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[RoyaleDuke]

I had to remove them from my life today, it started when she started to slowly change her name from something innocuous to the german name for a female nazi guards stationed outside Concentration camps on Steam.

The awful corruption of everything like some lovecraftian thing of antedeluvian horror, the monstrous fear of the other.

It disgusts me that I even liked this person, and I can't understand the cognitive dissonance required to do what...she did, others do, have done.

I don't understand it, it's madness.

I feel horrible gaf.

EDIT: it hurts because my father is also a racist now, when he wasn't before. Is more or less fine being called a neonazi, he'll get angry but he won't disagree.

 

[Geno Breaker]

I feel you man. It's awful when it hits you. Unfortunately I think its gonna become more common. You're just gonna have to accept it. You could always try to teach them to be better though. Not sure how one would go about that.

 

[RoyaleDuke]

I feel you man. It's awful when it hits you. Unfortunately I think its gonna become more common. You're just gonna have to accept it. You could always try to teach them to be better though. Not sure how one would go about that.

I don't think it is possible.

It's claiming so many people, and I just don't understand, I mean I can't even get my life together, the world is falling apart and filled with awful hatred, the kind that has done so many terrible things in the past and present.

There is a willful ignorance to these people.

 

[Manmademan]

I had to remove them from my life today, it started when she started to slowly change her name from something innocuous to the german name for a female nazi guards stationed outside Concentration camps on Steam.

The awful corruption of everything like some lovecraftian thing of antedeluvian horror, the monstrous fear of the other.

It disgusts me that I even liked this person, and I can't understand the cognitive dissonance required to do what...she did, others do, have done.

I don't understand it, it's madness.

I feel horrible gaf.

EDIT: it hurts because my father is also a racist now, when he wasn't before. Is more or less fine being called a neonazi.

Your friend AND your father both just became neo nazis out of nowhere?

Sorry OP I don't buy this. These people in and around your community have always been prone to these beliefs, you just didn't see it.

With Trump getting elected they've just stopped bothering to use dogwhistles and hide it.

 

[RoyaleDuke]

Your friend AND your father both just became neo nazis out of nowhere?

Sorry OP I don't buy this. These people in and around your community have always been prone to these beliefs, you just didn't see it.

With Trump getting elected they've just stopped bothering to use dogwhistles and hide it.

Maybe.

I don't really understand what is going on anymore. I'm overwhelmed by it.

EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will.

 

[highrider]

Well, that sucks. Probably best to just remove them from your life. Although the transformation from someone you liked and respected to neonazi is interesting to me. I don't particularly care to understand where this person's head is now, but I am curious as to why it happens.

Recently watched an interesting documentary on the Oklahoma City bombing, I think it was helpful to me to see where these people are coming from, I kind of think it's an advantage to have at least a cursory understanding of an enemy. It's a legitimate evil, but most of them were ' normal ' at one point in their lives.

 

[Moonkid]

Man that sounds awful OP, hope they turn themselves around down the line.

 

[Grenchel]

With Trump and others in power it has just become more "accdptable" to be public with abhorrent views.

That's what it seems.like anyways.

 

[David H Wong]

The world is also full of people who were racists or extremists in their youth and then mellowed as they got older. For some people it truly is a phase. We interviewed one ex neo-Nazi, there was no grand redemption story, the guy just made some black friends and decided the whole thing was dumb. There's a reason everybody marching with these people are age 20-30.

I think in most cases joining groups like this is due to something else that's going on in their lives - anxiety or feeling loss of control, whatever. And this vague hatred toward an imaginary enemy (ie, the army of evil minorities determined to ruin America) sort of becomes a vessel for all of that anxiety. It gives them something to rally against, a cause. A villain to feel superior to.

Honestly the thing they hate is unimportant; on Reddit if you find somebody who's active on the fat people hating subs, you'll find they're active on the anti-woman and anti-black subs as well. It's the hate that matters. It fills a hole.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will."

Being leftist or an American Democrat and being a racist are not mutually exclusive. See: Hardcore Bernie fans.

 

[MartyStu]

"EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will."

Being leftist or an American Democrat and being a racist are not mutually exclusive. See: Hardcore Bernie fans.

Or even better: Southern democrats who voted Trump.

 

[sphagnum]

Does she frequent 4chan?

 

[Dixon's Jet]

You did the right thing. I hope that you told her off before removing her. She is attracted to genocide. She deserves to be insulted.

 

[RoyaleDuke]

"EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will."

Being leftist or an American Democrat and being a racist are not mutually exclusive. See: Hardcore Bernie fans.

True, to be fair my Dad always taught me to see people, be accepting, respectful, and curious of other cultures.

Treat people as people, he used to say and my Mom says.

I mean my mom has known my father for 30 years, and she told me she barely recognizes who he is anymore.

 

[PezDispenser]

It may not be her fault. It's well documented that this sort of behavior can manifest compulsively after seeing the sex junk video by bill nye

 

[SRG01]

True, to be fair my Dad always taught me to see people, be accepting, respectful, and curious of other cultures.

Treat people as people, he used to say and my Mom says.

I mean my mom has known my father for 30 years, and she told me she barely recognizes who he is anymore.

Disillusionment, populist rhetoric, and an appeal to fear can change anyone in a short period of time

edit: To give an anecdotal example, one person I went to undergrad with went from a mild-mannered guy to a pretty hardcore right-winged racist. He's the same ethnicity as me, so it boggles my mind even more.

 

[parrotbeak]

True, to be fair my Dad always taught me to see people, be accepting, respectful, and curious of other cultures.

Treat people as people, he used to say and my Mom says.

I mean my mom has known my father for 30 years, and she told me she barely recognizes who he is anymore.

Does he consume a lot of rightwing media? I saw that happen to a couple of my friends' parents over the last 20 years.

 

[CrocMother]

OP where do you live?

 

[RoyaleDuke]

Does he consume a lot of rightwing media? I saw that happen to a couple of my friends' parents over the last 20 years.

He claims to give everyone "all sides", cites listening to NPR but when I ask him about current topics he has no clue.

also "BUT HER EMAILS" is literally every other thing out of his mouth in any political argument.

Ugh, I need to get out of this house.

OP where do you live?

Greeley,Colorado but we're from South LA, California.

 

[jaxpunk]

So is the OP planning to punch their former friend and/or father? Because that's what I understand happens to Nazis.

 

[Morgan Blackhand]

What is the german name for a female nazi guards stationed outside Concentration camps?

 

[kirblar]

Maybe.

I don't really understand what is going on anymore. I'm overwhelmed by it.

EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will.

If you're all the way out on the extreme already, all it takes is the racism switch to flip and you'll go from full-on lefty socialist to nazi just like that.

I'm sorry you have to go through this.

 

[sooperkool]

He claims to give everyone "all sides", cites listening to NPR but when I ask him about current topics he has no clue.

also "BUT HER EMAILS" is literally every other thing out of his mouth in any political argument.

Ugh, I need to get out of this house.



Greeley,Colorado but we're from South LA, California.

I imagine many citizens of Greely are upset at the immigrants taking all the meat packing plant jobs...

 

[RoyaleDuke]

What is the german name for a female nazi guards stationed outside Concentration camps?

A wiki article explaining things.

Wiki for everything I guess.

I learned what I learned from history books.

 

[Seesaw15]

Ehh who among us hasn't woken up one day and decided to be a neo-nazi.

 

[pa22word]

"EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will."

Being leftist or an American Democrat and being a racist are not mutually exclusive. See: Hardcore Bernie fans.

To quote my racist as anything that ever walked the earth grandfather: "I voted the Ds because they looked out for the farmers. Fuck anyone else."

 

[Slayven]

"EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will."

Being leftist or an American Democrat and being a racist are not mutually exclusive. See: Hardcore Bernie fans.

Or 60 years ago

 

[PixelatedBookake]

Ehh who among us hasn't woken up one day and decided to be a neo-nazi.

Somedays I just wake up, look at my self in the mirror, see the color of my skin and think "Boy, I sure do wish me and everybody who has a similar color/racial background as me was dead"

It happens.

 

[Morgan Blackhand]

A wiki article explaining things.

Wiki for everything I guess.

I learned what I learned from history books.

Thanks gonna have to read that

 

[Gordon Shumway]

Damn, OP..sorry to hear that. Had that happen with a friend years ago. Still think about the dude in confusion. We were real close..

"EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will."

Being leftist or an American Democrat and being a racist are not mutually exclusive. See: Hardcore Bernie fans.

Or even better: Southern democrats who voted Trump.

Or 60 years ago

Yup..

 

[pa22word]

Or 60 years ago

60? States like Oklahoma that are 65-70% white were still electing D governors into the mid 2000s. The blood of wilson and FDR runs strong in the south still, even if it's harder to see these days.

 

[Astral Dog]

Fear,weakness,bad company,ignorance and a desire to stand out against every one else will make you follow extremist ideologies

 

[RoyaleDuke]

It's like I'm living in some orwellian mindfuck.

 

[More_Badass]

Maybe.

I don't really understand what is going on anymore. I'm overwhelmed by it.

EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will.

True, to be fair my Dad always taught me to see people, be accepting, respectful, and curious of other cultures.

Treat people as people, he used to say and my Mom says.

I mean my mom has known my father for 30 years, and she told me she barely recognizes who he is anymore.

I know the feeling. My grandparents are Democrats, my grandfather an immigrant from Puerto Rico who came to America as a kid in the 40s without knowing English. He was even put back a grade because he didn't know the language, and he had to teach himself.

And somehow the son he raised, my dad, was able to corrupt that history and those values taught into something molded by right wing ideology. My dad thinks his father is crazy for being a Democrat.

He can be pretty blind to the racist and bigoted things he says. That "Theodore" sounds like a black name. How the protestors in Ferguson were just thugs and anarchists. How LGBTQ kids and people should just stay silent. How it was better in the 70s, 80s, because people didn't try to make their stuff known like that and just kept quiet about it

My mom and I told him how that last one sounded like during a discussion once, even she was surprised by what he was saying (she's a counselor and works with middle school students in the Bronx). But he wouldn't accept that what he was saying was bad.

It's hard to see someone who taught you to be accepting, understanding, logical, who you love and looked up to all your life, acting so counter to everything they taught you and them being completely blind to all of it.

 

[travisbickle]

"EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will."

Being leftist or an American Democrat and being a racist are not mutually exclusive. See: Hardcore Bernie fans.

What's all this about? Honest question, is it the typical you go far enough out there politically you end up a Jewish conspiracy theorist?

 

[SoulUnison]

It's weird, isn't it?

I recently realized that a close friend and I have a long friendship built on dark humor, except... I don't think he's actually been joking all this time.
He was raised a Jehovah Witness and managed to pry himself free of what he himself describes as "a cult," but he doesn't seem to have the self-awareness to take a long look at his level of impressionability that kept him vocally dedicated to the faith for the first 24 years of his life.
Hell, we once had what I thought was a perfectly calm and civil conversation about the differences in the faiths we'd been raised under (his JW to my Catholic,) and when I explained the Catholic concept of transubstantiation, he looked me straight in the eye, said "Well, you were raised wrong," and walked away. End of discussion.

He has an extremely obviously high level of impressionability - well, obvious to everyone but him - and he's starting to head down the whole "straight white christian males are the most persecuted group in America" path.
"Institutional racism isn't a real thing."
"Feminism is just another word for misandry."

That sort of stuff.

I remember pointing out to him that Donald Trump's real estate ventures had twice been investigated and admonished by the Department of Justice for blatantly racist housing practices, and his response was "I can understand why he did it. Blacks lower property values."

He's also got a MASSIVE hard-on for "the free market," but throws an embarrassing hissy fit whenever his opinion doesn't seem to align with the "majority."

 

[Lord Frieza]

With Trump and others in power it has just become more "accdptable" to be public with abhorrent views.

That's what it seems.like anyways.

Yeah, OP probably won't ever truly accept it, but odds are that they were always like this

 

[RoyaleDuke]

I know the feeling. My grandparents are Democrats, my grandfather an immigrant from Puerto Rico who came to America as a kid in the 40s without knowing English. He was even put back a grade because he didn't know the language, and he had to teach himself.

And somehow the son he raised, my dad, was able to corrupt that history and those values taught into something molded by right wing ideology. My dad thinks his father is crazy for being a Democrat.

He can be pretty blind to the racist and bigoted things he says. That "Theodore" sounds like a black name. How the protestors in Ferguson were just thugs and anarchists. How LGBTQ kids and people should just stay silent. How it was better in the 70s, 80s, because people didn't try to make their stuff known like that and just kept quiet about it

My mom and I told him how that last one sounded like during a discussion once, even she was surprised by what he was saying (she's a counselor and works with middle school students in the Bronx). But he wouldn't accept that what he was saying was bad.

It's hard to see someone who taught you to be accepting, understanding, logical, who you love and looked up to all your life, acting so counter to everything they taught you and them being completely blind to all of it.

The cognitive dissonance is draining and they get so angry when you try to tell them not only why they are wrong but... the reasons, the logic behind it.

There's just nothing there but dull childlike fury. It's heartbreaking, at least I know I am not the only one but sometimes More_Badass it feels like I am living a goddamn fever dream.

 

[Goofalo]

Huh, to be honest, I never thought of Greeley being a place where that would go down. I mean, I figure Northern Colorado to be conservative, but very much that Western conservative where, "Do whatever you want in your own home and keep the noise level down." type. Whereas, I see the insanity coming more from the Springs part of the state, what with the people who live there to literally be closer to their God via altitude and the presence of the Sons of Silence, but I guess they are from Niwot.

 

[Trojita]

I know the feeling. My grandparents are Democrats, my grandfather an immigrant from Puerto Rico who came to America as a kid in the 40s without knowing English. He was even put back a grade because he didn't know the language, and he had to teach himself.

And somehow the son he raised, my dad, was able to corrupt that history and those values taught into something molded by right wing ideology. My dad thinks his father is crazy for being a Democrat.

He can be pretty blind to the racist and bigoted things he says. That "Theodore" sounds like a black name. How the protestors in Ferguson were just thugs and anarchists. How LGBTQ kids and people should just stay silent. How it was better in the 70s, 80s, because people didn't try to make their stuff known like that and just kept quiet about it

My mom and I told him how that last one sounded like during a discussion once, even she was surprised by what he was saying (she's a counselor and works with middle school students in the Bronx). But he wouldn't accept that what he was saying was bad.

It's hard to see someone who taught you to be accepting, understanding, logical, who you love and looked up to all your life, acting so counter to everything they taught you and them being completely blind to all of it.

The Theodore thing really stood out to me. It's the nerdiest whitest name ever.

 

[TheMan]

A wiki article explaining things.

Wiki for everything I guess.

I learned what I learned from history books.

holy shit that woman in the first picture is Elisabeth Moss

 

[RoyaleDuke]

holy shit that woman in the first picture is Elisabeth Moss

I thought she looked like the trucker from Peewee's big adventure.

 

[pa22word]

It's hard to see someone who taught you to be accepting, understanding, logical, who you love and looked up to all your life, acting so counter to everything they taught you and them being completely blind to all of it.

My dad as well in a nutshell. He got tossed back into the job market in his 40s, bootstrapped it and went back to school got a degree, and no one would hire him due to his age essentially. He works as a dude at home depot now and has entirely sucked in the right's idiocy. It completely broke my heart to hear him unintentionally quote Andrew Johnson's CRA 1866 Veto without a shred of irony one day.

 

[More_Badass]

The Theodore thing really stood out to me. It's the nerdiest whitest name ever.

We were doing Walking Dead family trivia after dinner, and the question was what T-Dog's name was. That was his reason when asked why he picked that answer

The cognitive dissonance is draining and they get so angry when you try to tell them not only why they are wrong but... the reasons, the logic behind it.

There's just nothing there but dull childlike fury. It's heartbreaking, at least I know I am not the only one but sometimes More_Badass it feels like I am living a goddamn fever dream.

Whenever I hear my dad say how Trump is a great president and that Obama was the worst president ever and a tyrant out to destroy America, it's like I'm in the Twilight Zone or something. Granted, he's been saying that about Obama for years, so that part I'm partly acclimated to

But how in the hell can he say that, and then not see how Trump is everything he claimed Obama to be?

Well, partially because he wouldn't touch a New York Times or Washington Post or any other lying liberal news source with a ten foot pole (because they only lie and make up stories, and never really discuss what really happens in the world)

But damn, it makes my brain hurt when I see him being perfectly fine with everything Trump is saying and doing

And you can't discuss stuff with him. See, I went to college. Aka where liberal professors brainwash vulnerable minds. So if I try to discuss something from a liberal logical perspective, it's all dismissed as Of course, you'd think that. Who taught you that, your professors?

Never mind that I've been out of a college for a year now

 

[Aizo]

He claims to give everyone "all sides", cites listening to NPR but when I ask him about current topics he has no clue.

also "BUT HER EMAILS" is literally every other thing out of his mouth in any political argument.

Ugh, I need to get out of this house.



Greeley,Colorado but we're from South LA, California.

Is it the smell of Greeley that pushes people to madness?

 

[Goofalo]

Is it the smell of Greeley that pushes people to madness?

I used to think it was just letting you know it might snow.

Now its snow and madness.

 

[Socreges]

"EDIT: To give background, my father taught be to be a democrat, a leftist if you will."

Being leftist or an American Democrat and being a racist are not mutually exclusive. See: Hardcore Bernie fans.

So Hardcore Bernie fans are necessarily racist? Or some are?

 

[Creaking]

I'm really sorry to hear that. The worst I've had is a Youtuber I used to like turning out to be a shithead, and a friend of several years supporting Trump and generally holding many narrow-minded, xenophobic views.

But a neo-nazi, not quite, no. I still feel I understand how painful it can be to try to comprehend the ignorance and racism and where it comes from. It's draining.

 

[SeanTSC]

I had to remove them from my life today, it started when she started to slowly change her name from something innocuous to the german name for a female nazi guards stationed outside Concentration camps on Steam.

The awful corruption of everything like some lovecraftian thing of antedeluvian horror, the monstrous fear of the other.

It disgusts me that I even liked this person, and I can't understand the cognitive dissonance required to do what...she did, others do, have done.

I don't understand it, it's madness.

I feel horrible gaf.

EDIT: it hurts because my father is also a racist now, when he wasn't before. Is more or less fine being called a neonazi, he'll get angry but he won't disagree.

It sucks man. My dad has been a racist for as long as I can remember and I had to grow up with that shit. He has this horrible habit of calling any black person he doesn't like on the shows we watch together like Survivor and The Amazing race the N word and always hates on them. It took a long time of me calling him a racist shithead and showing him absolutely no respect before he started catching himself at all and backing off on it. Still says it sometimes but then apologizes at least.

And my older brother and sister voted for Trump for ridiculous reasons. I thought they were more intelligent and better people, but just awful things have come out of their mouths since the election. My brother just non-stop hated on Obama, both of them went "BUT HER EMAILS", and my sister ACTUALLY said this: Hillary couldn't control her man, she can't run a country. Fucking actually said that. Plus some really awful other things that I'd rather not repeat. Before this election neither of them would say anything terribly outlandish, but it's like they've been radicalized ever since this past year.

It's really hard to deal with. And to make matters worse, they're the type of people who only get hurt by Trump and the GoP over and over and over.

It's been a pretty rough year with my GF too, because she went completely down the "BUT BOTH SIDES!" rabbit hole of bullshit and she's a Brazilian immigrant to boot. She eventually stopped that shit, after many fights where I challenged her to put up a single shred of evidence and she never could, but now she's ultra paranoid.

 

[Lord Frieza]

You know, you read stuff like this, and then people laugh when you say we're on the road to another civil war. How can you not see the extreme gap in how these two sides look at the world and not see that we heading headfirst into a civil war conflict? We're already in an intense cultural civil war, it's only a matter of time before it escalates. I just wished I felt better about our odds