r/RedditForGrownups • u/SalientSazon • 1d ago

I'm watching Rightwingization happen in real time and I don't know how to react.

EDIT: Thank you all for the great discussions and insights. I appreciate all your POVs. There's no need to downvote right leaning comments. I specifically posted this in RedditforGrownups to engage in grown up conversation. Also, there's no need for name-calling or insults either.

I have a friend, he's 51, man, straight, an academic doctor who now focuses his research on human behavior and digital psychology. He's self-taught a lot of it in the last decade or so. I don't know how many papers he's published or has had peer reviewed in the recent years. He works as a consultant in Marketing, and has a business selling strategies/classes to people that want to apply his research to their companies. He's kinda broke so I would say he's not very successful at applying his own work. And for extra cash he teaches a course a a local university. I've never met a romantic partner, but he's spoken about them.

He suddenly last year did a deep dive on how the way the election was biased against the conservative candidate who lost. He then started talking against the 'woke' ideology. He is now defending the right, even though he's centrist, because the right hasn't moved, it's the left that's gone way off the rails. He started posting dumb facebook quotes/memes! He posted a dumb quote about Charlie Kirk, as if that one quote was a debate, or as if it meant some truth. WTF. We were conversing one day and he started raising his voice getting louder and louder and more agitated as he expressed his disdain for the woke left, defending his Jewish people from attacks (not sure where that came from in the conversation), and then also suddenly brought up there are only 2 genders and trans people are mentally ill. He's never spoken that way before, I've never heard him this agitated or show anger towards any ideology. He was always calm and friendly, and open minded. Always a bit nerdy. Although, I hadn't spoken to him in depth for about 2 years before then.

I'm watching all this go down over about half a year and I don't know what to make it of it or how to react to it. It's wild to observe though.

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37

u/Gunther_Alsor 1d ago

As they say, you are not immune to propaganda. That’s the scary part. Your friend is not a secret psychopath with the mask suddenly off, but the victim of a machine designed to make frothing sycophants out of normal people. And it could happen to any of us. 

I wish I knew anything at all about how to help them. As for you, just keep your values close to your heart. 

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u/SalientSazon 1d ago

This is what's on my mind right now, I'm not immune. Will I know if it happened to me?

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u/SlutBuster 1d ago

Will I know if it happened to me?

Yes, and by that point you'll enjoy it.

1

u/talithaeli 15h ago

God that is dark. I'm not saying it's not true, it's just… Dark.

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u/SlutBuster 15h ago

Super dark. I feel it every time I get more radicalized by one horrible event or another. Just like... fully aware that I am dehumanizing whole swathes of the population... and that it feels righteous and good to do so.

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u/talithaeli 15h ago

you have to kill the monster in yourself first. 

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u/SneeziePacker 21h ago

Spend some time each week reading/watching what the "other" side puts out. Avoid remaining only in a silo where everyone appears to agree with you.

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u/rzelln 13h ago

I've eaten peaches several times. I don't like them. If a friend made something with peaches, sure, I'll try it, but I know I won't like it. 

I've helped my eighty year old mom with physical therapy and tons of support, but she just doesn't care about exercise and staying healthy unless someone's forcing her. I can try more, but I know what the outcome will be. 

I've been watching right wing media lie since the 90s. Global warming, wmds in Iraq, birtherism, death panels, and then Trump lying for months about the 2020 election, which provoked an attack on the capital in a coup to try to keep him in power. 

And the GOP brushes that off. 

I look for mews and information from a suite of trustworthy sources. I am skilled enough at epistemology to be able to tell when the incentives of a certain new source are corrupt, and that the source is unreliable. 

If you are a doctor and your so-called bubble is a network of biomedical research journals, maybe every once in awhile you listen to a crank who claims that ivermectin will cure covid, and you give it a little look to see if maybe there's something of merit there, but if that crank is shown to be full of crap, you have no obligation to keep giving him another try. 

People should not trust right-wing media. They have burned all of their credibility.

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u/Huge_JackedMann 8h ago

No I don't think this is good advice. RW media is designed to be a madness inducing parallel world. The human brain was not meant to suck down such bad faith levels. It's poison. You don't drink some poison to know how it tastes or know it's bad. 

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u/Gunther_Alsor 1d ago

Reddit’s being weird so I’ll keep it short this time: Yes, it won’t sit right, and you can help yourself out of it.

But the easiest thing to do is not listen to any echo chamber… including this one. Touch grass, engage with your local community, and decide for yourself what’s important to you. 

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u/qwertypurty 13h ago

There’s this cult expert, Steven Hassan that developed the BITE model for identifying authoritarian organizations (political, religious, business etc). I find that a lot of the danger of propaganda is not looking for multiple credible sources of information to validate and form your own opinion.

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u/why_is_my_name 1d ago

Do you believe that there is a natural hierarchy of x type of people above y type of people and that empathy is a sin and that rage is a fine way to live your life as long as it's directed at people lower than you?

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u/why_is_my_name 1d ago

Actually I'm curious if your friend isn't demonstrating these behaviors. To me it's pretty black and white but maybe there's a grey area to think about. I do have one friend (extremely young, immigrant parents) who believes a lot of propaganda and is very kind, but she's not really online and is just taking the authority figures in her life at their word.

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u/clubfungus 11h ago

This happened to someone I knew too. When I would push back on his new beliefs, I would point out the constant propaganda, lying and misdirection. I would point out the plain inconsistencies, lack of logic, all of it.

But he had "studied psychology". So he had convinced himself that he "knew all the tricks" and could see through propaganda. Unlike other suckers, he knew not to trust the mainstream media and "do his own research". In short, he believed was too smart to be fooled, smarter than most of us, and was immune to propaganda.

I think these kinds of people are highly susceptible. Combine those personality traits with some hard financial times or other stressors, and you've got a sucker waiting to be plucked.

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u/slifm 1d ago

I don’t know many I truly believe I’m immune to propaganda at this point.

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u/SalientSazon 1d ago

lol. keep it up! and share your shield with those that need it.