To think I don't know my DH at all

[Cakerose]

We've been together 15+ years, married with kids last 5, I thought we covered all the topics when it comes to values and principles - especially related to the way we raise our children but turns out he was full of it - to put it bluntly.
Essentially, with meeting new kids/parents through nursery/school - I now realise he is very much leaning toward being,well, racist 😔
You would think - how did I not notice this before....well the thing is he was always respectful to friends or colleagues regardless the ethnicity - but now when we discuss behaviour that our child picks up from the nursery from another child - he attributes/explains behaviours with 'well ofcourse this happened considering he is x'.
Then slowly such vocabulary moved into every day conversations about e.g. neighbours - he'd say derogatory things about particular nation based on behaviour of a single person that affects us.
I am just so blindsided and can't stop thinking about how this will shape our children.
How could I have been so blind...or could he had just pretended all this time, and why??
Or can people change their views about something so basic so dramatically?
Recently he started making mean comments about LGBTQ community too - I mean we have friends that he loves or I thought so...
I am also thinking his mum's recent visit may have encouraged him to speak up - clearly these are the values he was brought up with.
I am also ashamed... I am looking at my DS atm sleeping - he is such a warm friendly loving and a smart boy and he is being exposed to comments like this. He loves all his little friends. He was talking proudly about friends he'd like to invite to his bday and his grandma actually asked him what colour is a certain child...she also described a 4 yo girl in the playground as fat.
I am sorry if this is a jumble of topics here - a husband showing true colours years later, a toxic mil, a clash in values, challenge with co-parenting, protecting a child from instilling wrong values...
So is it that I was blind all this time (YANBU) and I just never got to know him - or people actually can just change their core values so drastically (YABU).

Yes being influenced by social commentary is real

The daily mail is really mild compared to what’s Online, I mean really really mild

I would definitely try and find out what he’s watching

11 years ago I broke up with a man who very casually said "this is the kind of thing that makes me want to go and burn down a mosque". I couldn't believe how casually he said it at the time. Best decision I ever made, these days his life looks as rubbish as the comments he made.

If you tell him it's making you feel actually upset and worried about how it will impact your son, is he amenable to at least trying to stop the nonsense?

God, this must be so hard for you.
When you pull him up on his comments, does he ever seem surprised that you are pulling him up on it/dont feel the same as him?

No...he has this attitude lately that it doesn't really bother him the slightest how anything he says or does makes anyone feel.
Kinda goes hand in hand with being racist.

We were talking about this on mn. There's some very strange stuff on Instagram. The more you watch a certain type of content the more the algorithm throws at you.

I'll try and find the link.

No, he knows very well where I stand. I always correct him, I also tell him to not say such things in front of me.
He is not bothered at all I don't share his views, he is not attempting to recruit me. He just stands his ground.

@Cakerose If you separate and it did go 50/50, at least in your time his environment would be completely free of discriminatory influence and language. That's absolutely better than him being around it all of the time.

I think it’s possible. People get brainwashed. Maybe he has also been spending time on places like twitter etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrage_industrial_complex

@Cakerose does this seem possible?

So there's other arsehole behaviour alongside it... whats he been like as a dad and a partner in general, looking back?

I agree with this. Social media and YouTube is full of filth.

Your husband is from another country and he is willing to take your child to study there? This sounds very serious.

Huh that is a topic in itself (which I raised recently while his mum was visiting). He used to vary between great and decent depending on how things were at work for him, he really cannot separate work and private time as he is constantly on call. Imo he doesn't know how to set the boundaries and he was actually making progress until his career obsessed mother (she is of the type that thrives through her children achievements in the lack of her own) visited and he is now back to factory settings - work obsessed and useless at home, but convinced he is the breadwinner (we earn roughly the same btw and I work less). Although improving significantly since she went back home.
A separate topic..

Yes and probably a different topic as well, I am sure there are mechanisms for me to stop him from doing this, but I need to familiarise myself with that (do share if you know a useful source of information). This is still not imminent danger, he is just throwing ifs and whens on imaginary scenarios.

So sorry for you OP. I'd say two things: 1) for all practical purposes it doesn't really matter whether he was always like this & you missed it, or he's recently changed - you have to treat it like he's recently changed. And 2) I think it's pretty unlikely you missed it. More likely he's being influenced by rightwing "friends" - is his personality a bit on the easy-to-influence side? Whatever: you have to keep a route open that leads back to the guy you once knew. What other choice have you got?

You have to let him know you think he's changed. It will annoy him - if he's trying on a rightwing personality for size, he'll want to believe he's a man of strong principles, takes no shit blah blah. But you have to ignore that and say, I want the old you back again. Because this new you is saying stuff I can't hear and I can't let my child hear. And I can't go forward with that. So d'you want to sit down & talk about what's brought on these attitudes? Because that way lies some chance of us continuing. Or d'you want to stick with this "hard man" stuff? "No-one likes me, I don't care"? Because I care - enough to say I'm not living alongside it. It's your choice: talk to me about what's changed with you, and how to do something about it, or there's the door for a bloke I no longer recognise to walk out of.

I had this problem last year for a bit. We had a couple very big arguments over it.

I’m fully convinced (ok I have no proof!) that a specific demographic gets bombarded with GB news, reform etc. DP doesn’t have any social media but uses YT a lot and his feed/shorts at the time were pretty much only that, like every other video. It was relentless.

That's interesting. My dh is easily influenced - I know it sounds lame, bit it's more his laziness to inform himself by curating sources himself. He is not focused on politics or society, his head is so deep in his work which has nothing to do with it, but this makes him easy target because he is not properly informed...

What is his home country if i may ask ? There may be a general view like this in his home country . I ask as have the same challenge

Eastern European

You say he doesn't care what other people think, but does he care at all about upsetting you? If you said that when he says these things it leaves you very upset and questioning your relationship, what would he say? Because if its a 'so what', then what's the point in your relationship anyway?

Do you think he would want to spend a lot of time with your son if you split? Or would he see raising children as womens work?

I'd definitely be hiding the passports

People who aren’t well informed is a big worry, especially with all the AI
For example on YouTube he might see AI generated videos that are just crap and he doesn’t even realise it

it seems unbelievable, but I do think people change dramatically if they’re being subjected to a lot of whatever it is

does he meet a lot of people? Does he get a lot of time in the real world because that’s really important?

From the sounds of it, he had the seeds of this sown in his own upbringing. It's possible that he moved away from this way of thinking as he grew up and made his own way in the world, but is now being drawn back to it.

Has he always been close to his family or has he become more active with them following the birth of your son?

I agreed with PP who say he's likely being fed stuff online too. You don't even have to look for it these days, it drips into feeds all over the place. I go on what I think are normal Reddit threads about life in the UK and suddenly someone is blaming Islam for the UK economy being shite or whatever

Did it get solved?

I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s getting a lot of this from social media, or maybe friends. Maybe both. He may have grown up with these attitudes but only really adopted them himself more recently. There’s a lot more of it about these days, sad to say.

Given he’s not from the UK, you could broach the topic from the perspective that you hope your own children won’t face discrimination. Somewhere to start, perhaps.