I’ve been radicalizing my family members and my girlfriend for months now, but yesterday my mom wanted to talk about some political videos she had been watching. We’d talked about Ben Shapiro before and I had explained how he’s a grifter, so she sought his videos out and apparently found him far more convincing than I have been. Whereas before she was all on board with everything I had explained to her, about workers rights, American labor history, the contradictions of capitalism, etc., the few Ben Shapiro videos she watched were apparently enough to plant that conservative tick in her. She wanted to argue yesterday about how there shouldn’t be minimum wage laws because Ben Shapiro made what she though were good arguments, saying it wasn’t okay to force employers to pay a certain amount and that a job making $5/hr is better than no job at all.
I was taken aback and tried explaining to her why Ben Shapiro and others like him are a bad influence again, and in the middle of my talking both she and my girlfriend got on YouTube and my mother began watching another Shapiro clip while my girlfriend went and watched a Liberty Hangout video (since I had brought that channel up too and my girlfriend watches it sometimes, “because it’s entertaining and she doesn’t actually listen to Katelyn’s opinions,” which is obviously not true because you when you expose yourself to the brainwash it’s very difficult to fight it, especially when you don’t know it’s there and are politically illiterate).
I just feel so defeated. If I can’t even get my own family members to care and understand, how am I supposed to get anyone else to? I’m not as effective a rhetorician as Ben Shapiro and apparently my loved ones really are the “advertising doesn’t work on me” types. My mother is obviously going to get further radicalized now because YT is gonna put more rightist videos in her recommended, and since these people uphold the establishment values she grew up with she finds them more convincing than my showing and explaining all the secrets and bad things about the US and capitalism. It’s so disheartening and depressing and I just don’t know how to combat the brainwash anymore
