I feel there is very little we can do individually to change people's minds or turn them away from fascism, or even to get them to stop turning their own brains into soup, but you can still show them there are consequences to their actions.
Telling my own friends / relations what I think of them and cutting ties with them has done nothing to bring them back in line with normal human values, but at least I am not burdened with the guilt of my association, and maybe one day enough people will cut them off that the loneliness gets to them and they begin to re-evaluate their lives.
It is literally the least I can do. Any sadness I felt was heartbreak that they could be so shitty to begin with.
I'm going to clarify that my POC wife is absolutely better off knowing that I am not associating with these people, and learning what they had become or covertly always were really like was many things, devastating, humiliating, embarrassing. The least I can do is cut them off and tell them why. What I would like to do is ruin their lives brutally.
Of course, that’s a lot different.
I read your post and only considered it in the context on one person cutting ties with people who they decided couldn’t change.
What worries me about that misinterpreted scenario is that often times despite not wanting to be reliant on those people, they represent a real support network. There are real ways to improve conditions by withholding yourself from relationships you want to keep and improve, that’s how a strike works after all, but I worried in my misunderstanding of your post that someone could do real harm to their ability to weather all kinds of circumstances by cutting people out without a path back in.
Of course that’s not you.
I hope things improve with the assholes in your life.