Excuse the formatting, tried to post this on r/AITA, but the mods didn't like my language :/ To start with, me (32M) and my brother (30M) have always been very different people. Like, it's astonishing we even came from the same genetic donors different. I'm trans, bisexual 5'1, still loving at home with mum, artistic and with a list of health issues longer than my arm, having flunked out of multiple colleges and at least one high school to boot. My brother is six foot of sardonic bean pole cishet white male who went high school, college, uni, work, just like that. He makes being a normal average human in this society look easy. Point is, we're very different, but until this past Xmas I thought he at least didn't hate me and wasn't an awful person? We've always gotten along well enough when drunk until now. Except on boxing day this year I was down in the kitchen/living area making a sandwich for myself when he starts off on how JK Rowling - you know, the famous author who has proved time and again that she HATES TRANS FOLK LIKE ME - has been demonised and he doesn't get why some of the stuff she's said/written is so bad. I didn't even try to explain, just told him repeatedly, 'please don't talk to me about this, it's a real bad topic for me and you're dancing the hornpipe on my issues here' but he kept trying to get me into a 'friendly discussion' about it and I kept telling him to please back off until we were both screaming at each other. He knows damn well I can't keep my voice level with subjects that are important to me, so I really feel like he was just provoking me for his own entertainment. The second incident was lesser, but still ticked me off - mum and I were talking about the new Macbeth movie with Denzel Washington, and when he heard who was playing the titular character he laughed and said 'they should get (a white guy) to play Martin Luther King' like he expected us to find that funny?? Like it was at all relevant except to be gross and racist for no good reason? And I mean, I get that he's not had the best time of it recently - he broke up with his gf of 5 years and had to get a new flat with a flatmate he's not so fond of, been in and out of jobs like a yoyo, but he's still living independently in London as a normal freaking person - but this new bigotry seems to have just come out of absolutely nowhere and I can't help but feel like he's just being nasty to me for the sake of it because he thinks I've somehow had an easy ride, unable to move away from home and having to use two canes to get anywhere, not to mention all the other stuff? Anyway, mum told me he's gonna be up for the week starting the 4th/5th, and I kind of froze up? I cannot deal with that bullshit again, I just can't. It's worth noting that our dad was a similar kind of bastard, only smart enough to not spread his shit around as much, and while E managed to forgive him (now I see why!!) I'm still bearing the scars of 25 years of emotional and physical abuse. My brother acting like that just brought back Dad's behaviour, and mum's implied that she thinks I'm overreacting and is trying hard to be neutral. Besides the AITA (because I really feel like the crazy person here) is there any milder metaphors I can use for my brother's behaviour instead of 'I feel like I'm a jew and he's a nazi' because our grandad was Jewish and caught up in all that shit and mum was the family historian for that section of stuff. Every time I try to explain with that simile, I can see her just shut me off. She's not listening to me and I feel trapped and stupid and guilty for being so 'thin-skinned ' :/
TBH the likeliest answer for the out of nowhere bigotry is that he has new friends who are like that. Innuendo Studios has a really good (if very long) video called "how to radicalize a normie" that goes into this, but since his new sense of humour seems to be focused on making controversial statements like they're "funny but true" he probably on some level expects to be emotionally abandoned by his previous social circle -- including you. He's testing the waters to see if his new friends are right about how you secretly seethe against him because of your various victim cards. It's a hard situation. I would advice that you try to rekindle whatever bond you had with him before, remind him of having been a kinder person before ("I really like you, you're a good person" is something most people who are still processing a broken relationship can benefit from) but if you didn't previously have any kind of a relationship, it will be hard for you to advocate your own humanity since his new friends are trying to convince him of the opposite. Either way, it's not your fault. It's... probably not his fault either, unless he got dumped for "being a shithead" reasons. He's looking for a power position to bolster his own anxious, deteriorating self-identity from, and while the best option would be to remind him that white straight maleness is not all there is to him, and in fact people who only love him for those traits only want to use him, too... I don't really have practical advice for how to do that.
OH and with your mum, literally going "I think he's fallen in with bad crowd who are trying to isolate him. I've seen this, I don't think he's an incel or anything but this is how they prey on people" could probably contextualise your feelings. If she has a background in history, she should understand how fringe movements prey on people with reasonable anxieties and concerns. And hammer home the point that you think it's because he feels marginalized and unloved and unsupported. Because that's where all the Nazi shit comes from, it tells white boys "nobody values you except me" and that doesn't work so well on people who already feel loved.
The probelm is we don't have much of a bond to begin with? Like, I often struggle with it because media depictions of siblings are either 'ride or die' or 'worst enemies' and me and Ed have always been sort of... Acquaintances who sort of get along due to necessity but we've never been the closest of friends? When we were teenagers we'd have massive screaming matches over our vastly differing opinions - I'm spiritual and very open-minded about weird stuff, he's deeply aethesist and thinks believing in anything that hasn't been repeatedly Proven By Science is stupid. He also likes animals at a distance but doesn't like dealing with their mess - he adored Tiger, his cat we got when he was 9 and I was 11 and sister to my Lupin, but he's never shown any inclination to have other pets since and he's got a bad track record with things like goldfish and houseplants - whereas I'm the reason we have at least 10 non-human housemates including my fish, and are looking to get chickens once I've built the coop. Again, we're just very different people. I often say 'we both have dark hair and dark eyes and that's where the similarities end' XD There's always bits where I try to reach out - when he was still raw about his breakup I pretty much plyed him with weed, booze, and chocolate and left him to his own devices, because we don't have the kind of relationship where we're comfortable seeing each other cry but he's my younger brother and I'm supposed to look after him, dammit - but he's so stoic and collected otherwise I just - I feel like I struggle to relate, you know? As far as I can tell, his worst crime with Megan was becoming hyper-dependant on her at the exclusion to all his other friends. She definitely brought out the best in him whenever they were both up here :/ Mum's always said that the issue is that he doesn't have a lot of natural Empathy whereas I have way too much XD
My brother is the same sort of idiot,.and tbh I just try to engage as little as possible in the sort of conversation that would likely go poorly. I have that luxury because of my various privileges, which includes my job training because I have to chat with loads of different people with different views. It's not always easy. Whenever possible, I try to steer the conversation back to something fairly innocuous asap. It'll be a bit like: My brother: "something i disagree with, looking for consensus" Me: "nah, not really, how about this funny thing i read on the internet/this childhood memory I thought about the other day /I always forget, what's your favourite biscuit " Usually I'll be able to redirect him somewhat and get out of the conversation just fine. The trick with my brother is to not really engage, but also not stonewall him. If you have to stone wall, do not give reasons whatsoever, to this type reasons are something to be poked and prodded and tested to see if the boundary holds up. That's how you end up in screaming matches. Other than that: I wish you a lot of luck and strength because I know how exhausting it can be.
