How to handle my son's troubling far-right views and online influence

[TheCatCushions]

DS (14) is extremely bright, highly intelligent and adhd/autistic. He has recently been coming out with troubling views about wanting the UK to be all white again like in the 1950s, he talks about immigration and closing our borders and stopping the boats etc and doodles pictures of Hitler with worrying slogans. He has admitted to saying certain things deliberately to shock but he genuinely believes that the UK should be all white and compares us to say, Zimbabwe remaining all black.

He has not been brought up to think like this and I am concerned that he is going down a rabbit hole online. I teach him the benefits of other cultures and how the UK has evolved, what it means to be British has changed over time and that we are now multicultural. Although he is highly intelligent, he is also very black and white in his thinking.

He also believes that we should go back to the 1940s where it comes to gender roles and women need to stay at home and men be the providers. He also talks about feminism meaning women that hate men. I try my best to gently correct these views and question why he believes this.

Does anyone have any advice on how to approach this? Thank you.

I’ve been through similar with my son. He got into religion but it was mostly just trying to find an identity and due to right wing “traditional” content. Luckily I had lots of open conversations with him and it was mostly a phase. It helped me that the last two popes were mostly quite progressive which didn’t quite add up with what he was going for. I’ve got him off social media and now he’s a lot happier and taking up more hobbies off line. Talk to your son about how the far right takes advantage of autistic boys. In Australia there was an attempted bombing of Aboriginal people and their allies on Invasion Day and the perpetrator is an autistic guy who got radicalised online. Myself and my children were in the crowd and it’s extremely scary what could have happened if the bomb went off. Show your son to demonstrate this is a huge deal and leads to very dark places. These people use young and impressionable boys and where it leads can be a point you can’t easily come back from.

indeed but that 1% and 25% might not have been spread equally around the country resulting in differing lived experiences

Restrict access to the internet. I'd be worried about radicalisation, look at a Prevent referral. School should be able to help

Make the school aware. They have a responsibility to educate.
My daughter is a teaching assistant and entered a class where a supply teacher (man in his 50's) was saying that 'not everything Andrew Tate says is wrong, he makes some good points'. She left the room, found the Deputy Head, told him, and the teacher was called in and told not to return after that day.

Do you take him abroad OP?
Sometimes having a bigger world view can help.

If he's living in a tiny Tik Tok bubble his view will be small and bleak

You need better safeguarding on the router. It's easy enough to do

You're concerned but not stopping it?

Have you spoken to him about how he will be alienating himself from his family with these kind of views?

I understand to somw extent why you dont want to preach to him, but it must be extremely hard? I presume you have told him that the nazi drawings etc are not allowed in your house?

While greatly limiting your son's internet consumption, I would also do some soul-searching about your own unconscious biases. One reason many young are looking for answers online is because so many of our own institutions and adults push ideas that are clearly distorted. Eg. When we discovered that for decades police and politicians refused to appropriately deal with Pakistani grooming throughout the UK for fear of appearing "bigoted," is it any wonder that many young see labels like "racist" as tools to control appropriate dissent? When young men are told again and again that masculinity is inherently toxic, is it any wonder that a figure like Andrew Tate (whose adherents are disproportionately Black and South Asian boys, by the way) should gain some attention and popularity? Rather than dragging your son off to yet another National Trust house exhibition that bangs on about how evil the past owners were bc they once held investments in a problematic Jamaican sugar plantation, show him Proud of Us, which whole-heartedly condemns the slave trade while celebrating brave Brits who fought to put an end to such evil. Perhaps can acknowledge that you, too, have had some blind spots and you are willing to look with him, together, for unbiased sources of information with which both of you can better educate yourselves.

Quite a lot of ASD runs through my family so I am very familiar with this black and white thinking. Autistic children are at significantly higher risk than average of being being pulled into online worlds of many different stripes. These online worlds are in part so attractive bc in-person, real-life interactions can be relatively difficult and fraught with rejection for those on The Spectrum. It's hard to pull a kid off the internet unless you have something to replace that sense of community. Can you talk to your local ASD charities/ organisations about any in-person clubs or groups your son could join? eg. My nephew was spending too much time online so my s.i.l found a local robotics club where he now happily spends hours building and solving problems with a group of great guys, many of whom I'd guess are ASD, themselves.

You wouldn’t be laughed at whatsoever. You might get a curious face or two but you’d obviously just say “I was born and raised there, my mum/dad worked there” or whatever. China isn’t as multicultural as the present day UK, roughly 90% of China are Han Chinese so ethnically Chinese. 75% of the UK are white British, 82ish% white combined. London is a massive outlier- it’s about 50% white whereas Northern Ireland is still 96% white. So basically about a quarter of the UK are not white British hence why nobody would question your citizenship here if you’re not white.

Schools have a responsibility to fulfil the curriculum. It is the parents' job to go beyond what is laid down by the Dept of Education. We have to stop passing the buck. He is the OP's child and therefore the OP's responsibility.

This. The recommended age for social media from Jonathan Haidt and others is 16, but if he's autistic and sees things in black and white perhaps a little older (get GCSEs out of the way at least).
Also, more real life interactions. Scouts, volunteering, DofE, anywhere he can see men, women of all ethnicities getting on and doing things well together.
This should be compulsory (you are the parent, he isn't an equal decision maker in how you parent him). Any friends that seem especially troublesome he can see at your house with no devices, and not elsewhere (I know they will see each other at/after school but minimise their time together). Also as others have said, talk to school.
It's good you have caught this while he still has time with you at home. Far harder to deal with when he's out of the home.

I second this. Did some training with them recently and they are great. Thr training was delivered by someone who had been involved in far right activities when younger so really understood the complexities.

Might be worth pointing out that his autism might have precluded him from consideration as part of the master race. I'd ask him to research Hitler's opinion and treatment of people with autism.I know that's harsh but it might wake him up.

Sorry you’re being a little disingenuous, there aren’t many people who accept a white person calling themselves Chinese even if they were born and raised there. Let’s be honest.

On the other hand rightly or wrongly anyone questioning whether someone born in England with two Chinese or Nigerian or whatever parents was actually English would be called racist. In fact I can already feel the indignant replies I’m going to get for even typing this.

A certain amount of this is fairly normal teen development. I remember a lot of my peers debating the merits of national socialism and communism, and playing devils advocate about Hitler. Reaching for simplistic black and white solutions to complex problems is entirely normal too. They literally haven’t developed parts of their brains yet.

Talk about these things - or rather listen to him as much as you can. It’s one thing to listen to a podcast or YouTube video and another entirely to repeat it. Often when they go to put it in words, the logical holes become apparent.

It’s vitally important that we create the space for our dc to do this reflective piece. In the past we could mull something over in our heads but they live in a world of constant stimulation and don’t get a chance to reflect. By letting them talk, you can hold a space for that to happen.

It also strengthens your bond, demonstrates respect for them, and builds trust when you’re a safe person to explore a tricky topic. Sometimes I’ll ask a question to provoke a bit more thinking, often I don’t even have to because they get there themselves - but I never ever tell him what to think.

Never in the entire history of humanity did that work!

It’s also important to remember that we learned about stuff like Hitler in a different cultural paradigm. We had much more reason to have faith in democracy for one thing. They’re in a world where the American ideals are in tatters, all the heroes have been torn down, algorithms draw everyone towards the extremist version of their interests, and there is deep mistrust. The lines arent as clear - they’re not bad kids for being confused.

I haven’t rtft so sorry if this has been suggested but…
Are you able to access his devices and change his algorithm? It’s fair straight forward and I have done this with my own so I only see content that’s uplifting or heartwarming in some way (or funny!)
Id perhaps not try and push him too much away from his political views per se as you may only make him more steadfast in his beliefs but I would try and channel his obsessive, black and white thinking in to a more healthy outlet and encourage him to just take a break from the content he is consuming. That distance in itself may be enough to make him think differently about his beliefs.
I tend to be obsessive and have very black and white thinking but I can usually tell when I am being pushed too heavily in to something. I have with politics in the past and realised it was making me miserable so I tried to find other avenues to channel those personality traits in to that aren’t damaging in anyway.

Withdrawing SM is a bit like bolting the stable door after the horse had bolted and isn’t a solution. If he is very black and white about things, use that trait to your advantage by pulling him up when he is factually wrong.

This is a teaching opportunity, you should be able to debate him without accusing him. He is of course entitled to his opinion but you have every right to question his opinions, if they are based on half truths.

The algorithms have a lot to answer for.

I disagree it absolutely is a solution until his brain develops more and he matures. Sen or not kids are gullible and will believe anything they see online as fact.

Kids got left alone/let out to wander unsupervised far younger than today. As babies/toddlers they got left with older siblings, aunties, grandmothers, neighbours...

Absolutely this. Being knowledgeable about stuff isn't being intelligent. Only seeing things in black and white, in binary terms, is very limiting. He has no broad understanding.
I know this is what you want to help him with, a fuller and deeper understanding .
I agree with pp - take him to museums and discuss the exhibits. I'd start with the Imperial War Museum.

Does your son not have black and brown friends? What about female friends? Does he have any?Or jews? I'm assuming he doesn't otherwise how can he carry that sense of superiority towards those around him? That's quite some entitlement on your sons part to think that his skin colour makes him better. he's going to end up quite alone if he carries on like that... Unless of course he lives in all white boys social circle which I doubt in this day and age. Ask him what makes him think he's better than his brown friends? Or his black female GP who took care of him last time he was ill?

Yes, very true, sadly. He's just believing online stuff. That has to stop, it's toxic

Stop his access to the internet immediately.
this is a parents worst nightmare and you should have been more vigilant.

You show your own prejudice and lack of insight with this comment.

I'd tell him he needs to go out and get a job then seeing as men are meant to be the providers. And seeing as he's providing nothing maybe he should start paying board? If he wants to be a 'real man'.

Does he have a female cousin or family friend closer to his age he respects who could try and talk to him about how his views on women are outdated and ridiculous? Also obviously the awful racism.

You need to to give him less control over his phone.