<
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/apr/18/the-families-torn-apart-by-older-relatives-going-far-right>
"Graham doesn’t remember his mother ever sharing her political views. He’s not
certain she even voted until she met his father, who was a big Labour
supporter. She went along with that, only once voting Tory as an act of spite
towards the end of their relationship. She later married a farmer who was more
conservative, and leaned towards leave in the Brexit referendum. “But,
honestly, beyond that, she would never even speak of politics. She just wasn’t
interested.”
Graham, who works in the transport industry in the Midlands, noticed a big
change in his mother during the Covid pandemic. “I remember walking home from
work one day and I got this phone call and all of a sudden she was listing off
these conspiracy theories at me.” He now realises how much time she was
spending online, on her phone and iPad, cut off from friends, family and the
church life that had always been so important to her.
Five years later, Graham’s mother, who is retired and in her 60s, supports the
hard-right agitator and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson with what her son
describes as a religious fervour. She has told him Keir Starmer is a communist
trying to “replace us all with Muslims” and Covid was a hoax. He says she
spends hours on social media and uses her TV only to stream YouTube videos.
“I went to see her a few nights ago and everything started off as normal and
then the conversation just switched,” Graham says. “All of a sudden it was
about Muslims in prisons forcing others to convert at knife-point, then somehow
Starmer became part of it, and I just had to leave. I’ve been trying to help
her, but I don’t really understand politics and I end up making it worse. We’ve
always been close but I feel like I’m losing her.”
Graham has never had a clear idea of what, exactly, his mother is consuming on
her screens, or how she has become radicalised. But he is far from alone in
grappling with the sometimes extreme rightward political drift of an older
relative. While so much research and concern has focused on radicalisation in
young people – particularly young men – less is understood about the effects of
a fragmenting political and media landscape on increasingly online boomers, the
generation now aged from about 60 to 80."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
