The person in question is an elderly aunt. She's a decent, caring senior citizen and loves me very much, but she's also a devout Christian (as is the rest of my extended family), and anyone familiar with that demographic will know how much they're targeted by right-wing propaganda. At this point I can observe the state of the disinformation meta by the stuff she posts in our family group chat. Zionism, Christian homophobia, Islamophobia, the works.
Up until now I haven't engaged with her on politics at all. She's been doing this since I was a child, long before I was capable of forming independent political opinions. Then as I grew up, I realized I was trans, and suddenly I couldn't bear to even think about what her views would mean for me if I were to come out. The fear and the hurt were just too much to process. Her politics became background noise as I hid in the closet for the next few years.
In spite of it all, though, my mental health situation has improved a fair bit over the years. I'm still terrified and in the closet, but I've realized that I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to face my fear, and it's only a matter of time until I attempt to transition. When that happens, the degree of estrangement from my extended family will probably be correlated with how much hateful propaganda they believe.
I'm not naive enough to think I can turn these people into leftists, or that they will ever view a transfem atheist without some kind of suspicion; but if I put in some groundwork now, I may be able to marginally decrease the amount of hurtful nonsense I have to listen to when I come out. Even if it doesn't work, it's really the most I can do at this point in my life, and I think it'll make me feel better if I at least try.
Recently she DMed me this video of JD Vance 'debating' people at TPUSA 'in honor of' Charlie Kirk. I think you can tell how deep she's fallen in just by the fact that she watched this. She's gone all-in on the 'Kirk as a Christian martyr' narrative for the past few weeks.
I think this might be a good opportunity to engage, for a few reasons:
- She's the main source of political propaganda in our family; everyone else isn't particularly invested in politics. If I can get through to her, I might be able to stem the tide a little.
- This is the first time she's initiated a one-on-one discussion on politics, so I can hopefully avoid coming across as suspiciously invested in the leftist perspective. (Remember, she doesn't know I'm trans, and the family vaguely knows I'm an atheist but kind of chooses to ignore it; I'd like to keep it that way until I'm ready to come out.)
- She actually seems kind of squishy and persuadable on political issues. There just haven't been any progressive voices in our family so far.
- Kirk was a vile person, and if I can make that clear she'd probably think twice about her adoration for him. She hasn't lost her sense of empathy, and if she sees how Kirk devoted his life to punching down she probably wouldn't like him as much.
So I'm looking for ideas and advice on how exactly to go about this.
It looks like she spends a lot of her time online watching videos, so I thought I'd start by sending her videos or articles as a way to start the conversation. I underestimated how much of a right-wing hellhole YouTube has become, but after a lot of searching I was able to find this Three Arrows video, this Hadi Rahim one and this Rebecca Watson one. I also found a short list of his shitty quotes, and an article on his racism specifically. The problem is that she'd be inclined to agree with a lot of the homophobic/islamophobic/anti-abortion quotes from Kirk.
Has anyone come across anything that would be more persuasive? Ideally I'd like to highlight what a horrible slimy scumbag Kirk was; as a Christian she'd probably be more swayed by character defects than any of his actual views.
I'd also appreciate any general advice on how to proceed. I'm sure plenty of people here have had to have conversations like this in the past.
EDIT:
Thanks for the advice so far, everyone. You're probably right that I'm going to have to take a Christian perspective with her. I think I'd been unconsciously avoiding that fact because I really resent how much of my life is centered around a religion I was brainwashed into, but I guess I need to bite that bullet. I'll keep it in mind when the conversation starts.
After giving it some thought, I realised that the Vance video she'd sent me barely mentioned Kirk, so I decided to go after Vance instead. He's a much easier target since his even his own church's leaders hate him, so I sent her an article about that. Also he tells an obvious lie about his Palantir ties, so I refuted that. Hopefully that should disillusion her a bit about the current government at least.
The rest of the conversation will probably not be anywhere near this easy, but we'll see how it goes. I'll probably make another post if anything significant happens.
Institutionalized religions are a form of social control. Religious doctrine can be viewed as instruction manuals.
For dealing with Christian nationalist types.
First, highlight how Satan is the ruler of the earth.
https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Satan-As-The-Prince-Of-This-World
From that premise, explain how all governments fall under the kingdom of satan, that all politicians are agents of satan, that ‘Christians’ who meddle in earthly affairs belong to the congregation of the devil.
When you deal with religious types, you don’t really use logic or reason. Just come at them with absolute certainty and counter any arguments with logical fallacies.
The Social Contract, Rousseau
Honestly, while it might feel wrong to feed the insane the staples of their own insanity in an attempt to make them behave as if they were sane, it is the clinical gold standard for a reason.
It simply works. It works extremely well. And sometimes it is literally the only thing that actually works.
If it feels wrong to treat your aunt this way, as if she was a mental patient, consider the industry that has built up around precisely that assumption about people like your aunt and how they have been successfully using this strategy against her for decades explicitly in order to monetize her, weaponize her, and ensure she will never recover.