I’ve had several conversations/arguments recently with my brother making clear my system of values and my hatred for the wealthy. He is nearly diametrically opposed on all accounts and often makes light of their actions. He goes so far as to say that poor people and people in need of social services should have to figure things out for themselves. He often defends Elon Musk and champions him for being self made.
He is getting married in a foreign country soon and I have been able to put aside our differences and have been planning on going
…up until yesterday that is. I asked him of his thoughts on Musk’s seig heil maneuver and he sent a right wing meme of democratic leaders caught mid wave, saying that “they did it first”. He continued to be avoidant and didn’t respond to me calling it a strawman.
In this moment it feels necessary to cancel my plans to send a message that this is not ok. Am I the (or an) asshole for not going to his wedding because of this?
99.9% of these posts boil down to “should I do what I want with my own life?”
Yes, you should do what you want with your own life.
You can do whatever you want with your own life, but many of those things will make you an asshole.
The question posed is “will doing the thing I want to do make me an asshole”
Is being tolerant of assholes an asshole move?
Could be. Tolerance and assholes aren’t binary states, so it depends on the context what the measure is.
If someone intentionally steps on an ant at a funeral, and I decide I’m not going to let it slide and interrupt the eulogy to give an impassioned lecture about how needless killing is immoral, even if it’s an ant, I’d be an asshole.
If I saw some schoolyard bullies beating up a kid and I didn’t intervene I’d be an asshole.
That first example may just make you out to be an inconsiderate psychotic.
“If 10 people sit on a table with a Nazi, there are 11 Nazis on that table”.
You are not the asshole.
That’s quite a strong table, holding 11 people
The other 10 are just infants obviously.
Personally I think you’re pushing one hot button waiting for it to blow. I’m sure my father voted for trump. Should I not see him because of it? Or half of America? Wanting your brother to agree with you by punishing him just makes you look childish.
That said, I don’t know the rest of the dynamic. Others might say it’s worth it but honestly you all are just fighting over minor values. Do you expect all family to have exactly your values? Are you a liberal? Because this honestly seems like a lib more than a leftist move. Playing intellectually superior while trying to emotionally hurting the other.
How much sandpaper did you get through to make your brain this smooth? The gap between the values of fascism and human decency isn’t “minor,” it’s fucking monumental. If your values are only a minor step away from those of fascists, that’s a you problem.
Attacking me just like in OP’s post? Easy block. Others agreed with me, no reason to be a jerk. No one else was.
This is my read too. Cut someone out of your life for their shitty actions, not their shitty opinions.
I have compromised with my family my entire life and it has taken a mental toll on me. They have talked down to me and ridiculed my values for much of my life. I am deeply committed to human rights on a personal level and spend much of my free time volunteering in my community. These are not minor values. Perhaps I’m being extreme but making light of a nazi salute is also quite extreme.
I have compromised with my family my entire life and it has taken a mental toll on me. They have talked down to me and ridiculed my values for much of my life…
IMHO, this is the core / bigger issue. Maybe work on this first.
I still think you should go. And also I can’t judge if you are political online only or not but if you truly spend a lot of your time working based on your values and they belittle you, you do need to draw a line.
Them attacking you, if true, is different from you picking a fight with your brother over a minor issue.
I agree with the other commenter that you go to the wedding then make your decision. Them liking musk and you not going to their once in a life time event is a nuclear escalation.
Go to the wedding. That is a really big deal. After that don’t engage with him on politics. Maybe don’t engage at all. Show up for birthdays and maybe a holiday or two. Do the ‘quiet quitting’ of family interaction. You aren’t going to change their mind. I’ve been trying for 20+ years and it’s just gotten worse.
Why drag it out? The brother is clearly a lost cause, OP should just burn that bridge already instead of suffering longer than is necessary.
Your brother isn’t just passively going along with it because “muh eggs expensive,” he’s drank the kool-aid and he’s a lost cause. Don’t listen to these fucking concavebrains telling you to pal around with enthusiastic supporters of nazis, especially when it comes at the expense of your health.
life is too short to voluntarily deal with fascists, blood relative or not. no reason to go. nta
He is getting married in a foreign country soon
Where is he getting married? Plan a nice holiday in this country and take half a day to attend the wedding just for showing your face. Stand at the back of the room, make sure enough people see you to say you were there, then slowly back away and continue with your nice holiday of the country.
Or save your money and get absolutely loaded on blackjack and hookers back home.
Or save your money and get absolutely loaded on blackjack and hookers back home.
Not exactly what I’d call a healthy coping mechanism in face of emotional stress.
How do you feel about the sister in law? What’s her take on all this?
I think a lot of people would cut contact with their family at times like this due to the ways in which these kinds of beliefs often intersect with massive amounts of interpersonal abuse and broadly dysfunctional and unhappy relationships. I think this is most especially true of people who are queer, neurodivergent, disabled, or a member of some other minority, who are easily going to be subject by that abuse from their family more and more, especially as they may be more dependent on them and as they’re more noticeably going to see that abuse well up as a result of those narratives. You know, people who get to see the “ugly sides” of their family.
I would say that if you’re not actively dependent on your family, and you’re not part of an actively hated minority which they will more easily discard, disrespect, and abuse, then that makes it easier to cut them out of your life, but that’s also definitely a time at which you will counterintuitively be in the best position to sway them, since you’re at your most secure.
So I would say that this is, in some part, a decision which you should probably make in reflection of your current material circumstances, the current state of your life. This also isn’t a decision which you need to make right now, really, to cut him out of your life or decide to blow this particular one up. You said he’s already married, and that your other two brothers aren’t going, so one more probably won’t hurt things that much even if you invent an excuse.
I’m like 90% sure if I showed my dad the picture of elon musk hitting the five knuckle shuffle live on stage in 4k 60fps three times in a row, he’d probably flee to the “my heart goes out to you” comment, right before trying to find some sort of talking point he could throw down the hopper in order to justify this shit, which is really to say nothing of the fact that he basically just fundamentally agrees with elon’s actions on basically every level if he was to actually sit down and think about it for long enough. There’s some people which cannot be helped, because they will repeatedly choose not to be. There isn’t exactly a correct answer, here, I think the major thing is that if it goes sideways because of your decisions, you shouldn’t beat yourself up or crash out over it, or become overly callous.
People cut out family members for much less. I feel we are at a crucial turning point, and all we have left is letting the people we have a connection to know, that these stances are radical and not normal and that having them will have consequences. In your case not having a sibling at their wedding.
NTA. A fascist is no longer family. You don’t even need the context for this, the red line is so brightly painted there that you’d have to be dead not to notice it.
Seems overly dramatic. I don’t think you’re an asshole, but somebody who should realize you don’t deeadicalize your family by being emotionally unstable.
The emotionally unstable one is the Nazi :3
Wanting to have people die/suffer for being Jewish, Palestinian, queer, or whatever, that IS emotional instability. Normal people don’t want others to die. :3
This thread made me delete lemmy - bye
This family clearly has issues, most do.
The 20 posts suggesting to ditch your family to punish them instead of talking and expressing how it bothers you is where you lost me.
I guess this is how you create echo chambers. I disagree with the majority of the opinions here, and unlike family I have no motivation to keep listening to this.
Enjoy!
Realise that you’re choosing to listen to Nazis rather than not interact with them, or not to listen to them.
Habe you perhaps considered that you might be the problem? Sure, someone is family. But if that family member were to constantly make horrid remarks – would you then really want to spend that energy having a dinner with them?
For your mental health, it’s better not to.
As far as the Musk thing goes: I won’t even get into whether or not Musk was really trying to do a Nazi salute. Personally, I don’t think he was, Musk denies it, plenty of Jewish people and Jewish advocacy groups also say they don’t think it was intentional. But the important thing is, your brother doesn’t think it was intentional. So, at worst, he has committed the crime of being naive, and there’s a very good chance that he’s right and you’re wrong. If he said, yes Musk did a Nazi salute on purpose and then defended that, that would be way over the line. But honestly he sounds like a pretty run of the mill libertarian/conservative. And I will die on the hill that the vast majority of libertarians and conservatives are good people, even if I disagree with them politically.
If it siegs, heils, and screams discrimination, it’s a Nazi. No ifs, buts, or copes.
That guy certainly isn’t a run of the mill liberal/conservative if he tries to cop out his way out of that.
Also, Jewish advocacy groups worldwide aren’t exactly a good one to consult – as they often have been shown not to be independent, but work together with Israel’s government, which has a habit of ethnically cleansing Palestinians, like the current genocide in Palestine. The victims are turning into oppressors there, and that saddens me – ideally, Israeli, Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, agnosts and all alike should be able to live together in harmony.
That said, concerning Nazi aspects: assuming all other conditions are satisfied, you don’t even need to hate only Jews to be a Nazi. You can hate Palestinians and be a Nazi. Or queers. The original Nazis did that too. We were put up in concentration camps for being queer. And Musk hates those.
And your answer is, “Noooo, I don’t think he was sieg heiling”?! Come on.
You cannot be a good person until you actively work for the liberation of people, instead of voting against their rights. And reactionaries (that’s what I call ““conservatives”” do the opposite: they want us to go back to the Middle Ages.
With due respect, but your opinion should be reconsidered immediately.
I do think he wasn’t zeig heiling. So do most people in the real world who aren’t hooked in to leftist social media 24/7.
Anyways you’re missing the point. The point is that OPs brother thinks Musk didn’t do it. So are you really going to cut someone out of you life for having the majority opinion that someone isnt a Nazi and therefore is defensible?
“You cannot be a good person until you actively work for the liberation of people, instead of voting against their rights.”
“OK what if you think fetuses are people”
“But they arent”
“But I think they are, so I think I am morally righteous”
“But they aren’t and therefore you are a bad person”
Just using abortion as an example… I am strongly pro-choice myself but I dont think people are bad just because they are pro-life. Misguided? Sure, but thats hugely different than being evil. There is a ton of space in society for good people to have different political views. The notion that everyone who disagrees with you politically is a bad person is childish.
Using “jews” as approval means nothing. There were plenty of jews that supported hitler. To noones shock, the wolf killed the sheep.
So according to you his brother is wrong. He made a mistake in interpereting a hand gesture. You would cut him out of your family for that?
If they are defending a Nazi. They are a Nazi.
No don’t you get what I’m saying? Let’s say my acquaintance Jim is a Nazi. I, mistakenly, think he is not a Nazi. Someone calls Jim a Nazi and I say, “no, Jim’s cool, he’s not like that”. That would make me WRONG. It would not make me a NAZI. People get fooled all the time, a fact everyone in this thread seems to be forgetting, and that fallibility applies just as much to Musk’s accusers as his defenders.
If they refuse to accept the overhwleming evidence, yes.
In fact, the idea that they are using “Jews” approval here as some sort of defense is rather questionable tactic.
Are “Jews” some sort of authority on what a nazi is?
Do the rest of us need to accept whatever the “Jews” say
Shit is fucking sus
Not going to a wedding after saying you would is effectively for this is effectively cutting him out of your life. If you are willing to cut him out of your life, don’t go to the wedding. It just sounds like a rash decision.
Nah, don’t go if you don’t want to. Family are just randomly assinged people you share the same genes with. If you don’t like them you don’t have to force yourself to like them in order to appease random strangers online.
If he truly is your family and loves you, like all the “YOU ARE DOING WHAT” posters are saying, he will understand and not hate you. If he does, fuck him.
No offence but this is advice of a traumatized child. This is not how families should be and if this is yours, you need genuine therapy, definetly not giving others advice on family. Op do not listen to this
No offense, but this is advice from someone that’s not related to a rabbid wolverine with a toothache and a chemical imbalance. Some relatives are fucking nightmares, and no amount of tolerance is gonna change that. Walking away is sometimes the best for your mental health. Can confirm. My psycho sister disowning the whole family was the greatest gift she ever gave us.
OP, unless you’re in therapy and Shezzgrad is your licensed professional help, then ignore their advice.
You’re kinda making it clear your projecting your own family issues onto op as my original comment to you. I have a psycho sister too, thing is, there’s a difference between differences in thought and being a literal fucking psycho, psycho is sending is shattering the family at the drop of the hat because you feel slighted, thinking Elon is the coolest dude ever (he isn’t) isn’t the same level, things aren’t black and white.
OP, unless you’re in therapy and Shezzgrad is your licensed professional help, then ignore their advice.
When I said it originally I was being a dick, but I think you may want to genuinely consider therapy, family traumas can be everlasting and can really kick in later on in adulthood, your sister experience sounds similar to mine
So it’s not your professional opinion then, Dr.
When I said it originally I was being a dick, but I think you may want to genuinely consider therapy
I, too, was being a dick because you give advice like you’re intimately aware of the situation, when I’m guessing you are not. I’ve done therapy. Didn’t change the fact that I’m related to a person that would shove her kids into traffic if the mood suited. My ultimate point being that just because someone is a relative DOES NOT mean you need to keep them in your life.
And beyond saying i have a psycho sister, what gives you the impression that our experiences are similar? I didn’t give a single detail. Unless we compare notes, that’s just you basing an opinion on your experiences. Projecting, if you will.
Okay dude, whatever you say. You can take your anger out on me, but you’re proving you clearly were projecting your own issues and you need therapy. I hope you work through your issues dude, but your experience aren’t the same as op over here. You’re sister sounds truly awful and I hope you know it isn’t your fault
You’re right in that this is not how families should be. They should be people you care about and trust.
Your family does get a pass for being family; you maybe don’t share the same interests or lifestyle that would otherwise form a distance in childhood friends that eventually fizzles out, but with families this shouldn’t be the case.
But then sometimes your family members end up (or you discover) they are bad people. Yet even then you may stand with them as they sell drugs or rob people or even have killed people; they’re still family and what they’ve done can be understandable even if wrong.
Then there are Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, apologists, and supporters.
Families should stick together, but people also shouldn’t be Nazis. So here we are.
Well said, in my personal opinion we should stick close to family but there are lines, and each person’s lines are different, but I feel generally that line should be for their actions and not their ideas or thoughts. Being a trump supporter Vs a Jan 6 rioter or a proud boy are different levels to me. We should try to change our families mind to an extent, if they can’t or won’t change or if you’re not a great debater. Honestly unless your family hurts others, I can keep it together.
Yes, this would be an asshole move for sure! You should leave politics behind at least for a day.
