For some context, we are first generation immigrants. My parents are Russian, my mother and her husband have been living here for 20 years (even got rid of Russian citizenship couple years ago), my biological father is still living in Russia.
It’s damn exhausting to discuss political topics with them, especially my father. He keeps telling me how great it is to live in Russia, how their economy is doing great and how he’s proud that they are defending their “brothers” in Donezk and Luhansk from the evil bandera regime in Ukraine.
My mom voted far right in the past election. She doesn’t believe she voted for nazis, but the party’s views on economics, climate policy and immigration seem to align with hers. She believes wind farms are harmful for the environment. What the actual fuck.
Whenever I try to argue with them, they tell me that I’ve been brainwashed by “Western propaganda”.
I’m at a loss. I love my parents and I know that nobody’s immune to propaganda, but it’s heartbreaking to see them holding these toxic beliefs. How would you deal with parents like these? Should I just declare to never talk about politics with them again since it’s pointless?
Block their access to propaganda channels. Don’t tell them you are doing this. Make it look like it’s malfunctioning, if you can. Expose them more to educational material.
Example: Swap fox sub with vox. Set the child lock on their tv. Domain filter facebook in their router or throttle the service to make it unpleasant to use. Set up url redirects. Get them a stack of dvds. Proper entertainment is better than propaganda. They watch that crap cause they are lazy and it’s easy.
If they give up and switches to a more sane channel for their entertainment, politics or otherwise, you have succeeded.
The idea is to remove them from the constant barrage of propaganda from bad actors. If they stop hearing about “evil trans people” every ten minutes, they will probably become uninterested after a while.
Thank you for your advice. Unfortunately though, I don’t live with my parents anymore. They seem to consume information mostly through telegram, news articles and Russian television. I wouldn’t know how to shield them from those influences, I don’t have access to all their accounts or devices.