I have to post this here. So I haven't seen him since like 2020 and even before that we saw each other last time in like 2014-2015 at most so we don't really see or talk that often. He was normal last time in 2020, but now he went nuts.
So let me explain, we saw each other just before a few days after he came here with his sister and gf, he was talking about how shitty the situation in Germany is and about shit in Ukraine, Germany being USA puppet and immense hate towards Russia/Belarus etc in Germany which gave me hope until the next minute which was the exact moment when I was 99% convinced that he's on drugs. He just started randomly rambling about ''''''LGBT propaganda'''''''' in Germany, that it's ''attacking mah family'', randomly talking most incoherent shit about religion and Christianity, I will try to make sense of it: he basically said that Protestant church is not the ''real'' Christian church and talked shit about his Russian friend just because he is Protestant, all of that because Protestant church promotes ''LGBT propaganda'' which is ''satanic'', that every single religion in this world is wrong and satanic and that only Orthodoxy is the ''real way of god'', basically 'everything I don't like is satanic'.
And then, fucking then, he started talking about totally legit stories of priests who saw talking goats and heard voices in mountains and talked with me about it with a dead serious face. And then he went and told me that people who drink, smoke or use drugs are being told to do so by satan and that atheists are doomed in life and you get the point...
I'm completely convinced that he's using drugs for which we don't even have a names for yet and that he reached the point of no return, his entire fucking peronallity is talking about god every other minute, Orthodox christianity,hating on LGBT and rambling about random shit. And that's all he has talked about for 2 straight hours after we didn't see each other for years, I couldn't bare to spend 1 single minute more with him and didn't even try anything because there is no point. After all of that I'm so happy that he lives in Germany his whole life and that we see each other one time in like half a decade...
Wtf did I just witness?
Here in the US, I've noticed the only people who don't support Ukraine and were allowed a platform to promote those views were ultraconservative Trump types. I have a suspicion that's by design, to help further discredit any counter-narrative.
And as others have said, the "alt-right pipeline".
I notice that as well, but the ones I come across seem to me more like classic conservatives (more isolationist and/or anti-atlanticist, strong military for defense but also our country should mind our own business, etc.) While we disagree on many core values, they seem reasonably rationale and factual, and have a solid grasp on international geopolitics. Versus the insane incoherence--well, more like "will say anything outrageous to satisfy a riled up base"--of rightwing populism.
I contribute that less to a deliberately created pipeline, though, than the natural result of the complete suppression of a genuine left in this country. With communism equated to Nazism since elementary school, most people will avoid lefty-sounding talking points and titles and then have only one direction to go when they look for alternatives to the mainstream narrative. And the YouTube algorithm picks that up in its big data.
That's a fair assessment, yeah. I don't think a pipeline needs to be deliberately created, though. I honestly think a lot of the propaganda in this country develops as a byproduct of other stuff, and anticommunists just try to nurture and reinforce it when it happens. Seems like the practical thing to do. Why waste time, money, and energy trying to create a propaganda apparatus from scratch when you can just use a fraction of the resources to give people who already believe the propaganda a platform? Over time it feeds itself.