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.

I have, and she seems not to be able to help herself, its a compulsion.

It came up recently when she asked me why a particular group of friends who we were in a friendship group with when we were younger had stopped responding to her invitations to meet.

I know from talking to them that they feel as I do, some of them more stridently than me. They can’t deal with it.

She keeps telling me they have become “boring and middle aged” and are “dominated by the needs of their children”. (She is child-free and single although very happy with this). I haven’t explicitly waded in to disabuse her of this because I feel its not my place to do so but I feel she has a right to know.

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

For explaining why people have turned to the likes of TR? To be clear, not supporting him myself, just explaining clearly why people are turning away from the two main parties?

You probably have no idea how clearly you have demonstrated the points I made in my post 😁

I think it was true in the past, to be fair.

You still see the echoes of this on here with some “everyone hates a Tory” rhetoric.

But I don’t think the left has a monopoly on this any more.

I sympathise OP as I’m exactly where you are politically - I’m not keen on extremists either side of the divide- have the same problem with my FIL - but he’s 86. He seems obsessed with gays, which I think is the least of the country’s issues. I think the problem is there isa lot more money to be made by pushing the right wing agenda, and people like Robinson and Farage have seized on this for self enrichment, there is big money behind it -whereas I think on the left it’s more about wanting to be ‘down with the kids and doing the right thing’ - not a bad viewpoint but often somewhat unrealistic about what keeps economies ticking over and where the money comes from - both sides have some truths in there but also push a lot of dogma - whereas the reality is in life and business there are many grey areas . Take Brexit as an example , it was kind of pushed that it would solve the crisis of non legal migration, make lots of things cheaper and cut red tape - it has done nothing of the sort and anyone actually working in business knows this. . It has stifled international investment in anything but shuffling money about for any businesses dealing in ‘stuff’ - certainly hasn’t made things cheaper and positively caused an explosion in non legal migration due to the French no longer being under obligations - then further to the left ( and I don’t mean centreist) you have the idea that anyone doing semi ok is fair game to subsidise anyone not doing so well - regardless of why that is and the life choices they have made . I’m in Sweden at the mom ent for new year , we lived in Denmark for 2 years - I think the scandis have it right in many ways but even they acknowledge that being very liberal about certain things has caused issues and discontent - the difference is in most other country’s in Europe you can think longer term, not just the next election due to voting systems - it’s rare that the extremists have absolute power - with regards to your friend I would be upfront and say you are finding constant political talk really tiresome and would rather agree to disagree - if they can’t do that and they only want to talk about that then I think you have to accept it’s run its course

But I completely understand why more people have turned away from mainstream politics and embraced the right. It makes a lot of sense to me.

I just don’t agree with the sentiment that it’s inevitable and necessary for people to go down this path, nor that anyone who disagrees with this position is “woke” or “captured”.

And I want to be able to have a coffee or a glass of wine with an old friend without having this rammed down my throat every ten minutes.

@Crikeyalmighty I completely agree with everything you said.

I personally couldn’t continue the friendship. Not because of her views (although it would be challenging) but because she won’t respect your request to leave those discussions alone.

I would write to her and tell her how you feel. That you have tried to maintain the friendship because you care about her and would miss her but it’s becoming impossible.

You’re not attacking her views or asking her to change them you’re just saying you don’t want to discuss any of these issues in an attempt to save your friendship.

You can offer an opportunity to try and reset things again or just tell her it’s done and you don’t want further contact. I think I’d do the latter but you may feel differently.

I don’t blame you. I absolutely will not discuss politics with friends either in RL or on SM. I’m told I am boring, selfish, asked why I don’t care that the UK is being destroyed/that there’ll be a world war shortly/that LGBTQ peoples are being persecuted and so on and on, but I never get sucked in. Only on here anonymously.

I gave little indication of my own viewpoints in my post yet you told me I sounded like your “extreme” friend. Maybe ask yourself why you jumped to that simply because I suggested that her views are no longer considered extreme but are rapidly moving to the mainstream. Might help you understand the depressing path we are on.

I agree that the left (in England anyway) have become more intolerant and rigid thus making parties like the Tories seem more progressive and open minded.

The people who don’t hear about right wing people ditching left wing friends can’t be on social media much. Woke, sheeple etc have been regular insults online. Have they missed the whole QAnon movement (especially in the US)?

OP your friend lives an argument about her views. Tell her and you’ll be another “captured woke leftie” and the break up will be nasty. While I see why you feel like she’s owed more because of your history, you’ve grown apart and if she won’t avoid discussing the topic then there’s nothing you can do.

I have friends with very different viewpoints eg religion and the friendships work because we never discuss religion.

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.

Does this offer a route to walking away? Every time she diverts a conversation to her favourite rants, stop her and point out that it really makes conversation with her difficult and dull when every single topic gets derailed like this. If she comments that you're avoiding talking to her, explain that this is why. If she continues, you continue to wind the friendship down and, if she questions this, point out again that she just doesn't seem interested in a normal conversation and is making no effort to accommodate you. The whole thing will wither away sooner rather than later.

I had a colleague like this. She didn't have the 'all gay people are woke' line (our boss was gay; I'm gay), but she was absolutely sure teenagers identifying as anything was a sign of woke conspiracy. She believed in all the stuff about chem trails and conspiracies to put chemicals in the food supply, and she had some extremely odd beliefs about diet and supplements that she got from some kind of self-appointed nutritionist. She used to lecture us all about vaccines - first it was covid vaccines but then it widened out to include everything; she was desperately worried about me letting my DD have the yearly flu vaccine.

It made me aware how easy it is for people to get sucked in. The reason this sort of rhetoric is so appealing and so difficult to resist once you've started listening to it is that it all leads on to other things that seem to confirm there's a big pattern. She would show me videos that had a grain of truth in them, and they'd immediately link to other videos, seemingly by totally different people, showing a version of the same thing.

And she'd have constant reinforcing chains of stuff, like this: 'ok, so the Guardian says some people came over as immigrants on small boats, Sarah, you read the Guardian, right? Now here's a video responding to the Guardian and showing the number was much higher, and look, they're actually standing beside the port where they came in, right, so they must know. And now here's a video showing how those people were actually terrorists who planned to come here? See how there are no women and children, only men? Now here's a piece in the Telegraph - you get it, the Telegraph, totally mainstream media - saying how there's no money in the NHS? And see, here's the video explaining how these terrorists have deliberately come into our country to defraud the NHS, right?'

It would all seem to link up. And if there was evidence that didn't fit, she'd tell you the media was in on the conspiracy to lie to us, and you couldn't trust anything (at the same time as relying on all of these videos telling her things).

I think the alt right rely on people wanting to believe this stuff, and getting into a state of heightened anxiety where it's almost a relief to go with the flow and believe all the problems in the world could be solved by believing there's one underlying cause of our problems.

Sorry, that didn't help you with a solution. Much easier with a colleague than a friend, but I must admit at some point I simply said 'I cannot listen to this any more'.

@Sequinsoneverythingplease

I gave little indication of my own viewpoints in my post yet you told me I sounded like your “extreme” friend. Maybe ask yourself why you jumped to that simply because I suggested that her views are no longer considered extreme but are rapidly moving to the mainstream. Might help you understand the depressing path we are on.

To answer your question: because your response echoed things my friend has said. To elaborate: I think your diagnosis of the reason for this pivot to the right has happened is only partially right. It lacks a lot of nuance, in my view.

I agree that previous governments had their heads in the sand about uncontrolled immigration and that in the case of the Grooming Gangs scandal political correctness was allowed to stand in the way of justice.

But I think you have overlooked the very concerted effort made by the far right to weaponise this in order to divide our society. I think the pro Brexit campaign was a deliberate attempt to leverage genuine concern about immigration and the remedy it proposed and won was a heavy handed and incredibly ineffective solution which did untold damage to our economy and our political system.

The upsurge of political manipulation around the Brexit process did far more damage than the immigration itself and as we have seen has had no impact on immigration. All it’s done is to trash the economy and poison the well of reasonable political discourse.

I accept that you may disagree with me on this and thats your right, but my position is not based on being “woke” or “brainwashed by the left”.

This is what I object to. I am very happy for people to take right wing positions but they owe it to people who disagree with them to accept that they have their own reasons for their perspective beyond “woke”.

I suspect this is the exact kind of response you mean, OP? I have a friend exactly the same. And the interesting thing is it could literally be her writing this, word for word. Maybe Sequins is my friend lol! But otherwise...it seems there's a very set script with identical wording. Reminds me a bit of the MLM scheme that I lost a few friends too in the past as every single conversation took a turn to this, same wording, same script. Exceot MLM was way less scary than Reform.

That’s what I have started to do. I don’t think the penny has dropped yet.

You can't be friends with someone whose views are so diametrically opposed to your own, especially if they go on about it ad nauseam.

Time to let this friendship go, I think.

I agree with @myotheraccountsa about the script. And the insistence about talking about it. I think that's what makes it frightening and exhausting at the same time.

Point out that gay people have been around forever, the Greeks and Romans had same sex relationships, I don't think the woke community was around then!

Yes, I think you probably do owe it to her to be clear that you can't spend time with her if she just continues to rant at you.

I have a friend who is still furious about Brexit (I'm anti-Brexit too but after 10 years there isn't much new to say on the subject) and have explicitly said that I can't spend time with him if he just rants about Brexit the whole time. He actually mostly respects this now!

I think I'd tell her that you love her but think she's lost the plot. You'll always be here for her in a crisis but can't listen to her spout this bile, so it's probably better if you step back from each other for a bit.

It'll save your sanity and might give her enough of a shock to reconsider.

To my mind this descent into conspiracy theories that seems to be affecting so many people is a trauma response. It sees to have become more prevalent after Covid so maybe the pandemic inevitably triggered deep unresolved wounds and the apparent security of the far right seems to alleviate this? Tale as old as time.

@RandomNameChangeAlgorithm and posters like @Sequinsoneverythingplease seem to also totally discount the behaviour of the kind of white British Neanderthals , many out there supporting Reform too -white, British and often abusive complete arseholes of all ages - thing is arses come in all colours, religions and races and by obsessing about Muslims or Eastern Europeans or whatever , I think our totally home grown arses , drunks , wife beaters, drug addled , are having their behaviour pushed under the carpet, or even worse accepted as’real men’ - basically let’s blame xyz ( as they aren’t like us) for the fact that stuff has gone to shit -

Oh don't be daft, it's a response to the fact the economy is sluggish, housing prices are crazy, and we have a massive wealth gap.

No one would give a flying fuck about immigration if it wasn't for that - not that it is the fault of immigration, but people do need something to blame.

This is not to say the grooming gangs haven't been dealt with appallingly, obviously, but that's not an issue that's driving anyone's vote.

I agree and one of the things I find it hardest to stomach is when she starts talking about how Tommy Robinson exists to “protect vulnerable people”. Please.

And you only have to see the relentless squabbling and infighting on the left where ideological purity is deemed more important then political pragmatism and compromise. Look at Your Party, Momentum etc.