Dealing with increasingly extreme political views in a good friend

[RandomNameChangeAlgorithm]

I think its a hand-hold needed more than actual advice.

I have a friend who I've known for 30 years and who I've been through a lot of my life with. At her best, she's a wonderful friend. She can be entertaining and good fun, very intelligent and very supportive. She's been with me through most of the most significant parts of my life.

Increasingly her political views are become pretty extreme (on the right). Having been someone who described herself as a "left winger" and "progressive" for most of our friendship, she has now pivoted in the space of about two years to being someone who is "open to hearing from" Tommy Robinson, believes that Muslims in the UK are a threat to our safety, goes on ad nauseam about the grooming gangs etc. Believes the current government is antisemitic. Has very extreme views on gay people: she's gone from a position of being anti-trans (which I don't agree with but is more understandable) to basically saying all gay people have been brainwashed by the left. Everything, and I mean everything, is "woke".

To be really clear: I don't agree with any of these positions and I find some of them abhorrent but I acknowledge her right to hold these views. I'm pretty much a centrist, politically, slightly left of centre but not an extreme leftist (I was always politically to the right of her). But I'm very relaxed about being friends with people from different backgrounds and discussing different viewpoints, I just can't stomach having to endlessly debate this stuff. It's impossible to talk about anything else and I find it exhausting and just want to talk about normal things once in a while.

I've previously said to her that she and I will never agree on, for example, the need to expel Muslims from the UK, I respect that its her right to hold these views but I find them abhorrent and upsetting and can we just agree not to talk about this subject as I find it difficult. But she won't accept this and will always bring every discussion around to this, without fail. I can't spend more than about ten minutes in her company or on the phone talking about anything neutral without a rant about Muslims or gays or the "woke media". It's as if its some sort of compulsion, an attention seeking thing to bring everything back to her political position.

I suppose I've got to a point where I find this so toxic and exhausting I can't deal with it any more and have been avoiding spending time with her and I feel guilty. I've been wrestling with whether to tell her directly why I can't handle it or just let the friendship drift. She's lost touch with a lot of our mutual friends from the past recently because people can't deal with the politics: old friends have basically ghosted her and I know she is sad and confused about this. I sort of feel she is owed an explanation, we've known one another for so long, but I also can't face getting into a long debate about why I've been brainwashed by the woke media etc etc. I don't have the mental bandwidth for it.

Do I owe this to her? Or should I just accept that the friendship is over.

You don’t owe her anything. If it was me, I’d just walk away and ignore any further contact from her.

Thats just me though, I can cut people dead without a second thought.

I can usually as well but this is someone who's been with me for most of my life: she's totally interwoven in all my memories etc. It's really hard to walk away from someone like that.

I’d tell her. Tell her how offensive it is to you and that you’re sick of listening to her rants.

I have a similar friend. I don't join the discussion just 'hmmm' and change the subject. He has depression and I do think his extreme views are part of this so I cut him a little slack but I must admit I can't face meeting him sometimes and it's generally a chore not a pleasure.

There comes a point with people where you have to say 'this is who they are now, would I be friends with this person?'. If the answer is no then you need to extract yourself.

I would walk away from that tbh.

It is far more than a difference of opinion. Her politics are deeply offensive and hate fuelled. There is nobody I would tolerate that from.

‘.. to basically saying all gay people have been brainwashed by the left’

Wth does that mean? Or more accurately - what does she mean by that?

My aunt came out that she's pro Trump and anti abortion ( even though a lot of us in the family are physicians and would view abortion as what it is - women's healthcare), no one has spoken to her since last summer when she said grape was God's will 🙄

@RandomNameChangeAlgorithm We have friends who have joined Reform. They have completely changed. They are not deeply enmeshed in our lives but we aren’t visiting them again. We have heard enough.

I do feel your pain about this when it’s a close friend. However she’s not respecting you is she? She’s not caring about your feelings and what you would like. Therefore I’m not sure all friendships can or should endure. They run their course. I think you have to back out of seeing her - reduce the times you meet. This couple were our only Brexit supporting friends and our friendship weathered that but their views are now too much. It’s unpleasant seeing them and being lectured too and told “you don’t understand” as if we were children.

Enough is enough and your friend would not be in my friendship group so let go of the strings and keep the memories.

I have listened to Tommy Robinson interviews (Trigonometry podcast) just to see what he was about given his name at the time was popping up everywhere. He is an ex football hooligan who has found a niche for himself as a self styled 'journalist' and I dont have much time for him. He is a rabble rouser. That said, I spent a short time living in Luton on a work assignment and I have to confess a lot of his observations of the Muslim communities in that town were spot on and a lot of issues around integration have been quietly ignored. He has found his USP by tapping into that discontent. I have been a centre left/ lib dem voters most of my life but even I can recognise that there is a grain of truth to his narrative.

I agree not all friendships should endure, I've made peace with letting go of this if its the right thing to do.

What I struggle with is the idea that I should effectively soft ghost her. I feel she is owed some sort of explanation as @Blueuggboots suggests but I also know from previous experience that any attempt to provide one will lead to an argument which will involve personal remarks about me and my life and politics which I don't have the energy for.

Perhaps you could write to her or text her your feelings? That way, you could do more to avoid the replies?

I don't doubt that he's a highly intelligent person with some prescient observations to make about some of the communities he feels he represents. I just don't agree with his proposed remedies and I feel he's a cynical person with no moral core who uses media and social media in a way that misrepresents the realities.

But this is all by the by. I could possibly make peace with her views even on Tommy Robinson if she didn't feel the need to shove them down my throat in every conversation.

I can't have a conversation about anything any more without things being not to subtly brought round to right wing politics. I'm constantly told I'm "captured" by the left wing media (I mainly read the Times, the New York Times and the FT, not even particularly left wing).

I just find it really patronising: I'm quite capable of making up my own mind about politics and I object to being told that because I'm not in thrall to the right I must be "woke". There's no subtlety, no nuance and no respect for people's right to come to their own conclusions.

And just bored to tears with the inevitability of it coming into every discussion, whether I'm talking about my job or what I'm planning to cook at the weekend.

I have friends who are communists and others who are extremely right
As long as they get their round in I do not care
I laugh at people who call themselves liberal and then say they cannot be friends with someone who has a different opinion to them,
That is the polar opposite of being liberal but they are too virtue signalled up to realise it and want to live in a bubble of mutual back slapping and feeling superior

It started from a position of being a gender critical feminist. Very much in line with the perspective of someone like JK Rowling. I am not opposed to this: in some agreement with much of it although I feel its become quite strident.

But it seems to have evolved from "all trans kids have been brainwashed by the woke community into thinking they want a sex change" to "everyone who identifies as gay has been brainwashed by the woke community".

I think soft ghosting is awful. Definitely explain knowing that the friendship may not survive it, or at least cool a bit. But at least there’s clarity at both ends and if she does ever ‘see the error of her ways’ and change positions like some arch-Brexiteers in my friendship group did, she may well become closer again. Or maybe you’ll become more of a radical right winger at some point? Hope not!!

‘ I have friends who are communists and others who are extremely right
As long as they get their round in I do not care’

😂❤️ Made me laugh. True true.

And I agree with the rest of your post, particularly your last paragraph.

These are not extreme viewpoints now. They are mainstream due to the weak and dishonest responses of the governments of the last few decades with regards to the Muslim Rape Gangs and uncontrolled immigration. People are turning to the likes of TR as no one else has listened to them. It was always going to be the case but to even suggest this could happen was met with shrieks of racism and declarations of the concerns in themselves being Far Right. You’re the one not moving with the times. Rightly or wrongly the lefty “let’s just be nice, smiley & welcoming to everyone & always think the best of them while steadfastly ignoring any bad behaviour within certain communities…” is over. Time for pragmatism. Your next government will be Reform and it’s all our own fault.

This happened to a friend. If was during Covid and she just lost herself to conspiracy. She became unreachable and I reduced contact before she dropped me - she found my views abhorrent. She moved, divorced and I feel bad that she missed her chance to be a good parent in a happy relationship. She lost everything that mattered and I see it as ongoing mh issues!

The issue is that the friend insisting on shoving their views down the op's throat. The op has said many times she respects the right of her friend to have their own political and world view.

Perhaps read the actual post and respond in context.
Edit: grammar

We will just have to agree to disagree on this.

But more to the point I want to agree to disagree with my friend on this. And honestly you sound a bit like her.

I don’t want every conversation being about mr being browbeaten into “admitting” that I have been “captured by woke”.

I am perfectly capable of coming to my own reasoned conclusions on politics, which I do. The fact that I don’t agree with this narrative doesn’t mean I have been brainwashed by the left.

Completely agree.

It’s funny isn’t it. You tend not to see threads about right leaning voters, looking to cut off left leaning friends.

I am right leaning and find it easy to separate friends from their political views. Even thought some of them I vehemently disagree with.

On the other hand I have a left leaning sister-in-law who can’t help herself, and will write digs about me on her Facebook page, which are pretty disgusting and not at all accurate. The associations she makes are immature, for example ‘if you support Reform, you’re racist’.

Yes because it is rarely the left that are ramming their views. It seems that the right ramroad and don't read the room. Nobody needs to have an in-depth discussion about hating Muslim men with their Costa. Every time. It is exhausting and smacks of conspiracy /populist am dram.

I think historically the left has been guilty of being more illiberal than the old right.

The traditional left was exceptionally intolerant of diversity of views.

But the newer, harder right seems to have adopted a lot of this intolerance.

I agree with you though that it should be possible, and in fact its life enhancing, to have friends who have different viewpoints. It just seems to have become much harder these days.

You have already told her haven't you? You asked her to agree not to talk about it and she ignored your wishes. That's not really very respectful of your friendship and would end it for me.

If she was a friend she would have agreed and respected your wishes. She doesn't seem to have any self awareness.

This kind of agreement is the only way I can spend time in my brother's company.

I find the 'left are intolerant and right more accepting' idea interesting.

You only have to look at the relentless hysteria about Labour/Starmer in the right wing press to see this isn't the case.