Husband is unrecognisable

[phlebasconsidered]

My DH and I have always been different politically. We've managed it- it's fine to have different views. I'm left, he's Tory.

Or, he was. We have two nearly grown kids, 17 and 18. He's recently been spending more time in the back room watching stuff that i've pointed out is insane. You tube, Brit news or whatever that bilge is, I don't know where it came from. He's justifying his views by citing sexual assaults on white girls. He's basically transmogrified into a fucking idiot and I can't believe it.

We used to differ on economics, sure, but now suddenly he's a 53 year old fascist? I can't talk to him. His arguments turn me around. He's been radicalised- I recognise it from experiences in my profession. He says he's going to the march on Saturday. I've told him i'll go on the opposing one.

There's no way forward as far as I can see. As far as I knew he was still a loving family man but now I just see a big arsehole. He just circles around the phrases when I tried to talk to him.

I would just stand my ground and argue back- he's been a good husband and father till now, hitting mid 50s. But i'm in a job where if he goes and protests on Saturday and gets arrested, I will be compromised, asI work with children.

I need to distance myself. I'd really like to know i'm not alone I was hoping it was a bit of a mid life crisis, but I think he's just become a toral cock.

Wtaf am I meant to do. I'd rather he ran off with a younger woman tbh. I feel ashamed of him!

Where are you getting your data from? I think you're the plonker.

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/#:~:text=Government%20data%20about%20the%20UK's,group%20(2021%20Census%20data).

None of the above, I’ve said as much as I want to say about the march and it was in the context of my post.

Not helpful to jjump to conclusions and make assumptions.

👏👏👏

What an extraordinarily patronising comment, under the guise of kindness and concern. I would normally ignore such engagement, but your minimisation has rather annoyed me.

You ask: “Do you call out every rude comment made to you as racist? If so you may be making the problem worse.”

You clearly think that ethnic minorities consider all rude behaviour racist. We don’t. Here is a selection of the things that have been said to me since Brexit, and have worsened since the rise of Farage and Robinson and their ilk:

The day after the Brexit vote, I had to travel to a town in the North of England for work. A bunch of men walking past me told me “we voted for you to leave, so fucking leave.”

A woman in her 60s shouted “fuck off black cunts” at my family when we were having dinner outside a pub.

I have been told to “go back to my own country” numerous times, usually by aggressive middle aged men wearing England shirts.

A woman in her 40s told her companion “she probably can’t even speak English” on the tube when I hadn’t realised they were addressing me so hadn’t responded. (That one was particularly annoying as I was reading a novel at the time, which is why I hadn’t realised they had tried to speak to me.)

I have been called a paki, and spat at.

I occasionally appear in the press talking about work. Every single time, for the last 4 years or so, I get sent DMs from strangers spewing vile and racist slurs and threats. I had to close my DMs and stop using Twitter.

I am a highly educated professional, an expert in my field in fact, and am in my late 40s. I was born here. I haven’t encountered this level of hatred and racism since the 80s.

So tell me again, how me calling out racism is the problem, rather than the racism I am encountering? Do you describe those encounters I have described as rude rather than racist? If not, perhaps you should ask yourself why you were so quick to assume that I was calling out racism that wasn’t there.

You also say: “Suggesting women leave their husbands of many years for what could be a peaceful protest may be a common mumsnet reaction but it's also extremism.”

She isn’t solely complaining that her husband is attending a “peaceful” protest. She is talking about how he has been drawn into the extreme right wing, and is supporting racists. It’s not a question of politics, it’s a question of morality. Everyone has red lines. It’s depressing to me that supporting racism isn’t a red line for everyone. I actually wholly agree that couples can have differing politics and get on. My husband and I hold very different views but are respectful of each other’s. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t views he could hold that I wouldn’t leave him for. I’m a staunch feminist. If he suddenly started agreeing with Andrew Tate and other misogynists, I would leave him without a backward glance.

It was a figure of speech.

Few people are actively advocating for it. The problem is that when an individual voices concerns about the cultural implications of large scale male immigration from countries that brutalise women, pointing out that there are many concrete examples of them attacking European women, people call them gammons/racists/bigots/etc and start talking about these shouty blokes outside hotels.

The reality is that Reform are the UKs most popular party right now. That means a fuckload of people support them. Way more than just these idiots. It's like suggesting all feminists are like the angry blue haired mob that protested Warren Farrell at whatever uni it was in the US.

1200 women were sexually assaulted in one night by men who were almost exclusively immigrants/asylum seekers, in a way that is well documented in places like Egypt. The police refused to acknowledge it and restricted the press from mentioning ethnicity. The last thing we need is people who supposedly support women's rights validating this attitude of complacency.

Victims and eyewitnesses claimed that the police were turning away people that tried to notify them of unruly mobs of men. How many hundreds of women might've avoided life changing rapes/sexual assaults had they taken action? It's not even an isolated incident. There have been loads even if we discount Rotherham. Like the event in Stockholm where around 40 girls were sexually assaulted by a large group of young asylum seekers, with most of the victims being <15yo. How do you think that kind of thing affects a girl of 13-14yo?

Guess how the authorities handled it? They claimed the night went 'largely without incident'....until they couldn't deny it anymore.

A favourite feminist saying is 'not all men'. Why can't we also say 'not all middle eastern men' whilst acknowledging that it's too many as we do with men in general? This isn't an opinion. 1200 women were sexually assaulted in one night and a lot of posters are desperate to accuse anybody that dares mention it of being a racist. Maybe they'll change their mind when it's their daughter and people are calling them a xenophobe.

Shhhh. This is considered hate speech nowadays.

Really well said and enlightening, in a depressing way, I mean. So disgusting that you have to put up with that in this day and age x

Believing that Keir Starmer would be our saviour?

He's surely no one's saviour. Just better than Farage. Though that bar is on the floor.

Disagree. It's usually academics that end up getting into weird niche politics and ideological 'isms'. And looking down on non graduates whilst earning less than the average white van man is a bit embarrassing.

Bollocks. It's perfectly understandable for a man not to want his loved ones to be attacked or raped.

Oh sure, like a refugee is more likely to rape then than he is himself. Not. Check the facts.

What you say should be true, and maybe it was in the past. Sadly, I couldn't disagree more: being a millennial, having gone up to doctoral studies, my experience is quite the contrary. My experience with college educated people (and I include myself, before becoming a mum) is of bored smart people, playing with absurd ideas to justify their lack of life purpose or direction; blinded by ideologies and with embarrassing superiority complexes and authoritarian wet dreams.
I admit I may be a little bit resentful (after all, I witnessed first hand the anihilation of my field of study - women's studies), and nothing would make me happier than to be wrong. But I think that universities are a joke, albeit a very expensive one.

(So no: I don't believe that "critical thinking" is being taught or practiced on uni nowadays. I even believe it's actively discouraged, at least in certain areas of the humanities).

The saddest thing in all of this is the EU Vote. There were people who voted for Brexit thinking the non-white immigration would decrease. What absolute morons.

Our analysis, informed by advice given to us by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Home Office, and Oxford University's Migration Observatory, shows there is likely a significant difference in offending rates among Afghans compared with Britons - but most likely not to the extent described by Mr Farage.

Our estimates conclude that Afghans are closer to three times more likely to be convicted of a sexual offence than someone born in the UK, rather than 22 times.

https://news.sky.com/story/fact-checking-farage-are-foreigners-more-likely-than-britons-to-commit-sexual-offences-13407029

Social media, the death of civilisation.

Well, we're not stoning women to death yet.

you watch GB News ! No one believes Starmer is saviour but the Farage boot lickers are another livel of insanit and definitely . need someone to wipe their bum. You want to buy a hat? 😂 stop it! Politics gone extreme

@CuriousKangaroo You shouldnt have to experience that and you could take it to the police.

You are still suggesting someone should abandon their husband and the father of their children without even an attempt to counter the sort of propaganda he has been experiencing. Their are other videos on you tube she can show him, she can discuss it with him calmly. Yet you immediately go for you must leave him. Just how is that going to help? You cant bully people into thinking the same way as you.

Really @anyolddinosaur? While I wouldn’t expect an apology from someone so clearly determined to ignore the impact of the views you plainly hold, you have not a moment’s reflection on the fact that you tried to dismiss my comments about the racism I have experienced as plain rudeness? You were wrong, and if you genuinely think that engagement and conversation can change people’s minds, then surely the examples I outlined would have some impact.

As for reporting the incidents to the police, do you genuinely think they will do anything? Or that I have the time or energy to report such incidents every single time? You know that it’s not practical, you simply want to continue to feign kindness/concern.

As for the OP speaking to her husband, she is clear in her post that she has tried and he is so entrenched in his views that he simply parrots what he has heard, without research or reflection. Perhaps you need to read the OP again? Because it’s all in there.

I repeat what I said earlier, some views are immoral. Racism, sexism etc, are immoral. I couldn’t stay with a man who held them, because morality is important to me.

@CuriousKangaroo Op said this is "recent" and "sudden" . She has an opportunity - even a duty - to try and work against that. Or she can be like you and imply views that I dont hold because you want this woman to leave her husband.

Being spat on is assault. Threats by dm are malicious communication. Yes I do believe the police would take those seriously. They might not prosecute but if there is cctv for the assault and they can trace the addresses for the communications then they either act or you can take action against them. You cant do anything except ignore insults because they are not criminal offences but you can do something about criminal offences.

Hmmm, and still no recognition from you of the fact that those are plainly racist incidents after you insinuated I was seeing racism in plain rudeness? You know a truly polite person would apologise for such an unfair and improper assumption and for minimising the concerns I raised?

As for the police, you clearly have no dealings with them. I do, for work, and have done for over 20 years. I know exactly how things would pan out.

I think I’m done with this chat. You are proof of what the OP, some others on this thread, and I have said: when views are entrenched, no evidence to the contrary is accepted or recognised.

The fact is though regardless of if its short term cultism you can simply ‘go off’ someone if you are no longer on the same page mentally - I don’t see it on here that we are being told to tolerate drug addicts or gamblers or alcoholics, why should not seeing the world in the same way at all be something we should just go along with because ‘ we should tolerate views we totally don’t go along with ‘ essentially the person is no longer who you thought they were- I would certainly ‘give it a bit of time’ and argue my viewpoint , however if a year later we still were totally at odds then I would be seriously thinking of separating -

@GingerPowerFull research source please.

UK security clearance is a condition of employment in a lot of organisations for all levels of employees. The vetting process goes into backgrounds of spouses, partners, parents, step parents and children.