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

[Coffeesoon]

My mum has just sent me a video of Ant Middleton explaining how in 2027 the migrants / boat people who are seeking asylum and have already been made legal, will kick off and attack us all.
He says there will be a civil war, he knows because of army contacts and that we need to prepare.
What am I suppose to say to that?
She fully believes that an army is being formed and is constantly telling me or sending me videos about it.
I love my mum but since covid, which she thought wasn't real, she has been thinking the government is out to get us. We live in an area of increased immigrants and she absolutely hates them.
I've tried to talk to her but shes adamant and its really getting me down.

Does she have a history of mental illness?

This is actually very sad. Is your dad in the picture at all? Could he help?

Sympathies, op, my mum is similar and I dont know the answer. She isn't concerned about immigration but is very much of the mindset that 'they' are planning to steal all our money, keep us in our homes, police our every move and global warming is fake. I either change the conversation or reply with basic facts that counteract her comments.

Has your mum moved to getting a lot of her 'news,' off youtube? I cannot get through to mine that being on YouTube does not make it true, she needs to research the topics properly somewhere else.

My mum is similar. She thinks that ‘they’ are trying to ban Christmas and trying to get Remembrance Day stopped. My mum has an acquired brain injury which means that in the past she was just quietly racist (and knew not to do it in front of me) but now she can’t stop herself as her frontal lobe is fucked.

Does she spend a lot of time online? The social media and youtube algorithms have a lot to answer for, they feed people more and more extreme content and then they end up radicalised.

I'd try to increase her engagement in real life social activities.

I think we share mothers.

My mum spends most of her days on YouTube watching shouty men shout about things that the "mainstream media won't tell you".

I just nod and smile and say "uh huh"

Though I do believe we're heading for some kind of major and widespread civil unrest, if not all out civil war

Just laugh at her and change the subject.

All the nasty comments on hear about your mum.
Is she okay in herself op has been acting odd lately.
Is this the normal for her or has this just started.

I have an elderly relative like this. Their primary source of information was their daily newspaper, the Express IIRC.

Their primary carer, also a relative, refused to keep buying it, and funnily enough the racist outbursts, batshit replacement theory conspiracies, and ranting and raving about similarly baseless nonsense about the direction of the UK has stopped.

Not necessarily. My mother has good instincts, but is uneducated, only semi-literate, and terribly deferential to male authority — as a result she thinks whatever she hears on the radio must be true, especially if it’s a man saying it.

Unfortunately the local radio shockjock has a particularly unpleasant bee in his bonnet about Nigerian taxi drivers being some kind of Mafia, so she thinks this must be true, otherwise why would the local radio presenter think so. My siblings and I just make a big effort to get her in front of better information, as we’ve been trying to teach her about media biases for forty years.

"He says there will be a civil war, he knows because of army contacts and that we need to prepare.
What am I suppose to say to that?"

Tell her it is total bollocks.

Tell her you don't want to hear about her nonsense any more.
Or receive bullshit videos.
Suggest she gets out in the real world more.
Perhaps tries volunteering or something social where she can meet people.
Ask our relatives to back you up on this.
Tell her you can't carry on like this and unless she bucks up you will see less of her.

Sounds a lot like my parents. Not very educated and very susceptible to misinformation. My brother followed a lot of accounts reflecting their hobbies and interests when he was watching their TV and it’s improved the situation a bit.

Covid seems to hsve messed with a lot of people's perception of reality. I lost a previously very good and well grounded friend because she went down a similar rabbit hole and decided I wasn't safe to be around as I got vaccinated. She also thought covid was fake and the government were out to destroy us. I think she believed that vaccinated people would be dead within ten years. Sadly she has passed away now...not from covid i might add, so she won't live to see how things pan out.

I'd find that incredibly difficult to put up with. I think I'd have to be brutally honest with her and say that if she wants to continue having a relationship with you, she needs to not talk about this rubbish to you. You don't believe it, it's racist and you don't want to hear it. If she wants to talk about that crap, she can do it with someone else. The moment she mentions anything conspiracy like, hang up, or immediate delete the message unread and respond saying if she continues to send you things like this you will block her.
I do feel for you, I'd be so upset and disappointed if my parent was like that.

There's a LOT of people like her. Just yesterday was chatting to a neighbour who is pro brexit, anti immigration and straight faced said to me he wanted to sink the boats until the message got through to France, didn't care if they died. While blaming other things on migrants, I corrected him with some facts, he asked me where I found those out. So I said online, from many news outlets. He then told me that all news outlets were untrue, they have an agenda.

Gave up, walked away as he's a conspiracy nutjob, racist to boot.
Am so sorry you've one of these as your mum.

Having an opinion that illegal immigration might not be beneficial for the country and actually questioning the influx of small boats and the growing illegal money making industry that comes off the back of them is not racist.
It's actually a bit thick to reply in such a way without thinking about any nuance around the subject.
Shouting racist at any and all opinions that differ from your own narrow veiwpoint is actually very lazy and actually dilutes the word itself and its true meaning and the insult/shutdown that you meant it as.

The poster has deleted the post I was referring to now.

You reccomend OP threatens to cut her mum out of her life for having alternative views? Madness!

She doesn't have those opinions though does she.
She thinks there's going to be an army, a civil war and that covid didn't exist.

Nobody needs to waste time trying to find nuance in that nonsense.

She does spend alot of time on Facebook and I suppose the algorithm is feeding her so thats probably all she is seeing.
I've tried talking to her, which results in an argument. So I try to just ignore and change the subject but its very frustrating. My dad just laughs it off and doesn't argue with her.
I'm shocked that so many people are in a similar situation with their parents.

Well if we dont stop thousands of undocumented men into the country, feed them, put a roof over their heads and allow them to roam freely in our communities then we will have civil unrest