demisaysstuff:

lindentreeisle:

solacekames:

solacekames:

I Lost My Son to the Alt-Right Movement – Anonymous As Told To Alexa Tsoulis-Reay

My son was in Charlottesville. He probably went with his friends, but I don’t know for sure because I haven’t talked to him in about three years.

Maybe some alt-righters were born into racist families and then they just follow along, but we weren’t like that. He grew up in a big, multicultural city. When he was a kid, he was very accepting — his friend group was ethnically diverse, we often hosted overseas exchange students. He was dating someone who wasn’t white. He was a responsible kid. I mean, he would occasionally drink and smoke pot and stuff like that, but he wasn’t getting into trouble or anything. He had a few close friends, but he was not that great with getting girlfriends.

He was a good student, smart, sweet, and we were close. He always told me he loved me. But over time he began to change. I was worried it was drugs or depression. He started treating me like shit. I remember one time I went to hug him and he nearly ripped me a new one just for touching him. He said, “We have nothing in common.” I was hurt. That was just the beginning.

When he was in his late teens, he started listening to this podcast FreeDomain Radio. After he told me about it, I googled it, and from that point forward, my life was never the same. It was founded by this guy Stefan Molyneux, who I later learned is a major figure on the alt-right. He spews horrible things. I heard him listening to the podcasts in his bedroom. My son started saying things like, If we could just get the Asians out of here it wouldn’t be so crowded. I realized he was getting into really dangerous stuff. He was beyond the point where we could have a rational discussion. Not long after, I told him I thought he should move out.

(RELATED STORIES: Men’s-Rights Activism Is the Gateway Drug for the Alt-Right)

After he left, we stopped talking and he pretty much alienated his closest friends. The only way I could keep track of him was by watching his online presence on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (I remembered his nicknames from when he lived at home). I saw that he was questioning the Holocaust, and tweeting about Trump, white supremacy, and all this horrible stuff about women. On his YouTube account, people were commenting that women don’t need to have education because their place is at home having babies. I panicked and approached a local religious group that’s very knowledgeable about cults and they said, Just wait it out and take care of yourself.

These days, I check up on him whenever I’m on the computer — it’s constant. I’ve got all his social-media pages pinned on Google Chrome. Sometimes he removes posts quickly and sometimes he makes things public and leaves them there. Maybe he wants me to see? I make sure I’m not logged in when I look at his accounts because I don’t want him to block me.

I recently saw him on a video, he looks healthy. Taking good care of yourself is all part of the white-supremacy thing, right? They have to be in good shape in case there’s violence, and they have to be fit so they can make good white babies. My thinking these days is God forbid he should have kids.

(read the rest at https://www.thecut.com/2017/08/charlottesville-white-supremacy-parenting-alt-right.html)

#this is literally how people describe losing their children to terrorist organizations

^^^

And what makes it worse is that any community support for deradicalization is being actively eroded by the government.

If you’re a parent and your teenager starts obsessively watching beheading videos and researching plane tickets to the Turkey/Syria border, I’m not saying you’re lucky by any means, but at least you’ve got to know there’s a serious problem. There’s nothing like that for white radicalization because it blends in so seamlessly to “acceptable” right-wing activities in white communities…

From ThinkProgress:

President Donald Trump initially condemned “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” for the tragedy, later placing the blame on white supremacists after a storm of backlash. But those words haven’t been backed up by policy—in June, the Trump administration dropped funding for one of the few organizations devoted to countering and de-radicalizing white extremists in the United States.

Founded in 2009, Life After Hate is run by former members of racist extremist movements who now work to counter and reform white nationalists. Under former President Barack Obama, the organization received $400,000 as part of its Counter Violent Extremism (CVE) program—the only anti-white nationalism group given funding under the program. After Trump’s election, Life After Hate reportedly saw a 20-fold increase in calls for help from those reporting signs of radicalization in themselves or others.

Life After Hate could really use your donation, if you’re looking for a way to put dollars into anti-racist efforts.

I never realized the alt-right is a cult until today. Jesus.