VOM TAG

The Radicalization of my Father

By John Collins | December 26, 2025 | Filed Under: Politics

A life lived offline

My father is a rare person indeed, due to having lived his entire life offline. Now in his mid-seventies, he has never owned a computer, never been online, has no wi-fi in his house, and has never even owned a cell phone.

Put simply, he hates technology and gets stressed when he must interact with it in any way.

He only pays in cash, and has never owned a credit card, let alone used any kind of mobile payment methods.

He consumes all his media in physical formats, including DVDs, books, and newspapers.

And as he has never been online, he has naturally never used social media and never had any online profiles to speak of: He is a digital ghost; his online footprint is non-existent.

You may be thinking that this sounds idyllic, and he is probably a contented man having lived such a peaceful offline life, free from the toxicity of social media and online divisions. You would, however, be wrong: my father is one of the most politically radicalized men I know!

How the hell did that happen?

His background

My father is a working class guy. Despite working hard all of his life, he has little to show for it beyond a state pension. He never owned a house. He never owned a passport, so he barely travelled. And he never completed high school, having left at 15 to take up manual work.

Despite his humble upbringing, he is a well-read man. My father read his entire life and always has a pile of novels nearby. In fact, it was his example that led me to my love of reading, and his grandsons from my marriage have followed in both of our footsteps: we are a family of readers, and I remain very proud of that.

A well-read man who owns nothing can be a dangerous thing. His political enlightenment can lead him to discovering how poor he actually is, and how the odds of success were stacked against him from an early age. Such an awakening can sadly lead to bitterness and resentment.

Put simply: an ignorant poor person can remain content because they know no better, but my father is not ignorant, far from it.

The mainstream media

Whenever I visit my father’s house, his TV is either running CNN or Al Jazeera. His views are formed by their biased coverage of world events, hence in spite of living in Ireland and not the US, he has a visceral loathing of President Trump and his senior staff members. He has a venomous hatred of Israel, and hates wealthy CEOs or other billionaires. His poor background makes him particularly susceptible to such anti-capitalist narratives.

In addition to TV news channels, he always has a pile of Irish newspapers beside him. For those of you not from Ireland, all you need to know about Irish newspapers is that they all present the same opinions in different formats, so if you have read one you have read them all. There are no dissenting voices, instead it is a banal chorus of sanctioned opinions that is rarely challenged. I cancelled my own subscriptions many years ago with no regrets.

Between the TV news and the newspapers, my father is being reinforced with partisan rhetoric in stereo, on a daily basis. What chance does he stand?

Tech creates algorithms to feed us what we want; my father has manually curated his own "algorithm" by buying the same papers and leaving the TV on the same channel. He is stuck in an analog echo chamber.

The demise of critical thought

Those who already benefit from critical thought know to question the motives of the messenger as much as the message itself. It should not be taken for granted, however, that most people are doing the same. Instead, I believe that critical thought is a minority activity.

Most people will accept as fact opinions expressed to them from sources that they trust: the mainstream media, the legal and medical professions, and even politicians often fall into this trusted category. They accept on faith what they are told to believe.

They do this because it is easier than forming an original opinion of their own. The human brain naturally seeks the path of least resistance; it is far more efficient to outsource opinion-forming to a trusted third party than to do the heavy lifting of research oneself.

Online, you might occasionally encounter a comment that disagrees with you. In my father's living room, the TV never argues back. There is no friction, only validation.

Once an opinion is formed, it becomes impossible to dislodge it with facts or evidence. It's a blind spot that most people suffer from: they will blindly accept "evidence" that aligns with their bias but dismiss evidence that is not aligned with their bias. It is just confirmation bias all the way down.

I used to envy my father's offline life, assuming it was a sanctuary of peace. But I've realized that silence isn't always peaceful; sometimes, it’s just an echo chamber where the volume only goes up. If you love someone, you accept their wrong-headed opinions, but you also mourn the conversations you can no longer have.