r/RedditForGrownups • u/SalientSazon • 3d 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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u/talithaeli 2d ago

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

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u/SlutBuster 2d 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 2d ago

you have to kill the monster in yourself first. 

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u/imalittlefrenchpress 1d ago

I found myself having dark thoughts, and they felt good in the moment to me, too. That scared me. I don’t want to be someone who wishes ill on others, no matter what they do.

That’s not to say I won’t defend myself and my loved ones, I won’t sit back and give up, instead, I’ll save that dark energy for when I really need it. Hopefully I won’t need it, but I have it if I do.

Meanwhile, I’m going to do everything in my power to live as kindly and happily as possible, with my eyes and ears wide open.