A small thing I’m doing to try to help keep this election truthful:
We all make big political posts here on Tumblr right? Where we learn about how mail-in voting works and the little things that you need to keep an eye out for to keep your ballot counted, where we discuss what voter fraud actually is and what to really be worried about, where we fact-check claims and bring up productive platform discussions
So I’m doing this on Facebook for my QAnon-fallen family.
Here’s the thing when you post on Facebook for your radical right family members - often you are the first time they are seeing this news at all. You know the news about ICE forcibly sterilizing Latina women? We all found out about it on Twitter right away. My great aunts who only go on Facebook never saw it at all. This is because social media monetizes the content we see on our feeds - separate from ads, it changes which posts we even see. (Most of us know this, but I’m giving a little primer anyway.) So my aunts are very upset about child trafficking, they only see QAnon posts and shares about this. BUT! Because we are family, they will also see my posts every once in a while. So when news like this breaks, I’ll post it to my feed too.
But here is another very important thing.
When I post the news, I write a caption to go with it. I’ll find a report coming from BBC usually (because it’s less inflammatory for my fam if it’s from the UK) and then I’ll make a post starting with an emotional appeal. When the ICE news came out, I kicked it off like “This news is horrific. It shocks the conscience.” I summarized the story in a sentence or two. And I explained in longer sentences why it was bad (in this case, I referenced UN genocide markers).
All of this, I did without using keywords.
You can’t say things like “abolish ICE” or “defund the police” or “anti-fascism.” Fox News and YouTube has basically conditioned their viewers into understanding these as triggers. You have to use other words - you have to let them come to the conclusion behind these ideas, that there is something wrong with ICE, or policing, or Trump’s behavior on a simply everyday level. It sucks, I know, to be so careful with your speech when they don’t worry. If that makes you upset, then this post is not for you. Keep protesting and making your posters and sitting on your reps’ lawns - that’s all important work too! But this is different work, and it won’t get immediate results. It is very much a long burn tactic.
And I don’t tell them how to vote
I ask them sometimes to please consider this news when they make their decisions. But usually, I make an appeal like, “you don’t need a pro-life vs. pro-choice debate to recognize this as horrifying” or “you don’t need to justify any immigration policy to know this treatment is inhumane.” I make it seem so universal, just trying to remind them of decency outside of politics. I’ll ask them to call their reps to investigate these things. They’ll see how their reps talk to them versus how they speak on the news, for one thing, and their reps will know there’s political pressure from both sides of the aisle.
But the big thing is, my QAnon-believing family members all grew up with abusive homes. I think they’re drawn to this conspiracy theory because 1. it’s nice to have a black and white explanation for why things are crazy and 2. it’s comforting to have a strongman authoritarian leader taking all the decision-making and control behind it. But as stated in “Why Does He Do That” and its chapter on creating an abuse-free world, you have to give abuse victims tools and freedom to make their own choices. Like how ex-Mormons say you need to be nice to door-knockers if you want them to leave, you gotta show them that the world outside of Fox News and YouTube is actually safe and full of helpful people. You can’t be like, “you’re wrong, these people are nice” you gotta represent it. It’s hard, it’s draining, but my great aunts are now commenting on my posts like, “wow, I never heard about this before, thank you for bringing this to my attention.”
Because I’m asking for help, not condemning.
Yelling at my family over Thanksgiving dinner never changed their minds. All it did was make them dig in and defend their own sense of conscience and the leader they loved. This isn’t a tactic for everyone. You don’t need to enter debates on these topics. But I’ve found that simply posting some news, saying a couple lines about why it’s wrong, and leaving it at that, has helped get my family members to trust my thoughts a little more, which opens the door to them asking questions, which opens the door to them actually listening instead of reacting when I do need to explain things like “this is what climate change is” or “this is what defund police means.”
And if they do get cranky
I’ve always found quoting their language back at them, that do your own research rhetoric, helps. “Sure, but why not read the article anyway? See what you think :)” helps. “My dad always taught me to read past the headline. Why not read the article?” helps. At the very least here, if you are consistently pleasant and encouraging them to just read, not trying to Change Their Minds, just trying to show them another story, then any outsiders will see their aggression and juxtapose it against your calm, and they will be more inclined to click on the link too. (My older sister started being very nasty to me and my younger sib, and my constant pleasantness maybe didn’t get my sister to read an article about why masks are helpful, but it did get my conservative mom to check it out.)
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