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.

Have you talked to him directly the rise of ultra-conservatism & toxic masculinity? As he’s bright I’d buy him some books:

• Toxic Masculinity: Curing the Virus: Making Men Smarter, Healthier, Safer

• The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny

• Far-Right-Vanguard The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism

• Bloody Nasty People: The Rise of Britain's Far Right"

• The New Extremism in 21st Century Britain

Surely nobody is in favour of free speech 'in its entirety' like you claim to be, or are 'free speech absolutists' as some say they are.

Do you really think I should be allowed to go around screaming for the right to sexually abuse children, say, or murder all black people? There are obviously some things which no society should permit people to say publicly. After that it is a matter of degrees about where to draw the line. In

Please speak to school and contact Prevent. His views are worrying and factually inaccurate.

Perhaps he could read what Pope Leo has said about inclusivity? He has written about the horrors of racism, and the need to reject violence. He's of mixed heritage, his mum being Louisiana Creole.

No it’s like locking the stable door to prevent the horse eating toxic food it’s taken a fancy to.

Do you also speak to him about the dangers of socialism and the far left that are becoming more prevalent?

Agree with this an several other posters about history. A professional historian here - most women worked throughout history. In the 1940s women were running the factories and farms in wartime. The industrial revolution, millions of women in factories ( and their kids) go back further craft working and farming was a family endeavour, women had to work to make it all work. Of course rich women didn't work. But the didn't do house work either. And the men didn't work either. Women keeping house and men providing was was a very short window for middle class only. Other points on empire and keeping Britian white has already been made. His history knowledge is very poor. Push book reading.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-31/liam-alexander-hall-possible-plea-flagged-alleged-terrorism-act/106515414

show this to your son and tell him he could be used

@TheCatCushions
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.

How do you respond to this?

If he is autistic and interested in the far right and Hitler, he might be interested to learn more about the Nazis' attitude to autism.
https://mjhnyc.org/blog/autism-and-disability-in-nazi-vienna/

The issue is, is that there is a massive problem with immigration, anyone with any amount of critical thinking can see this, however if people are faced with denial they will find people who also recognise the issue. Unfortunately the loudest on SM sell wholesale far right views and use an obvious problem to drag people into their ideology. Your son probably already feels “othered” with his ND so feeling not heard with his views he will be glad to find others that make him feel heard. Speaking as someone with autism, you do sad pens much of your time mimicking the social interaction of those round you with little understanding of nuance once you identify a group you want to be part of and you take things at face value.

I would say it’s important to remove him from SM, but you need some acceptance of his views by getting him to logically interact in discussions about them with more middle of the road views (don’t try and get him to interact with anyone with left views, maybe less extreme right wing views. It’s unlikely that he will be persuaded to move left, but that’s fine. If you speak with school about this it’s really important to make sure their views aren’t too left wing from the off as it will be too unsettling

If he loves history then you should start educating him about the history of the UK as a multicultural society. Does he know for example that black people have lived in the UK since at least Roman times? Does he know about the history of areas such as Bethnal Green in London, where immigrants have lived since the 17 th Century, starting with Huguenot refugees, followed by Jewish refugees fleeing from Russian and the Baltic states, with Bengali and Somali communities also established there in recent years.

If you can search out a book called The Peopling of London, it gives an amazing history of how a multicultural society evolves. If he really thinks that the UK was a whites only country in the 1950s then he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.

And yes, get him of the internet, it is only feeding his ignorance.

If he’s very logical as many with ASD are, is it worth diffusing with comments like “I’ve never seen an 11 bedroom house on Rightmove” (as a “traditional husband” he’d obviously live with the kids and want them kids to have their own rooms with luxuries like game consoles) Ask him how many kids could fit in a car to go to school as dad will be at work so can’t do the school run etc. Someone with 10 kids wouldn’t get time to see friends, game etc as the kids needed parenting after work and he’d have to pa for cleaners, nannies and other help. The boy would have to be on a professional footballer’s salary to afford all that. If ds has his own room ask him how he’d feel about sharing a room with 3 or 4 siblings and having things like gaming time on a rota because there’s not enough space for everyone. Hopefully he can start to guess that giving your children is a good quality of life is often a deciding factor when choosing how many kids.

Wouldn’t ds prefer driving a sports car and having a life where he could do what he wanted? (the sports car thing is because it’s a sign of success in the manosphere but you’ll know if there’s a better suggestion like going on holiday 5 times a year or whatever)

And on your last point, he could start with Jane Eyre, a classic novel about a young working woman written by one of the three Bronte sisters who all worked in the 1800s as teachers, governesses and of course bestselling authors whose works have become highly influential and respected, appearing on exam syllabuses and reading lists everywhere. Maybe that would help him realise that a woman's place is not barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen!

Also can I make the point that most black and Asian British people who came to the UK post WW2 were not immigrants as they came from countries that were, at the time of their birth, controlled by the British empire. The rules changed and are quite complex, but, depending on date of birth and status of the country, people were either British subjects or British citizens.

Could you try and get some advice from the PREVENT initiative?

Where is this happening?
What about it is dangerous?

(I also have a son with some far right views so am reading the thread with interest.)

As others have suggested your son has a very narrow idea of Britain in the past. In the first half of the 1940s there a war on .... women went to work on the land, in the factories and the forces.

About his white supremacy thinking ... would you consider having a DNA test on him done? It may shut him up a bit if he finds out that he's various percentages of other races!

I wouldn’t be gently correcting him. I’d correct him very firmly every time he spouts this stuff.

This is the problem!

OP, I just read this to DS of a similar age.
His response?
‘Bro needs to get off TikTok immediately’.
Maybe telling.

As I mentioned in my comment above, I would focus less on challenging your son's views (at least, for now) and more on getting him offline and finding him some in-person communities that have a higher-than-average cohort of other ASD folk. Once he finds a group of in-the-flesh friends and activities, it will be easier for you to pry him from his admiration of Hitler.

Also, do be careful about challenging his views unless you are absolutely certain of your facts. Several posters above have scoffed at the notion that Zimbabwe is "all black" but if you try that with your ASD son, he will lose respect for you as - factually - the country is AT LEAST 98% black African (depending on what source you believe, eg it could be up to 99.6% if you with the country's most recent Population and Housing Census). As mentioned in my comment above, this is an opportunity for BOTH of you to become better educated on these matters.

Keep the channels of communication open. Don't attacks his ideas or try to show him why he's wrong. Just listen and ask questions. Kids try on all kinds of personas and ideologies at this age. My kid wanted to be a Muslim, went on about it for some months - until I made an appointment for him with the local imam to talk about converting. That made it real. He moved on to soccer and Model United Nations.

Stop being "gentle" as you correct him, and read him the Riot Act instead. Have some strong principles and state them clearly, and tell him in no uncertain terms that his views are completely unacceptable. At least he would know where he stands in relation to you. It might be the wake-up call he needs. He sounds confused, and you are not currently helping him.

I think it’s less important to engage with point by point and more to get a conversation going about ultra-conservatism and toxic masculinity. He needs context to all this because he’s not aware of the bigger picture of what he’s being influenced by.