Not the wisest decision to debate politics with your father-in-law in his house. According to my partner, he would have kicked me out if I wasn’t family.
Basically - very stubborn white man in his 60s. Travelled a lot in the Asia-Pacific for work most of his life.
I’m an Australian-born Chinese and I know NOW that nothing that comes out of my mouth will ever change his mind. I mean, he HAS said before that “China can never be trusted” so I have no idea why I thought I could have a sensible discussion with him.
He believes in the Tibet and HK crap. He believes NATO is a defensive alliance. He believes NATO is not led by the USA.
He believes the USA is not out to get Russia or China. He believes that Russia had no reason to invade Ukraine but that the USA was justified in being upset over Russian weapons in Cuba.
He believes that the USA, with their 800 military bases around the world, is merely “being prepared”, while China is stepping WAY out of line in the South China Sea.
He believes that the 2 main aggressors in the world are Russia and China. He believes the Australian mainstream media is telling the full truth and that independent journalists are crazy conspiracy theorists.
And because I challenged him on all the above, I’m apparently heading down a ‘dangerous’ path. You know the guy who shot tons of Muslims in New Zealand mosques a few years back? He actually used that as warning of how extreme I could become.
I give up. He can continue thinking that the white man is the noble saviour of the world. I’ll bet he strutted around Thailand, Indonesia and PNG feeling real good about himself.
I’ve learned that too many people just don’t have any room in their heads for a differing point of view or fact. They don’t WANT proof of this or that. Their truth gives them comfort. To challenge it would be to question their entire identity and would cause an existential crisis.
That’s why, to these people, the West MUST be the good guys.
The racism is deep-rooted. That’s at the bottom of it all.
This whole thing is super depressing, but the mention of the Christchurch shootings really messes with my head. Like…the idea that you could be like that guy because you don’t buy into the West’s narrative about Ukraine and Russia. Meanwhile the guy who actually shot up the mosques…was linked to Azov.
What’s frightening is these westerners are more likely to become that terrorist who shot up minorities from countries that the mainstream media are calling “bad and uncilivized”.
The “dangerous path” this FIL talked about… it sounds more like he’s thinking of shooting up a group of Asians himself…
Yeah, those are fighting words. Straight up.
It’s like, as soon as an Asian or person of colour speaks up, they’re deemed “aggressive”. That’s how China is portrayed in the news - “dangerous” because anything more than staying silent is just too much.
Awwwh dude that fucking sucks, my condolences you have a piece of shit FIL like that, mine are the same 😔
I’m full angloid with some Irish conversely so I don’t tend to get the “you’ll become an extremist” line when I kick off about my families backwards views but of course white people can’t be terrorists right? /s
I just get the “western democracy gave you rights!” spiel cos I’m bi and therefore I owe my life to performative and exploitative neoliberal politics and other wacky bs 🙄😮💨😒
The ingrained racism in the Anglo countries is so intense I genuinely can’t ever see these countries stepping out of their conditioning ever. The chauvinism and racist perceptions of others are too strong. I mean the fact that everytime a white person commits terrorism my family will cope away the association says it all.
Fair play for standing your ground though! Gotta take some courage to argue the toss with someone that dogmatic in their views so respect!
My inlaws and parents are both for the most part consumate idiots and enjoyers of british propaganda so any political conversation gets immediately ended once you bring in any evidence to the contrary so I usually get an easy out for the most part bar my partner kicking me in the shins under the table 🤣
A cool thing I heard to potentially make dickheads of people like this is to ask them “what amount of evidence would make you change your mind about this?” And if they say none then you can attack that anti-intellectual thinking first before you go deep into politics and ideology because let’s be real, there’s copious amounts of evidence to disprove imperialist propaganda.
If they wanna try and be smart then they either have to consider your position seriously or (more likely) make twats of themselves proving they are fuelled by racism/chauvinism and not evidence which is also a fun corner to force these people into if you fancy it.
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Yeah you can imagine why I’ve not told them I identify as non-binary given their “considered” take on bisexuality.
I’ve not heard the specific turkey example myself but thats so interesting and very on brand for the west.
Not just sexuality but gender identity and presentation was nearly if not entirely erased in a historical sense by colonialisation if my understanding is correct.
The example I’ve heard is that several native American tribes had more than two gender identities (among thousands of other examples of cultures with this) but some were more trad. It wasn’t some homogeneous view.
However that doesn’t exist anymore due to the genocide by anglos and now you might hear “two spirits” as a concept which according to sources I read is essentially a white washing of lots of different takes on gender by various native American tribes now homogenised into one tag/term because so much of the cultural history and understanding was erased and lost.
I can’t speak how accurate that explanation is so anyone with any knowledge please correct me if I’ve misrepresented something but for the most part our entire understanding of the human experience has being either destroyed, corrupted or exploited by the bourgeoisie class whether through colonialism, judeo-christian religions, imperialism, fascism, capitalism or a blend of all the above.
We’ve had our very existence corrupted by leeches. It should make us beyond angry but that requires education and listening by the capitalist minority holding everyone hostage and their bootlicking apologists.
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Omg I typed out a whole example of Joe America and how his existence has being taken from him and replaced with suffering and nationalistic extremism to a system that does not benefit anyone but the rich but I accidentally deleted it before posting 😭 it was meant to be an example of how even the apparent “greatest country in the world” 🤮 intentionally sends its citizens into squalor but you’ll have to imagine it now hahaha.
I’ve heard exactly that too! I again can’t remember which people for my sins but I have definitely heard that example.
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Damn hearing it from the horses mouth really paints just how in decline America really is. I guess for a brit I never see the nitty gritty outside of propagandised city crime and poverty but hearing how entire towns just evaporated (if im catagorising that correctly) is kinda spooky vs their slow shambles into irrelevancy that takes place in Britain.
Oooo will have a look now!
Edit: damn american steel production just falls off a cliff.
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Honestly Europe reminds me a lot of the rest of the world whenever they weren’t subjugated first by the Romans, second by Christian theocratic monarchs and third by America. The genuine average peoples of Europe have had their own cultures killed and sanitized, some for thousands of years.
A cool thing I heard to potentially make dickheads of people like this is to ask them “what amount of evidence would make you change your mind about this?” And if they say none then you can attack that anti-intellectual thinking first before you go deep into politics and ideology because let’s be real, there’s copious amounts of evidence to disprove imperialist propaganda.
Ah, I really should’ve gone this route! I think that will be my approach in the future. Thanks mate!
It never occurred to me till someone mentioned it either! Have a good one pal!
Yes, I have a very similar story.
spoiler
My de facto FIL (we’re not married yet but might as well be) has always said he loved me like a son and is always excessively proud of me. I always felt a little weird about it because 1) daddy issues 2) he is excessively DISAPPOINTED and critical of his own, actual children and 3) I felt like he fell in love with a face I put on to impress him, that he fills the gaps with his own projections, that he doesn’t know the real me.
I’ve always felt like the truth is the best gift that you can give someone, and I didn’t want to lie about my political views anymore (for years I treaded carefully, walking on eggshells) so I tried to engage in a little respectful political discourse. He struck me as a man who could respectfully disagree and maybe even be swayed with a well reasoned and well cited argument, and I trusted him to be a healthy amount of confrontational that any kinks I could make would be easily noticeable and could be ironed out mid conversation.
Boy was I wrong on all fronts.
I didn’t even start the conversation, he did (he always does). It eventually ended up with America and its geopolitical role. It’s frustrating because in isolation he will agree in essence with the idea of the military industrial complex, war profiteers, the V.A. treated him like shit (he’s a veteran), how mainstream media incessantly lies to spin narratives for the rich. Yet when it came to this conversation he 180’d and was defending Wholesome & Solely Good America to the death, shooting down any of my counterarguments as propaganda. I thought it went poorly but not awfully, but behind my back later he essentially yelled at my girlfriend for me going down “a dark path” (not a direct quote but an accurate paraphrase), how he is a worldly man and thus knows better (he’s traveled to Scandanavia a few times) and that I don’t know a damn thing just because I went to Palestine as a kid (something that I didn’t bring up once while we were arguing…I don’t appeal to authority, especially over personal anecdotes). It’s one thing that we argued, but he took the nastiest of his feelings out on my girlfriend, his own daughter, and now THAT pisses me off.
So yeah. He thinks I’m just a dumb kid who parrots headlines (and where here are there headlines of US foreign policy being bad, exactly…?) when he gets 100% of his worldviews from an endless stream of local Fox News, national Fox News, and the opinions of people like his own dad, his former coworkers, his former boss: people who physically, mentally, and emotionally tortured him, broke his bones, betrayed him, fucked his wife, cheated him into homelessness, stole his hard earned wage and gloated about it, belittled him as nothing which to this day still so obviously affects his self esteem.
It’s, IMO, a classic case of an abusive relationship, only instead of just with one person he has it with American Exceptionalism and every ghoul who channels it.
It sucks because deep down underneath all of his trauma, ignorance, PTSD, bad coping skills and just honestly being shit on unfairly by life again and again and again and again, deep down underneath all that he really is genuinely a good person with a good heart and mind. Unfortunately, I do not think he can be liberated from his externally-inflicted but self-perpetuating prison before he goes senile and dies. He is infuriating but underneath that it is just really tragic, and honestly a perfect microcosm of my life of the evils of capitalism and how terribly its many tendrils can compound off of each other.
I totally understand the feeling of disappointment when someone who you thought could handle a reasonable conversation ends up being totally irrational and intolerant of discussion.
Pretty insane how your FIL gets the part about the military-industrial complex, as well as the mainstream media’s lies…but still defends the USA! Does not compute.Reminds me of Scott Ritter who is critical of the military-industrial complex and clearly sees through the USA’s games in the Middle East and re: Russia, but is also clearly very patriotic.
Sounds like your FIL has had a lot of issues with self-esteem. Take away this final ‘truth’ of his and he’d likely break down.
focus on reframing. shows their hybris…
“well if you are so fond of capitalism, why do you complain about rising prices when deregulation favours monopolisation and thus price gouging and corrupt lobbying…”
“Did You know that Jesus said that a camel will pass through the eye of a needle before a rich man is allowed to enter heavens gates?”
“Did You know about all the american dynasties who funded the nazis in order to profit over cheap labour after they couldn’t openly enslave people anymore and infused them with their eugenicist racist ideas they had established to justify slavery? have you ever looked up their family names? why not? you rant about soros&the gays, but you don’t know the people who profited over a genocide, corrupt our politics since 1955 and still hide among us as rich donor class? Do you like wearing horseshades?”
“How is this a meritocracy if 90% of all wealth exchange hands by heritage? Do you think rich kids are the more competent economists, seeing how they have never worked a day of hard labour in their lives or planted and cared for a single fucking apple tree in their whole lives? do you think the coked out brats of some Paperclip nazi oligarch who pretends to be the citizen kane is the better arbiter of our economy?”
“I know taxes are bad, even the homeless drunk meth head on the street corner in his tent thinks that taxes are bad, i mean some of them actually think they will be billionaires someday and then they would have to care for the sore losers living in tents because there is no money for social housing. I wonder how the tourism economy has profited off of all the tents on hollywood boulevard…. maybe some free housing could have saved these fucks millions, not that they deserve it… At least white america will get a taste of the police brutality they have hid behind so much. maybe that will help with abolition…”
I had to argue with my politics teacher a few weeks ago about the war in Ukraine. He said something similar to your father, that Russia had no justification, but no matter how much I show him evidence of Ukrainian war crimes ( I mean the bombardment of the Donbas people since 2014 ) and the Nazi problem he wouldn’t still continue ignoring it or say that these Nazis aren’t actually Nazis. My advice is to not talk about stuff like that at all, since no matter how much evidence you show him that the west ain’t the “good guys” he’ll continue to speak complete bs, no matter how much you try.
Yep, point taken. I won’t ever bother with challenging him again. Better stick to safe and agreeable nods and smiles. That’s all they seem to be able to handle, especially from a Chinese face. So much for the independent thinking and freedom of speech that he’s so proud of.
Uncomfortable truths and angloids. I know people who mask off’d their racism after I sent them the article proving top gun maverick was literally state propaganda.
Apparently they loved the movie and didn’t like me “ruining it” for them so as you can imagine they pivoted to defending the entire movie and justifying war crimes as their egos searched for anything to cling to. Pathetic.
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He thinks he’s empathetic when he cries over the news stories about the Ukraine war (which he confessed to my partner). When I said there’s an easy way to stop the war - declare neutrality - he was all “But sovereignty!”
He really does believe that any news/pov worth listening to is on the mainstream. If he found out how the world actually worked, he’d really have something to cry about.
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Yea closed mindedness is really bad because it means that you can’t handle another narrative. I watch Lib media often because I know deep down that whatever spin they try putting on it is full of contradictions and pointing them out is a good mental exercise for me
YES! Poison Gang 😎
Guardian is a good one for trickery.
Thanks, I usually check out CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Solutions, check their donor list it’s hilarious) and CNN/MSNBC, Fox is a lil tough to take seriously so I refrain most of the time, but I mean it is very popular even if it’s ridiculous.
I had a similar conversation with my MiL resulting in the same outcome. As an Australian myself I’ve found having these types of discussions solely productive with my liberal peers. Your time and effort will/can go a lot further with those who view you as an equal. Obviously you would have to deal with the additional racial dimension regarding that…
That’s true. Many older people I’ve spoken to have a mindset/view of the world that just will not budge. Not saying all older people are like that (and I’ve met my fair share of young idiots too) but when they get to a certain age, you sometimes just have to shrug and accept that it’s a lost cause. Still, I hope one day my FIL realizes the truth or has an epiphany…for HIS sake.
I really like pissing off shitty old conservative boomers. Just take it to heart that every time you get him real angry and get his blood pressure raised he’s that much closer to a grave. There’s actually some statistic out there I read about care facilities that played shit like fox news all the time had the residence dieing earlier because the whole show is designed to make old people angry about everything.
Lol Well, I don’t really want to bring him closer to a grave because he’s my partner’s father. But as badly as the ‘discussion’ went, I’m glad I got to say things to him that probably no one else has.
Keep your kids away from this psycho.
