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 people are a little disingenuous generally in both this and the thread about working women. I don’t want to derail OP’s thread but yes women have always worked, it’s just if we’re talking specifically about married women and paid work- very low levels of women worked prior to WW2. I’m also dubious about the historian on here who failed to mention the marriage bar… But anyway.

Also to the poster who mentioned a book on London being multicultural, London has been for hundreds of years but it’s always an outlier just as it’s currently only 50% white compared to, say, Edinburgh which is 85% white.

I’m saying this because I don’t want OP to give her DS more disinformation. He’s accurate about certain things. But yes, teenagers have always enjoyed being controversial. I’m half Jewish and went through a stage of being utterly fascinated by the Nazis, I was a Hitler expert at one stage.

Racists won’t get far in the Catholic Church. Attendees are very high % Filipino, Indian and Eastern European.

Putting aside the online issues, as other people have addressed this, if he like history you could watch Black and British with David Oloysoga. Shows v positively that there have been black people in the UK for hundreds of years

I agree with history education. However his views seem to be that the UK is a white Christian country - you can't force him to have an appreciation of multi-culturalism.
Also in learning the history of Bethnal Green and Whitechapel would that include leaning about the indigenous people, the Cockneys, who have been pushed out of the area altogether?

It’s an advert technically but I found this quite moving and it made me do my own ancestry and DNA test (he might find his own history interesting?)

I am a pale (blue!) redhead with green eyes. I’m also 6% west African. Which doesn’t seem a lot but it’s my history - my GG grandfather (would have to check exactly how many great…) was a black slave who came to Scotland and married a white woman here

If freedom means anything at all it means being able to tell people things that they may not wish to hear.
George Orwell.

you need to find someone who is expert in countering extremism and expert in autism. Autistic people are over represented in extremist groups. Probably due to finding community groups line and rigid, inflexible and black and white thinking.

I was gonna say, id be making a swift referral to prevent. Youre beyond reasoned debate imo

@Sartre when you say the OP's son is accurate about certain things what do you mean? Because she says in her first post he thinks Britain should be like the 1950s when it was 'all white' and that gender roles should be enforced to make women stay at home and men be the providers 'like the 1940s'. He's definitely a bit dodgy on his decade for the latter as the first half of the 1940s had men at war and women working in greater numbers, so his accuracy could be challenged there - however, even if we take it that Britain was almost entirely white and that the majority of married women couldn't work in the 50s, bringing in as you mention the existence of the marriage bar (asking perhaps if he thinks this should come back!) those are two tiny things he's roughly (but not entirely!) correct on being the case for a short period of time in the 20th century. He's taking a very narrow slice of time and culture and claiming it's the correct order of things and the way he'd like to see the country now. I think it's really worthwhile pushing back on both his understanding of what life was actually like in that very short period of time he's referring to while also broadening his awareness of the wider and deeper history of Britain, empire and the world that might actually give some context to his understanding of how and why things change and the dangers of idealising an imaginary utopia that never did exist - whether black people were in the country or women worked or not in a particular couple of decades that looked different to both what had come before and would come after.

I agree with previous posters that he needs to be educated to the views of the far right/nazi party of those with disabilities and autism. At the moment he is identifying as a white male and therefore believes himself to be superior to women and brown people. The algorithm won’t be feeding him views on the autistic.

You need to feed him those views. He’s needs to realise he’d be first in line for the death camps because he will never be good enough for those that believe in a master race or purity. Doesn’t matter he’s male or white. He would be deemed as unworthy of life and a burden on the state.

I'm a former teacher who saw this at times in boys. Most boys who get sucked into this way of thinking do so because they feel they can't succeed at anything, and put the blame on other people for this. Make sure he has chances to experience success in some area of his life - schoolwork, sports, hobbies. Give him lots of positive reinforcement in this area.

Combine this by cutting down drastically on his use of social media.

I do really agree with this - there is a big overlap from incel communities into far-right and manosphere spaces online, and a major feature of incel culture is nihilism and a belief that there is no hope for the future. This creates a need for scapegoats (women, people of colour, immigrants etc). Life does feel bleak for many people, and it is really important that our teens get to experience success and joy away from screens.

Look at Channel and Prevent, be proactive in seeking support and advice. Your son is at huge risk of radicalisation. You also need to monitor / reduce his internet use severely, again, these people can help guide you in this. You need to start thinking of your ds as being ‘vulnerable’ and start putting things in place to protect him, otherwise this will escalate. Speak to the school also.

How have they been pushed out?

I'm a Designated Safeguarding Lead in a school.
OP, you have had some helpful advice on this thread but also a lot of advice from posters who don't fully understand the risks around online grooming and radicalisation, or it's link to real-world criminality, violence and the exploitation of children. If there is one thing we know from cases where teenagers have commited horrendous acts of violence after being radicalised by online extremists, it is that parents and carers often overlook the early warning signs. You're absolutely right to be concerned.

Your DS is particularly vulnerable due to being AuDHD. This means that he is likely to be suggestible and easily influenced, despite being academically able. He is also more likely to fixate intensely on particular topics that capture his interest. He may also miss red flags in friendships or relationships that might be apparent to others, making him more vulnerable to grooming and exploitation. There is some evidence that extremist groups are now deliberately targeting ND teens online for these reasons.

Do you regularly and thoroughly check your DS's phone and all other devices? If not, it is absolutely essential that you start doing so. Given his apparent level of interest it is likely that he is not just passively watching far-right, racist and misogynist content online but interacting with individuals or groups who espouse these views. It has been well established that far-right groups, including banned organisations who are known to commit real-world acts of terror and violence, target vulnerable children and young people on platforms such as YouTube, Reddit, Tik Tok and even seemingly 'child friendly' online games such as Roblox and Minecraft. They befriend them and groom them over a period of time and once they have established a deeper connection with the child they will invite them into private chats on another platform. This could be on the Dark Web, a gaming platform, or on encrypted messaging app like Telegram or Parler. These closed group chats become echo chambers, the content becomes more extreme and violent, and children are actively encouraged to ignore, mistrust and eventually distance themselves from their parents, teachers, and any friends who don't agree with their views. This creates a dependency on the child's new 'community' as well as leading them to become even more entrenched and extreme in their views, meaning they are potentially more susceptible to being drawn into involvement in acts of terror, violence or criminality either online or in real life.

You need to find out who your DS is communicating with, find out what sites and online forums he is visiting, what videos he had been watching, who he is following on social media and who is following him back and (this is really important!) screenshot any troubling posts or conversations. This guide is really useful in knowing what to look out for as there are a lot of symbols, code words, memes, abbreviations and seemingly innocuous combinations of numbers that are used by the far-right online
www.childexploitationeastmidlands.org.uk/uploads/signs-of-hate-%28hope-not-hate%29-erw-signs-and-symbols.pdf

When you have done this, call his school and ask to speak to the DSL. Tell them you would like them to make a Prevent referral. You can send the DSL any screenshots of concern to include in their referral. Some parents, understandably, worry about these referrals being made but please be assured they are not interested in criminalising vulnerable children. Their role at this stage is very much around protecting children like your DS, educating them and supporting them.

He doesn't know British history. Britain has not been 'all white' for centuries. His sources are actively lying to him.

Point proven i think.

You're not prepared to listen and discuss.

You've dismissed something as nonsense when it disproved your assertion.

You hide behind law (which is merely the codifying of the current majority view, c.f. hanging) as an assertion of "truth" and you state with absolute certainty that "removal of rights are not intelligent and valid positions" yet various groups have had rights removed "for the common good" and you no doubt support those for what you would no doubt argue are intelligent reasons.

I don't mind that you choose to take that position. We all have some prejudices and bigotry, acknowledged or unacknowledged.

But you are little different from the OP's son in that you hold views that you consider to be absolute but are in fact debatable, and yet I'm sure you classify yourself intelligent.

The only difference between you is that the echo chamber you live in is much bigger than his.

Gently correcting him hasn’t worked. OP needs to try another tack.

There’s a significant visible cultural impact too, due to colonialism. Those white people, along with millions of black people, who left Zimbabwe have done so due to political and economic issues. Not because black people think ‘white people don’t belong there’.

I think it's very fair to state that removing women's rights is not an intelligent position @CanSeeClearlyNowTheRainHasGone and I'm really not sure how you could argue otherwise. Can you explain that one a bit more?

I think the problem with your arguments is that you're trying to take them to such an abstract place that everything stops making sense. So your vegans are standing in quite clearly for Muslims and you want to say that someone might like an individual Muslim person or people but fear growing Muslim influence. It absolutely does not translate to vegans, and for you to take it to that odd hypothetical is nonsensical, especially as it didn't even work as a hypothetical stance. Same with your vague assertion that 'other' groups of people could have their rights removed and it would be reasonable...ergo removing women's rights is a reasonable stance? Is that really what you think? And what other groups of people do you mean? How can I agree or disagree with something that vague and fluffy? Just argue your actual point and it will make a lot more sense!

Imperial War Museum is much nearer and it's free!

This. Ring ACT to talk it through. Btw if he talks like this at school, or to e.g. the careers service, he may get referred officially to Prevent. Maybe he should know that. And if he's saying this to you, what's he posting online? Talk to him about hate speech so he can understand what's unacceptable and the trouble he will find himself in? Talk to him about the visceral dislike he will experience from other people? Explain that although you will listen and discuss, most people will dismiss him as despicable. Does he realise that people will think he's incredibly stupid?

Many Black British people are also Christians fyi

I second the advice to ring ACT, but just wanted to say it's really important that Prevent aren't used as a threat. Their role with children is to support and protect them from harm, and if children have been 'threatened' with a Prevent referral by parents this won't help in the event that they accept a referral and need to do direct work with the child. I wouldn't mention Prevent to your DS at this stage, OP. If a referral is made and accepted by Prevent then they will advise how best to introduce their service to him.

I've got a similar aged AuDHD boy and I think it's a really hard age. You've had some great advice on the social media side but I also think you need to consider how well supported he is with his ND.

Does he have good male autistic role models? Is he bullied or supported by his peers at school? Is he doing well at school or struggling? Does he understand the strengths that come with being autistic as well as the downsides? Its really important that he has hope for the future.

There has been a lot on the news recently about autistic children failing at school, not getting jobs etc. This could well exacerbate the general feeling of low self worth that are greyed on by people peddling this nonsense.