that is easier said than done. and it requires that the other person wants to discuss and wants to listen.

remember, this is a teenager we're talking about.

his parent's opinions are not the highest thing on his priority list

Ask him what appeals to him about it. Ask him what he's learned. Ask him what he's looking for when it comes to the content he consumes -- entertainment, knowledge, new perspectives, reinforcing perspectives? Don't react or correct, but take him seriously. His answers can give you something to think about and work on for the next talk.

Tell him about the rightwing Wilks brothers who fund Shapiro and the Daily Wire.
Tell him about Murdoch and how he owns Fox and uses it for his ends.
Tell him about the billionaires’ agenda: to get white people to hate brown people so they won’t notice the billionaires stealing their tax dollars.


Teenagers HATE being lied to. They HATE being used by adults. (They like to feel like they’re figuring out things that adults don’t know) This is the way to reach him— it really works, in my experience.

Stuff to share with him:
- movies: “merchants of doubt”, “The Brainwashing Of My Dad”
- audio/podcasts: Pod save Ameirca, New Yorker podcasts, Josh Marshall podcasts
- books: “Dark Money”, “Manufacturing Consent”, “Democracy In Chains”

It doesn’t take much to expose the agenda and the money behind Shapiro and Fox.

and I turned out alright!

You can start by parental locking the Faux channels and firewalling your Internet and blacklisting every right-wing source.

You can tell your son that there are better things to do in his life than to listen to bullshit. At 15, I was playing Sierra Online games... You remember those.. Leisure Suit Larry, Kings Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, etc.

They are still playable in many retro sites.

and listens to 70s and 80s music.

he plays Clash of Clans a lot which is not violent.

he's on a good track.... until this.

If he is refusing to explain, then cancel his Clans account. I'm watching my kid closely even though he plays Roblox exclusively, but also uses Discord to chat with people worldwide.

Also might want to restrict his Youtube stuff. Just thinking ahead. Redirection is important, get him to think about his hobbies, like guitar playing, and maybe reading up on great music.

I know the games you mentioned.

materials at 15 I’d have been pissed, and it would have reinforced my desire to read that stuff all the more.

ask him if he doing a school project on propaganda?

I don't think you have much to worry about. You can't control everything he is or will be exposed to. If he is a critical thinker, he will figure it out for himself.

The days of "capitalist imperialist running dogs" are long gone.

If somebody offers free heroin, they are not your best friend. Fox is like that. You have to assume they are trying to compromise your ability to discern truth. You don't know how to resist it.

they are trying to indoctrinate people like my son

This is a good one about the agenda behind PragerU to show him — tell him the Wilks brothers think he is stupid; they’re trying to use him to vote against his own interests. Teenage boys detest people trying to snooker them.

https://rewire.news/article/2015/04/30/conservatives-spend-millions-proselytizing-school-children/

Tell us how it goes... we’re happy to provide other material or media that might help.

Ask him what he likes about it.

Ask him more things after that. Repeat.

Ask him to watch Rachel with you. Or listen to Amy Goodman with you.

Good luck.

watch and discuss ideas, if possible

watch so it becomes much less cool, if not

parenting is a real pain in the ass sometimes.

Last edited Tue Jan 22, 2019, 09:11 PM - Edit history (1)

pool. The Faux News in the locker room was like news from an alternative Universe. Tell your kid if he wants to watch Fox he can get his own TV and cable with his own money. Call it a lesson in economics.

it's mostly youtube videos. i never heard of this guy ben shapiro before but evidently he watches his videos

I'll have to look up this Shapiro.

His friends. I would look into that. Where did he get the idea to watch Fox? Just saying.

I fact checked them when they first started, and it was so obvious they just made sh*t up and presented it like news.

"Ben Shapiro Bullshit"

And read the results.

I've always been forward with my kids. "Like, hell no, we are not listening to that shit in this house."

It's good to start talking politics to your kids from when they are really little. When I was a little kid, i knew I was a democrat because my dad talked the talk all the time. By the time I was in high school, I would not think of dating a Republican. I did the same with my kids and grand kids - told them we were democrats and why.

Some teens who will just spit venom back at Mom or Dad are still very much afraid of disappointing Grandma or Grandpa.

He came to me during the primary and started spouting "Hillary is corrupt" crap.

I said, you are good at internet research. Go do a thorough search, come back to me and we'll discuss.

He came back an hour later and said, she either is a criminal genius or this is a bunch of crap! Republicans have been investigating her for decades and got nothing. What a load of nonsense.

He cast his first presidential vote for her.

My nephew, same age, thought Glenn Beck was smart and sensible. Now in college, he rails at his parents for supporting Dotard.

Good luck.

Tell him he won't get any dates if he watches too much Fox News.

Copy some articles about Republicans not being able to get dates, and bribe him to read them. When I wanted my daughter to read a book that I thought could make a difference in her life, I actually paid her to read the book. As an adult, she thanked me.

To get rid of fn from her tv source. Talk to him about it all. Show him some real news. Don’t give up.

educate, explain, and bring facts about the real world to debunk their lies.

if you just "turn it off"...... he's only going to get more curious......

approach this like you would approach talking about sex LOL

is dating this trumper jerk who worships Ben Shapiro. She and her dad are at odds over it. I’m biting my tongue. She tells me she thinks Shapiro is handsome. I said he wouldn’t even look at a shiksa so we talked about religious fanatics. I hate this shit.

Back when my kids were in grade school one channel was running raunchy dance videos after school, including some of Madonna's choice bits. After one little girl who watched unsupervised did a demo of a bondage routine for my little boy, I called my cable company and had that one channel blocked forever. They were young enough that "I guess it's broken" worked.

Nowadays you can do it from the comfort of your own living room.

But the others are right: talk to him. If you fill your mind with poison -- it poisons you.

that has hurt others or helped others. Anything that can bring out empathy.

Not much you can do, though. I liked Bill O'Reilly when I was 15. He may come to his senses later.

It's a religious belief of mine that skin and razors or hot wax don't mix, with the possible exception of before major surgery, but everyone knows that sucks.

Bloody hell, who wants to see a hairless hot waxed scrotum? Not me.

Every time a razor has touched my skin it's exploded into the worst case of acne you've ever seen. That's why I haven't been touched by a razor since the later 20th century. Thank God.

We never had the Fox News problem in our house, possibly because we'd pretty much quit all television by the time our kids were impressionable teens. It was DVDs or nothing until our youngest set us up with Netflix.

I'll consider myself fortunate that they never got into Fox News Fear Porn.

When I was about 18 years old or so, I fell into a group of friends I lifted with at the gym almost every night. They were horribly racist and I was too naive to know that what they were saying was nothing more than ignorance. The more I hung out with them, the more I started to agree with them. Then I started talking about some of the stuff they said with my parents and my parents helped me to realize that they were wrong. Deep down, I think it always FELT wrong to me too, but I just accepted it because they were older and more worldly than I was.

So whoever it was above who said to sit down and have a discussion with your son has it right. Explain and discuss, don't lecture. He'll see the truth eventually. We all know that RW lies don't hold up to scrutiny. Once he learns to stop accepting RW talking points at face value and learns to really examine WHY he believes what he does, he'll see the truth for himself. But with teenagers, you have to let them believe that they came to that conclusion on their own.

So my advice would be to give him guidance (not orders) and encourage him to question the WHYs of his beliefs. I know that when I was 18, I believed all the RW talking points, simply because I heard my dad saying them, and I just accepted that he knew what he was talking about. Soon after arriving at college, I was exposed to the other side of many issues for the first time, and I did reverse my beliefs on many issues simply because I was given answers that made more sense to me.