So we’ve ended up splitting hairs in the words? Maybe they weren’t ‘goading’ her but there have certainly been quite a number of posts from people strongly encouraging her to leave him and making ridiculous comments in his intelligence etc.

It strikes me that the people clinging to their cosy image that the British government are not outright harming our society with their total lack of effort to control our borders against available evidence might need to have another think about their views.

Does nothing you have learned from this thread concern you?

Which bits of this thread do you think I should be concerned about? The number of posters defending racist views? That's not new, unfortunately.

As for the OP, yes, some people have indeed suggested leaving her DH. Obviously, they are basing that suggestion on their own value systems. If the OP doesn't find her DH's views to be morally repugnant, then she will obviously reach a different conclusion.

When you ask on an Internet forum what others would do in your shoes, you are obviously going to get diverse opinions. If you don't want to know what others think, it is probably best not to ask.

Even if you are not concerned about immigration, are you concerned about the rapid rise in the number of people who are, and who feel so strongly about it that they are prepared to do physical violence?

Three years ago "deport them" was the extremist position. That has changed. That is new.

Yes, of course I'm deeply concerned about the rise in racist rhetoric and the mainstream expression of extreme far right views. I'm also concerned about the huge increase in disinformation on MN and across all social media platforms.

But that trend has been emerging for a while now - it isn't something new that I have learned from this thread.

You cannot be serious. None of what this administration does is pro women. None. The whole 'Biden was so bad' rhetoric is straight out of the MAGA propaganda playbook. People voted mostly because they believed they'd have more money in their pockets. The price of eggs, petrol and housing. That's really what Americans cared about and so far he's failed miserably.

On here it is getting noticeably worse and at pace...

I agree. It's the influx of people from Twitter who have come here to fight for their "cause".

No critical thinking going on here!!

Again about thinking Trump's great: another reason to care about what's going on in the US is the impact on world leading science. This administration is gutting research. I know there are a lot of Guardian haters on here but this is a good summary of what's been unfolding on that front

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/07/nih-scientists-trump-cuts
This bit especially stands out for me as this is a parenting forum:
"Science is an engine for American economic dominance, and scientific clusters such as Silicon Valley could not exist without federal funding, the official said. “Once you break them, it will be impossible to rebuild them. We’re on the path to breaking them.” LaBonne said she worried about the impact on progress in cancer specifically. “My own research touches on pediatric cancers. Forty years ago more than 60% of children diagnosed with cancer would have died within five years of diagnosis. Today there is a 90% survival rate. We should not put progress like that in danger,” she said."

I was talking to a top American scientist recently. He is heavily involved in cutting-edge medical research which is now at serious risk because of the current funding issues. He explained that he and his colleagues were desperately trying to fundraise to keep the work going. They had had secured significant support from a number of Asian sponsors who were willing to help, but he wasn't sure whether they would raise enough for the research centre to survive and he said that they would almost certainly have to scale back the work that they were doing. There was only one other research centre in the US doing similar work, and they were apparently in an even worse position. Worrying times.

Criminally stupid of 'MAHA'.

No. You're not getting it. There is not an influx of people from some other place with not-nice views. People are changing their own minds. Which includes reasonable, educated, nice middle-class people looking at the new data we are seeing (either previously hidden/minimised, or relating to migration from the last few years of the "Boriswave") and coming to a different intellectual conclusion about their desired policies and who they'll vote for in 4 years...

...as well as people who don't think they want to wait 4 years after all and who are seriously losing faith that the democratic system will be able to deliver.

All the "lol Farage will just betray you, he won't do a thing about immigration either because he's beholden to his billionaire paymasters" is, well, something you also see on extremist far right X accounts. Because they're advocating for non-democratic means of achieving the desired results.

This is new and has accelerated over this summer and it's not just "disinformation bots" or something.

I think it's extremely dangerous to continue to advocate for no change to the status quo under such conditions.

Advocating for no change to the status quo, by the way, also includes things like saying the only change should be "speeding up the asylum process" or "offering safe routes to apply from abroad" or "just letting them work while they wait for a decision" with no corresponding limits on overall numbers, application acceptance rates, etc.

The "status quo" I mean is one where Britain does not control who enters the country but binds itself to legal requirements to let anyone enter who meets an arbitrary set of criteria, with no consideration for the ability of the country to support them.

Funny how their comments are getting deleted now. I wonder why?

The problem with Farage is that he does not have the solution. He's only happy to stir shit up. Brexit was a disaster for immigration control, which he would have absolutely known had he done his job in Brussels. Best case he was too lazy to find out why, and worst case it was active manipulation. Why was that a disaster? Because of data sharing and seamless collaboration with EU members which is now gone. We put up a barrier where there was none, how constructive was that? It was bound to cause new friction and make borders harder to police. Another problem was that we replaced a fluid and mostly transient type of immigration (the EU FoM) with a very long term one (if you have to jump through so many hoops, regardless of where you're from, you're in it for the long haul and you will bring your family along or try to). So forgive me for never wanting a dishonest and/or lazy politician who manipulated the electorate into a bad choice on false premises ('take back control') in power.

Some of the posters have explicitly told us that they have followed links over from Twitter. So that is definitely happening.

I don't know any "nice, educated" people who have suddenly turned into extreme far right supporters, so I don't recognise this characterisation at all. In fact, I don't know a single "nice, educated" person who espouses such views. I have met plenty of not-so-nice people like that, but I don't think that's new.

What has changed, for sure, is that the closet racists amongst us now feel emboldened to express themselves more freely. And there is no doubt that those with limited critical thinking skills may well be susceptible to the increasing amount of disinformation that their algorithms feed them. But "nice, educated" people continue to reject racism as they always have done, for all that you might want to argue otherwise.

Of course, I don't dispute that there are things that need to change. We need to fix our shamefully neglected public services. We need to sort out our education system so that people don't get trapped in cycles of poverty and low aspiration. We need to fix our NHS so that people are well enough to work and improve their lives. We need to kick-start our economy. And yes, we need to address some issues around migration and processing times etc. We need to address the multiple challenges that people are facing so that they aren't so easily manipulated. But let's not pretend that the extreme far right actually care about improving people's lives. That isn't their agenda at all, and never has been.

I also know that a few long time posters with moderate views have more or less left the forum or just lurk. It's not just happening on MN, it's on all social media really...