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 think it's probably a different kind of intelligence, thinking in such a black and white and binary way. It doesn't mean he's stupid, but he obviously does need more support and guidance to pick his way through information.

Lots of great advice already.

Is his DF around? Or a male grandparent? Uncle?

You need strong male role models around to help challenge his behaviour and call out when he's wrong.

Like, in this boy's case, that Hitler was right? It doesn't seem like a signifier of 'true intelligence' to me.

But that's the point. I'm not saying he's right - far from it - but you're arguing his intelligence from the fact he has arrived at a different conclusion to you.

Bit like, way back when, people thought round-earthers were wrong and must be stupid as well as heretical.

Who knows, in 100 years from now, with the benefit of hindsight all our accepted views may turn out to be misguided.

Also, presumably someone who believes people who are not white pose a threat to social cohesion is also not comfortable around those people

That's an error of logic on your part. Let's say your friends are all strictly vegan. You can really like them all, but you can worry that their majority status allows them to dictate what you are allowed to eat.

Intelligence can reach nuanced conclusions; not all views come from a position of bigotry

As someone said it was only 25% of mothers working, now I think about it my own mother (twice married, twenty years between my older sibling and me) was in no way rich, her first husband even went to prison for a bit for being violent to her. She also did not work until my sibling was about 10.

I am all for women having their own financial dependence btw I just think we should be honest about the past.

Zimbabwe is all black? When did that happen?!

Please speak to the school. As a PSHE lead, I would want to know this had a hold on at least one of my students (he probably isn't the only one) so that we could look at tackling it head on. We would also make a Prevent referral but what the timescale for actual support might look like, I don't know. Keep lines of communication open and as suggested, keep calm and offer alternative views where you feel confident. Discuss algorithms and what they effectively do in terms of shutting down alternative opinion and consider where he gets his 'facts' from. It is very worrying - he isn't the only one.

The 'round earthers' had evidence to back up their position. The 'Hitler was right' edgelords do not have scientific backing for their racist theories. Failing to listen to anyone who thinks differently to you is a failure of intelligence, but so is giving space and credence to people spouting bigotry. I can listen to people on the other end of the political spectrum to me and appreciate their intellect even if I fundamentally disagree with their viewpoint. That doesn't extend to extremists, racists and misogynists.

I am also not threatened by the existence of vegans, nor do I fear that as more people turn to veganism that I will be made to eat things against my will. I think that's fearmongering and ignorance (I understand you aren't actually talking about vegans here by the way).

Very sorry you are dealing with this, but I don't think you should be gentle, OP. Educate him as much as possible, as that's the only antidote. The influences out there on social media are truly toxic. I have already 'lost' someone close to me to that bilge. Obviously as his mum you have to fight this with all you've got without alienating him. He is testing your boundaries here. Point out firmly what the facts are and don't handle this with kid gloves. He'll respect you all the more for it ultimately.

Good Luck though OP. There is a lot of online radicalisation of young boys and men at present (not so much young girls and women, interestingly.)

You aren’t the only parent dealing with this.

I often wonder why none of these lads are into sport. If they'd have watched the great British Boxers last night, or any of the football, they'd realise how shit our sport would be without the African influence. It's only horse racing were you see all white talent. Liverpool already had multiculturalism in the 50s, my Italian/cockney grandad was part of a settled, well established Italian community in Acton and across Shepherds bush. My half black heritage sister was born mid 50s. There were large Chinese etc communities. I don't believe that only 1% wasn't white British. We certainly wasn't the only immigrant families.
However, we can't carry on shutting down conversations about population explosion and long term issues with the amount of asylum seekers. Parts of the world are no longer habitale and like the UK, India and even Morocco and Ghana, other countries need to embrace smaller family sizes. It benefits everyone.

Your son is a young adult and is entitled to his white supremacist views, regardless of whether or not you agree with them. Just as much as other people are entitled to be Catholic, Vegan Marxist or whatever. This country has always been celebrated for freedom of speech. What happened to the idea that "I dont agree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it."

Based.

Years ago I would have suggested the Prevent programme but I’m not so sure, now.

This place has some ideas and your local Social Care centre might be able to suggest other resources

https://www.educateagainsthate.com/online-radicalisation/

And the past extends a lot further back than the 1950s, and women have worked in various ways across time and different societies. There are female skeletons dug up in armour buried with weapons that tell us of the existence of women warriors in the ancient world. There is a rich history for anyone who cares to dig just a little way in of women's labour and contributions, paid and unpaid, recognised and unrecognised throughout the whole of humanity. Women whose scientific, medical and technological achievements were suppressed and attributed to men. Women authors and thinkers as well as rulers, fighters and hunters depending on time and place. Women who weaved, women who worked in factories, women who taught and women who wrote. History and culture is a lot bigger than a snippet of time in the 1950s, which in itself was not as homogeneous as some people like to imagine and itself included women working.

It’s really difficult with very bright autistic kids, especially boys who seem to be targeted with this repulsive content. I think you need to read about radicalisation and also do some reading about twice exceptionality, as if he is significantly brighter than average this will also be complicating things further and you have to choose a very different approach a lot of the time. There’s an amazing charity called potential plus which is possibly just about to close down but they do have a website full of useful information. Essentially, he needs to improve his critical thinking skills but he probably also needs to think it’s his idea. . The content that gets served up to these kids is very compelling and persuasive so you may have to really tool up with new skills to handle it

Racists don’t care. They can hate people of a certain ethnicity, wish they were not around them yet want them to provide entertainment. They don’t even see it as a contradiction.

this.

I would talk to his school he may need a PREVENT referral

He’s drawing pictures of Hitler. I think there comes a time when we’re allowed to worry about the views of our children and the insidious hateful content they get served online. Freedom of speech does not mean that we don’t challenge each other, you can chat as much shit as you like but other people can still tell you you’re being a twat.

Hate speech is illegal, and no mother of a 14 year old child needs to 'defend to the death' her son's right to celebrate Hitler. Anyone who cares about their child, as the OP does, wants to lead them away from radicalising content online. Just as no one would defend their teenage daughter's 'right' to consume pro-ana content and starve themselves to death, so should parents also be rightly concerned with their children falling for white supremacist and misogynistic propaganda. It's hateful and harmful, both to the individual and to the rest of society.

Last year you were rattling on about how shared culture and identity was about watching Blackadder together.

In a weird coincidence for this thread, the biggest Blackadder fans of my acquaintance are a bunch of black Zimbabweans. It's one of their favourite family shows, oft quoted in their daily life. I don't remember whether they watched it on satellite in Zimbabwe or got DVDs, but anyway their children grew up with it.

I'm sorry you don't know who you are anymore.

I know who I am. I base my life on my values on each issue; not on wearing a team T-shirt and on dividing people into those who wear the same T-shirt and those who wear Other.

And yes, I do very much enjoy talking to people who have shared childhood reference points. I also enjoy talking to people with other childhood reference points: so many things completely different yet exactly the same.

That's being human for you. And being human is the thing I share with other people, not which team T-shirt they wear.

That’s interesting that you should say that as he’s also recently developed an interest in Catholicism and is now attending church. Glad things have improved with your son now.

By the way, the reason I remember you going on about Blackadder Goes Forth as the pinnacle of the UK's shared national experience was because that same week I was sorting through 100-year-old family paperwork about the aftermath in my family of World War I.

Not you enjoying giving yourself the sads watching a fictional bit of telly, but an actual unavoidable national experience in which real people died horrible, unnecessary deaths partly because of jingoism and a narrow-minded view of national identity.

I said nothing at the time because I was so angry I could barely speak.

I was born and live in the UK; I assume from the things you say that you were too. If we're similar ages we may have watched the same childhood telly. But you and I don't appear to have much shared identity.

Is one of us not British, then?

If he's into Catholicism, he should get up to speed with what Pope Leo has been saying about the white supremacists in power in Washington.

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but Britain hasn’t been all white since the Romans - who had soldiers from as far as North Africa. Many of whom then settled here - we’ve been various ethnicities since then.
If he’s interested in history, there is archeological evidence supporting this - https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-history-of-black-britain-roman-africans
just as one quick example.
I agree with PP that you need to restrict his internet access as his algorithms are now feeding him extreme right wing racist feeds because that’s what he’s been looking at.