Why dining with 'bonkers' relatives on Thanksgiving is like 'living a paranoid nightmare': columnist

23 November 2023

Around Thanksgiving in the United States, the term "crazy uncle" has become a metaphor typically used to describe relatives who buy into extreme conspiracy theories and promote them during dinner.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on Thanksgiving 2023, Yevgeny Simkin (co-founder and CEO of the Samizdatonline.org platform) offers some reasons why talking to a "crazy" relative on Thanksgiving can be frustrating or disconcerting.

"If we can't predict what's about to happen, we feel unsafe." Simkin explains, "Being able to forecast what is about to occur is one of the principal tools that make it possible for us to feel safe. Hanging out with our 'crazy' kith and kin can take away that sense of security. When we identify someone who seems deranged, our alarm bells start going off because it's impossible to know what such a person might say or do next."

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Simkin emphasizes that there is a difference between good-faith political debates on Thanksgiving and being exposed to "bonkers" ideas from "flat earthers" who believe that "Trump won the 2020 election" or that "Osama bin Laden had it right all along."

"There are only so many hatches you can batten down, so to speak, before you're just living a paranoid nightmare…. But now, you've got one of these people sitting across the table from you, and you're wondering if it's safe to have them spend the night because just last week, you noticed them reposting a tweet that included the phrase 'From the river to the sea' — a slogan that Hamas uses to call for the extermination of the Jews," Simkin wrote. "And now, they're mentioning, as they pile their plate high with all the fixins, that they were surprised to find themselves agreeing with a lot of what bin Laden had to say in his letter to America that they just found on TikTok."

"You might have been prepared for various kinds of claptrap from this person but you did not have that on your bingo card," Simkin added. "But here we are. Deep breath."

Simkin argues, "We don't want to all be stuck in our prepper bunkers awaiting the zombie apocalypse (although boy will those guys have the last laugh once it’s here!)."

Read Yevgeny Simkin's full article for The Bulwark at this link.

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