My dad was a straight-ticket Democrat, gave money to the ACLU, and left the Catholic church when his local parish prioritized a new, bigger church over hungry parishioners. He was VERY liberal.
He voted for Al Gore in 2000.
In 2004 (when he was 75yo) an injury forced him to spend time at an assisted living facility for rehab. The TVs there were all tuned to Fox News.
All it took was six months.
Upon his release that’s all he watched. He obsessed over Fox. Became convinced liberals were out to destroy HIS America.
From 2004 onwards I watched my liberal dad – the guy who imbued me with my beliefs and values – decline into a ranting, angry, hateful person.
He almost died alone because I told him I simply could NOT stand to hear any more about how Obama was ruining the country. He relented, and I said goodbye to him in 2011 at his hospice, only because we agreed not to discuss “politics”.
Fox News is pure 100% brainwashing. I’ve seen it up close, and it is evil.
It wasn’t Fox News with my dad, it was another evil. Talk Radio. The far right has pretty much taken over talk radio and monopolized it, and through it radicalized a lot of people. My dad worked nights, driving, so he listened to a lot of this crap. Rush Limbaugh and even worse people. There’s like, nothing on the left even close to the amount of ears these people can reach, every day and every night, spewing their hatred and their vile thoughts. Talk Radio is Fox News on steroids and both are evils that need to be addressed.
It’s important to recognize the way people are radicalized and find ways to counter it.
Sometimes I forget that other people find this stuff shocking. I mean, it’s shit don’t get me wrong, but I basically grew up on it and it surprised me other people are just now finding out about how wack conservative radio is
Yeah my dad is liberal too, and I need to work to keep him off Fox News. He’ll watch it sometimes bc, “you need to know your enemy” and then a couple days later he’ll unknowingly repeat something dumb he heard. It’s fucking wild how quick they can turn older people. You can’t learn from Fox News bc their goal is to brainwash and nothing else.
About “knowing your enemy”
A good way to do that is through debunking videos. I mean the kind that shows a propaganda video, but it also shows the arguments against it, with the host offering commentary. That way, you can see what these folks are trying to say, but it isn’t unfiltered.
Youtubers Vaush and Suris do a lot of those, and sometimes Jimmy Snow (formerly known as Mr. Atheist) also does as well. Incidentally, Jimmy Snow (not his real name) also does radio-like things.
Suris’ channel (the smallest of these channels, he’s a lot like Cyrano De Bergerac, a character I admittedly heard of through a Wishbone episode but a known literary protagonist - except Cyrano didn’t get any action roles whereas Suris, in real life, did, he stole an abuse victim from the house they were being abused in)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh-YXgnF0tmBxCsh4w_4svw
Vaush’s channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1E-JS8L0j1Ei70D9VEFrPQ
Vaush is sort of a counter-voice - angry white masculine man talking about leftist topics, and he cusses like a sailor. Yes, others on the left have objected to what he says (and some of it is admittedly rude and off-color) but sometimes having voices like that on your side can help in de-radicalization, if only by challenging stereotypes from the right just by their very presence).
Speaking of counter-voices, here’s another one. This one doesn’t do debunking videos, which is why I didn’t include it in the intro, but it’s worth mentioning anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/user/unvoicedproject
Beau of the Fifth Column, who looks and talks like a right-wing redneck but he’s left-leaning. Sometimes his comments section can be nihilistic (a thing I don’t believe is helpful if it isn’t tempered with enough hope to help people feel it’s worth the fight), but, like Vaush, his persona might be more likely to be listened to by some right leaning folks than other leftists are. If only because he can’t be dismissed with various insinuations that left-wing men are all “weak” and thus not worth being listened to.
And last but definitely not least, Jimmy Snow’s channel. It’s a fairly big one. And it so happens he has a good radio voice, and is doing something like a radio shtick on Youtube (with being out-and-proud about his pansexuality and a lot of unselfconscious boy humor), in addition to debunking videos. I hope someone can get this man a show on actual radio - it would be a big help. And I bet he could do it, too, if he had the right offers for it.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgeV3tFiU2Xg0PD1dAQbBHA
I’m also listing Telltale, who does a lot on cults and propaganda techniques. He is leftist, and a lot of his videos are nuanced - he’s good about talking about the types of weaknesses these folks exploit (one of which, in his recent video addressing a person who claimed social justice is a cult, agreed that some of the ones anti-SJWs were debunking should be debunked, while being firm on the reality of how yes, there are social inequalities in American and those should be solved, and while there are mini cult-like groups within social justice that does not make social justice a cult)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgIi12EA6BQ8HKL8QUccsOQ
And while most of these are men, there are a couple woman channels I want to list as well. I’m not sure those would lead to de-radicalization, but one does debunking videos, the other helps with general insight (and I’m not listing the ones that are more niche, i.e. anti-MLM, because this thing is about more general issues. Also, one of the known woman debunkers does a cooking channel, and only one of those videos even mentions politics, so it’s a topic for another conversation)
Rachel Oates, atheist and general history and literary geek. She’s very good at critiquing things and talking in-depth about why the things she critiques are good, not just bad. Appeals to literature lovers, but also even if you don’t get into it all that much, she has a way of making it sound good, so even if you think you hate literary discussions she’s worth a watch just for that alone, and her ability to generate interest in those areas - some of her earlier videos especially are debunking videos, though she also criticizes online propaganda, most of which in recent months was anti-feminist propaganda:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC6ue7UYt1yeS621xmTMKrQ
And this is Dr. Ramani.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Qixc77KhCo88E5muxUjmA
She’s a therapist (mind you, her tone might be triggering to those who experienced abuse in special ed because her tone resembles that of a lot of abusers in that field). She talks about narcissistic abuse. This might not be entirely relevant to goings-on, but she is very in-depth and goes a lot into how those dynamics work, which is relevant to this radicalization. And while she does talk about social media enabling this, she isn’t wrong. It’s just that she’s basing her talk about social media on things like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where “likes” and praise matter more than anything - not Tumblr, where the validation-seekers end up circlejerking in corners of the site never to be seen by anyone else.
And also, she is speaking as a mom, not from the perspective of the one who was abused, and so I think she falls into an “awareness trap” re: negative effects and spreading narcissism (and I think not all of it is narcissism per se so much as related phenomena, or where it is narcissism it’s the cultural variety). But she acknowledges that she has limitations. And she listens to people’s ideas. She’s even included people’s ideas in her videos. Her latest one, about how narcissists change, might even be worth a listen from people who think they might be narcissists - some of what she says would tell actual narcissists what they need to do to change, but might also reveal pseudo-narcissism in those with personality disorders for the misdiagnosis it is because people who think they are narcissistic and aren’t will already exhibit some of the key characteristics she’s saying narcissists who wish to change need to cultivate
