I just need to vent.
So the other day one of my best friends, whom I know since I was like 6, asked me what I think about the whole Battlefield vs Call of Duty shit, like if this was 2009 or something. I told him that I didn'tk now much about Battlefield and my concern with Call of Duty is NOT with the gameplay (like at all) but with the message it tries to send to their large audience. If you play games I'm sure you have seen that shitty trailer about the new CoD which literally screams "Marxists bad, kill the marxists", straight outta Cultural Marxism bullshit.
So I went on a large critique of the game and it's message particularly mixed with today's situation in the United States. Mind you, neither of us are from the US.
He answered back in the worst possible manner. He absolutely does not understand what Antifa is. He claims Antifa is "Equal if not worse than the nazis" and that BLM and it's "Antifa allies" are causing huge problems in the United States, often attacking "innocent cops" and burning down "Small bussinesses". He claims George Floy's killing was regrettable BUT (and when they add a BUT you know shit's going down) "nobody talks about how he was convicted of crimes in the past", so lowkey he's literally trying to downplay the killing or cancel it. He went on to defend that fucking 17 years old kid in Kenosha, yeah, THAT level of brain rot. He claims that he was being chased, he feared for his life and opened fire (motivation to carry a weapon in a protest be damned!) and the whole thing is actually somewhat "justified" because he was "defending a gas station and Antifa wanted to burn it down, who would want to burn a gas station?".
He went on, full fash. He claims he leans to right-wing institutions because "people are too fucking stupid", that between a left-wing government and a right-wing government, he chooses the right wing one (I wonder if he even knows what the left stands for...). Out of nowhere, he bashes "LGBT education in schools", because these programs are "made for a near insignificant minority and are extremely expensive" and if people want to educate themselves on LGBT-issues they should, and I shit you not, "go to a seminar" . He claims he knows what the country "should do in order to advance" (We're from Argentina btw, so it's extremely unlikely he knows what to do.. especially considering his voting record lol). Funnily enough, he later went on saying that we should invest in education... but NOT in LGBT education, I'm seeing a potential homophobe and transphobe here.
The classical Libertarian "politics bad" speech followed, claiming how politicians are "draining the country with their corruption". I mean yeah, a critique on capitalist politics and politicians is not bad but he totally misses the point. Still, he insisted that "instead of expanding the government, we should give more power to less people", so.. Libertarian-right? I dunno.
Lastly he made a rant about Feminism, because why the fuck not? He claims that Feminism is (and remember the "but") "Good, but, there are some people in the movement that are so ridiculous that everyone else thinks Feminism is a joke".
It took me TWO DAYS to answer to that shit, not because I didn't know how to, but because I was trying to digest it. And so I did, I sent him about 25 minutes of audio lol. I literally disregarded the fact that Antifa were Nazis, he later claimed it was an "exaggeration in a literal way", I remarked that BLM is Antifa by nature and that Antifa is not an organization but an action, something you do in response to the rise of right-wing movements... which ranges from bashing the fash to insulting the fash on Twitter, it's all Antifascism. I insisted that Antifa is NOT organized as, say, a political party, but he still doesn't understand.
I attacked the Kyle point by simply asking, "Are you in favor of killing people in the name of property?" and he went on to say "All lives are important, but not *that * mportant", so yes, he's literally in favor of killing people in the name of property, particularly if a group of people are perceived as a "threat for the rest of the citizens" (Antifa trying to burn down a gas station) so my counterattack was literally saying "So you're in favor of shooting a black guy 7 times in the back because he walked towards his car... just in case right?".
I remarked the elitism on his "people are stupid" comment, and when you judge othe people's vote you MUST keep in mind their material conditions, people who feel betrayed by the system but still don't vote against the system, but actually for the candidate who they perceive will improve their material conditions almost immediately. He of course said that "I said stupid in a literal way". The whole "politicians bad" rant was rather easy to dismantle, first by saying that it's better to have more people with less power and secondly by saying that "you spend a lot of energy on politicians but not a single drop on corporations, here's how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are causing a lot of harm", I attacked his "LGBT education bad" point and the Feminism one was a favorite of mine because I used the TERFs against him, particuarly J. K. Rowling (because he loves Harry Potter, dear lord..). If people perceive Feminism as a "joke" because of some people inside the Feminist movement, then the problem lays in the interpretation of these people, not in the movement itself. If they can't separate classic Feminists from TERFs, that's their problem. Also he says that the police should be free to go after BLM and Antifa if they're causing trouble... but what happens when the police fails? What happens when the Justice System fails..?
He answered me like this saturday but I haven't even read his messages, I don't even want to reply. I'm disappointed, greatly. Like I know he's DEFINITELY not a lefty, but I didn't know he would descend into this shit... I thought he was a lib like "capitalism good but give women a better place in society, and also gay people are cool", but no, he's gonna go full fash any moment soon. I'm conflicted, I can "let it go" (I can't, I just can't... I can pretend I can let it go but in the end I can't) and continue with our friendship (which isn't as strong as it used to be), or I can take my time to attack his premises and make him feel like shit again, potentially ruining a friendship...
Right-wing thought is literally cancer, it poisons the brain. It ruined my relationship with my father, we haven't spoken for two years because of ideological differences... and I see it has ruined my friend too, like I say before I'm seeing a homophobe, transphobe potential fascist.
TL;DR - One of my best friends is going fash and I hate it.
Do you have any similar stories? Do you have friends who converted themselves into chuds? What was your reaction and what did you do?
Thank you for reading.
Someone I knew since the second grade fell for the Peterson and Shapiro grift sometime after highschool. At the end of 2017, out of nowhere, he replied with a few very long emails with some standard individualistic self help before going on about how the US is a fundamentally good country with some rough patches or something. I don't know why he sent this, we weren't talking about the US at all before. I pretty much checked out after two or so more replies because he sent I think one more large email with similar topics along with a smaller one that I don't recall having any political discussion in it. Regardless, it didn't really seem like he wanted a conversation so I let it fizzle out.
We began talking again in late 2018 and, while it was rather depressing, it wasn't whatever the conversation turned into last year. That happened next year where we talked over voip twice, well it mostly him because I had pretty much nothing to say once he began talking about how Japan's current situation is due in large part to them letting women vote. It was awful. He wanted to voip again a few months later and this time he wanted to talk about how the sjw's were berating some shit game on steam I think - he mentioned that golden god guy Contra and the Chapos mocked on the pod because he also had an opinion on the shitty game for some reason. I went through an uncomfortable anxiety thing which led me to seriously self reflect on whether this is really worth the time and effort. Honestly, it didn't seem like he really enjoyed the conversations much anyways and we somewhat brought the worst out of each other eventually. Sometimes I think about reestablishing contact because in our last exchange it kind of seemed like he was beginning to understand how capitalism worked but without an actual support network it was wearing me thin having roughly half of my human interaction being this weird half-combative debate-like discussion where I had to attempt to refute the billionaire sponsored talking points without sounding too much like a communist.