Unfriending right wing friends

[nondrinker1985]

One of my school mum friends of around 10 years has started sharing loads of Restore Britain/Rupert Lowe posts.

I’m actually really shocked as she’s an Irish immigrant herself.

I’ve unfriended her which is a shame as day to day she’s ok. Also another mum who has been liking and commenting on the Restore Britain posts, they’ll probably tell me they’re not racist but I can’t be arsed calling them out.

One of my really good friends voted Reform and I’m so disappointed.

Acceptance , inclusivity and diversity. Except if you disagree with them, in which case, ostracise.

I'm not so sure. The left/right lines are so blurred these days. For example, Reform just forcing the Government not to cancel May local elections. If you had no prior knowledge of the protagonists, who would be left and who right in that scenario?

Well it depends how far you take “repugnant”.

Racism is obviously a line in the sand.

But having lived through the Scottish Independence referendum where debate was extremely polarised I found that people who dropped any friends who weren’t on (as they saw it) the “right” side became very very narrow minded.

If you aren’t talking to anyone on the other side it’s really easy to demonise them as “stupid, uneducated, evil, nasty, bigoted”. People who you’ve happily been friends with for years can quite easily become “repugnant” if you stop listening to them and just assign them the qualities of cartoon baddies.

I recall years ago when I was in Canada, offending a British woman there because I referred to her as an immigrant. She responded that she had left the UK 30 years prior and moved to Canada but that does not make her an immigrant.

Whilst this person was technically an immigrant, referring to her as such was not very polite, particularly since it seems that you didn’t know her very well.

How many decades does someone have to be in a country and make it their home before you would consider them ‘one of us’?

Racism is not an opinion.

‘Unfriending’ is a bit performative. It’s fine to block people whose posts you find boring. But I don’t see social media as real life - it’s fine for your sm to be a bit of an echo chamber, as long as you spend plenty of time in the real world interacting with people who disagree with you about some things.

I would be a bit careful before throwing around words like ‘racist’, because it is losing its power. Reform are not inherently racist, though they are anti-immigration.

By repugnant I mean racist, homophobic or misogynistic.

And every racist votes for them…. Unsurprisingly!

This is so true! Performative unfriending! That’s a good phrase. The useful thing is, if someone does this to you, you get to see they never really cared for you anyhow.

How dare they have a different opinion to you!

Sitting in an echo chamber and not hearing other people's thoughts is how you end up somewhere as polarised as the USA. Try to understand why people think the other way rather than demonising them. I have many friends with different politics to me, including my best friend.

Exactly this. Aldous Huxley said similar, that humans naturally love the chance to hate others and feel self-righteous about it:

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”

I'm Irish in the UK. Any vote for Reform basically means they want me gone - or stay so long as I don't get sick or disabled.
It's hard really to stay friends with people who feel like that.

It's funny that people can be that moronic.

As a Reform UK supporter myself, Id rather not be friends with narrow-minded people who cant accept people have different political opinions from yourself

It's tough, isn't it. A very long-term friend (40+ years) recently expressed support for capital punishment. I felt sickened inside. I'm not ending the friendship, that would be silly, but it's definitely changed my view of her.

'I’m actually really shocked as she’s an Irish immigrant herself'

I am bemused by this idea that migrants are some amorphous blob who are by default all pro mass immigration. Most of the first, second generation immigrants I know want strongly policed borders and tighter controls on who can enter. The elephant in the room is that not all migrants are of equal merit.

Some racists vote reform, but not all reform voters are racist.

I disagree that ‘every racist’ votes for them. The Greens, Labour, Conservatives have plenty of racists of different flavours.

I don’t think you understand what resilient means.

If you didn’t see them on SM would you know any of this?

Your friend may end up being turfed out too as is happening to shocked MAGA supporters finding out that it’s not just the immigrants of colour even if they are the majority those kind of people are concerned with. We had an Irish guy hurling racist insults at obvious foreigners on our train( people did act). Ridiculous as he was an immigrant himself and old enough to know that the English used to hate Irish immigrants and stereotype them as thick. Landlords used to have No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs signs displayed only a few decades ago.

Has anyone looked at the kind of people campaigning alongside Reform's Matt Goodwin? Those canvassing for him have included a former Britain First activist, a former Reform parliamentary candidate who promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media, and the party’s interim campaign manager in Tameside who has used the n-word and minimised the Holocaust. Adam Mitula, Discussing the number of people who died in the Holocaust in July 2024, Mitula claimed: “6 million polish [sic] people including some Jews. They always use Poles to make up the number. And on top of it they claim Poles were killing. Just sick.” Mitula was responding to a post which read: “I’m sure something happens but even as a Jew you know 6 million is a number they made up before WW2”.