this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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As I said: I don't see what good that would achieve.
I don't cut ties with friends because a stranger online calls me a nazi for hanging with them. When trying to change someone's mind, a good starting point would be to not insult them, make demands, or issue ultimatums. Perhaps your friend didn't change his mind for the simple reason that you weren't giving him any reason to.
This defensive posture isn't warranted. I was commenting from a place of empathy since I was in a very similar situation and the cognitive dissonance and eventual hard talk I had to have was very difficult. If you truly feel that all life is equally valuable with no regard to race, then you are feeling some of this cognitive dissonance too. You won't know it, since that's the nature of cognitive dissonance, but it will be there. I wasn't calling you names or attempting to force anything on you. I was warning you about what your future looks like if you continue being good friends with a racist.
A lack of social consequences is what gave him no reason to change his views. As long as his friends quietly ignored his crazy views, why should he feel the need to change. He might even feel those views are acceptable in regular society. We had plenty of "debates". All that did was make him feel hatred was a debatable stance. He ignored any good argument and burrowed more deeply into online spaces that accepted his hatred. I thought he was mellowing out after a COVID era phase. Turns out he learned to not to tell people irl about his views.
You can't fix him by being friends with him. I'm sorry. All that's going to do is make you more racist.