I have 2 GOP parents, one that voted Trump originally and one that did not. Over the last 9 years, I have watched them both travel down the MAGA pipeline to become visibly fascist. The parents who taught me racism was wrong and to have empathy for others, have become openly hostile about immigrants, Muslims, and even parrot the Nazi “great replacement” theory.
Part and parcel with this, they refuse to have any discussions about the facts – like immigrants not stealing and eating people’s pets. They won’t hear it, they won’t even engage in the conversation…they just get angry and loud the second they hear anything that doesn’t fit into the Fox News narrative. Can you relate? How are you dealing with it in your relationships with your parents?
My dad always leaned center-left, and he’s only gotten slightly lefter as I reach middle age and get very left. I’m very fortunate. My mom is long dead but I would like to think she would be on board too.
The real bugbear is my extended family, typified by dad’s sister and her family. Always leaned into the Rush Limbaugh right, but really she isn’t so much visibly MAGA as she is aggressively Zionist. It happens with a lot of Jewish boomers; Does ‘Never again’ mean for everyone, or just for the Jews?
Anyways, I was a protest at our local holocaust center in 2018, protesting the detention camps on the border. The proudboys and others were counter protesting. I told her about it, and she just said,
“They cant use that word, thats our word!” “You know who would agree with you? The nazis?” “What do you mean?” “They were there! I have pictures!”
Anyways, shes been surface level cordial ever since.
The takeaway that alot of people had from the holocaust was “genocide is bad”. The takeaway that most Israelis and alot of other Jews had was “Genocide against God’s chosen people is bad”.