I was eating dinner with my dad a year ago when he told me about how he believes jews secretly run the world and that there’s something fishy about the Rothschilds. I burst out laughing thinking my dad had suddenly developed a very modern online sense of humor, but unfortunately no.
I’ve never known my dad to be antisemitic, and he even explained that regular jews are a different group from the ones in control.
I straight up told him it’s ridiculous and that he needs to get off the internet, but he never agreed with me. I still don’t know how to handle the situation really.
Oh and my mom went borderline sovereign citizen a few years ago, but I don’t remember what insane thing she said first.
I straight up told him it’s ridiculous and that he needs to get off the internet...
Which is especially crazy when I imagine I'm not the only one who was constantly told my personally developed views were influenced purely from "listening to all those liberals on the internet."
What’s wild is that my dad is a democrat, “union man”, who is himself otherwise liberal. He agrees that there’s a class war, but that the rich are organized specifically by a few secret unimaginably rich jewish families for unclear purposes.
Well like all lunatic right wing theories this has a kernel of truth. He just needs to strike Jewish, and the purpose is even more money.
From personal experience the "you're overthinking it, its just class warfare nothing else and that is bad enough " was to me the more effective way of pulling well meaning generally liberal/left leaning people back from the edge of the lunatic to fascism pipeline. I once made the mistake of doing "yes and (the Jesuits and the Medici)" in an ill advised attempt at humor. That person is not in my life anymore. It was far too comfortable being a hateful lunatic around me.
He's so close… He's even distinguishing that the problem is social class, just not taking the racism part out of it. There might actually be hope in his case.