i found a white supremacist flyer in my bfs bedroom and i’m not sure if it’s his

[whyismylifelikethis]

some context: i’m (24F) dating a Jewish guy (26M) who is proud of his roots and we’ve been together for about three months. his pride is wonderful to me since i’m puerto rican/italian and i also love my cultures and people. he told me he wanted peace between israel and palestine and i assumed that meant he wasn’t a zionist. 

i’m really politically involved and believe that we should stop funding the israeli military and that the state of israel oppresses palestinians. this isn’t really meant to be a pro or anti zionist debate so i would prefer yall not comment if you’re gonna make it a whole debate forum.

the issue is i found a flyer for the zionist organization of america on the floor, in his room. it had a date scribbled on it for next thursday. i didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but my heart dropped when i found it.

i talked to him about it and showed him a picture of what i found in his room. he told me he had no idea what it was and that maybe it was his brothers that somehow got into his room. he went and looked at his phones calendar and said, “see? i have nothing listed for that day.” my gut is just telling me there’s something wrong. i knew that his family were proud Jewish folks who had done birthright, but i had no idea they were connected with zionism. i called my sister that night and she told me he could be lying. how could a flyer get into his room when his brothers hardly ever go and casually drop this flyer? their rooms are really far apart so it’s not like it would have blown in from the wind. and the fact that he had “no idea what it is” is so fishy to me. regardless, i don’t want to raise half puerto rican half jewish kids with a zionist family.

personally, i am pretty set on ending this solely because it could belong to a family member who would interact with my kids. not acceptable. i’m just here for a second opinion

 

TLDR; found a zionist flyer in my bfs bedroom. he says that he doesn’t know what it is or how it got in his room, but i don’t know if he’s lying. i wanna end things with him, but i would like some advice.

[Jibralta]

Just say that you feel you're not compatible and you'd like to move on. 

[Kwothe28]

If we are going to get technical about it, he is a zionist, not white supremacist. There is a political difference as Zionism support jewish state while white supremacists would mostly blame jewish people for everything bad in the world. Most of them are very adamant about that. So he would be a nationalist, but not necesserely white supremacist. Sorry, just saying.

Anyway, as your views differ, and you are both very political and its important to you, just broke up.

[Seraphim]

Since political debates are not allowed this forum you won’t get a debate. 
 

Just break up. 

[whyismylifelikethis]

7 minutes ago, Kwothe28 said:

If we are going to get technical about it, he is a zionist, not white supremacist. There is a political difference as Zionism support jewish state while white supremacists would mostly blame jewish people for everything bad in the world. Most of them are very adamant about that. So he would be a nationalist, but not necesserely white supremacist. Sorry, just saying.

Anyway, as your views differ, and you are both very political and its important to you, just broke up.

political debates are not allowed on this forum.

[whyismylifelikethis]

my main issue is if i should trust that the flyer is not his when he says it. do you believe him when he says that it isn't his, because that makes a huge difference. please read the whole post.

I could definitely keep my family away from members that are think this way. but if it is him, i can't salvage it at all.

[Seraphim]

If your politics is of most importance to you and you don’t have a meeting of minds it won’t work. 

[Batya33]

If you think he is lying then to me it's over and it made me cringe that you really wanted him to "prove" it to you.  It's only three months.  You have no idea if he wants to marry you or have a family with you but if you feel this strongly about the views you now believe he has then please end it now.  It doesn't matter if you label his views a certain way that may or may not be accurate -all that matters is you don't trust him, you're playing detective even though he told you it's not his - and that's because if it's true it's a dealbreaker. So end it now.  Especially since you extend your dealbreaker to family members who might believe what the flyer says. 

Be proud of your culture and find someone who feels as strongly as you that if any of your family members have a political view that would be inconsistent with his own he would ban that family member from spending time with your future children.  Find that out as early on as possible because in most families there is diversity of opinions on a variety of matters so you're entitled to limit your dating pool and to what you want in a partner but it's going to be hard to find and better to know early on.

And what would you do if your partner's sibling or parent changed their political views and you were already married -would you then from then on not let your children interact with an aunt or grandparent?Give this a lot of thought because many people change their political views for a variety of reasons.  But yes you took a photo of the flyer, you interrogated him, you don't believe him.  Not a good match. Understatement.

[Batya33]

9 minutes ago, whyismylifelikethis said:

my main issue is if i should trust that the flyer is not his when he says it. do you believe him when he says that it isn't his, because that makes a huge difference. please read the whole post.

I could definitely keep my family away from members that are think this way. but if it is him, i can't salvage it at all.

In most families you don't get to keep your children away from their grandparents absent abuse or something like that.  It's up to him too - so again please be clear up front how strongly you feel.

I am sure I have random flyers from junk mail that I forgot to throw out or didn't review yet.  Even if you decide you believe him it's irrelevant because the damage is done. He knows you don't trust him, he knows you'd stoop to photographing "evidence" and confronting him with something like this, and he knows that he risks having children who can't see family if the family has views you don't agree with.  Leave him be.  Whether I'd believe him is a non issue.

[whyismylifelikethis]

6 minutes ago, Batya33 said:

In most families you don't get to keep your children away from their grandparents absent abuse or something like that.  It's up to him too - so again please be clear up front how strongly you feel.

I am sure I have random flyers from junk mail that I forgot to throw out or didn't review yet.  Even if you decide you believe him it's irrelevant because the damage is done. He knows you don't trust him, he knows you'd stoop to photographing "evidence" and confronting him with something like this, and he knows that he risks having children who can't see family if the family has views you don't agree with.  Leave him be.  Whether I'd believe him is a non issue.

obviously we had spoke of this issue before extensively and he knew it was a very big deal to me. he also failed to mention that anybody in his home had these radically different ideas. i knew to an extent, but i did not know they were this hateful. im viewing this a a lie in the form of omission and am ashamed that i made the mistake to stay for so long after this. it has been a small amount of time from when we started dating, and i have decided to end the relationship because he knew this was important to me and failed to mention anyone in his home was this radical. there are political differences and then there's extreme nationalism. i'm sure other families, like most in my own family, are not as hateful.

thank you for your advice. i'm leaving him to protect my future family from hatefulness.

[Batya33]

3 minutes ago, whyismylifelikethis said:

obviously we had spoke of this issue before extensively and he knew it was a very big deal to me. he also failed to mention that anybody in his home had these radically different ideas. i knew to an extent, but i did not know they were this hateful. im viewing this a a lie in the form of omission and am ashamed that i made the mistake to stay for so long after this. it has been a small amount of time from when we started dating, and i have decided to end the relationship because he knew this was important to me and failed to mention anyone in his home was this radical. there are political differences and then there's extreme nationalism. i'm sure other families, like most in my own family, are not as hateful.

thank you for your advice. i'm leaving him to protect my future family from hatefulness.

If that's your view of it -hatefulness -then you do you.  How you feel about it is unusual so I suggest you clear this up within the first few dates and make sure they know that if any of their family members change their views you will unilaterally decide that the children cannot see them because of the risk that they will discuss politics. 

I don't think the political views of anyone in his family was any of your business especially since you just started dating.  Unless you told him that you needed to know and he told you and promised they'd never change.  Doesn't sound like that. Sounds like a ton of assumptions on your part.  Sounds like you maybe were not that into him to begin with.

[Seraphim]

Yup , do you and only get together with people who agree with you. 

[catfeeder]

I have plenty of materials in my home that I consider 'opposition research'.

If you like the guy and have been finding simpatico in the last 3 months, it wouldn't make much sense to jump to conclusions. However, if you've been on the fence about him, then there you go--perfect reason to ditch the guy. 

[MissCanuck]

6 hours ago, whyismylifelikethis said:

my main issue is if i should trust that the flyer is not his when he says it. do you believe him when he says that it isn't his, because that makes a huge difference.

OP, there is no way anyone here can give you any answers on that. We don't know him, don't know how likely (or not) it is that it came from somewhere else. 

You have to decide for yourself if you trust him on that. It seems that you don't, so the answer is to end the relationship. 

[Wiseman2]

At 12 weeks dating, it seems you are incompatible. You're thinking way too far ahead .

Why were you snooping through his stuff?

How old is he? What kids are you raising? What are you talking about?

Dating is not social work or political and religious debating.

Stop interrogating about the flyer. Just move on. You're too extreme and intense and going ballistic over whatever your cultural, political and religious differences are.

 

[Jibralta]

6 hours ago, catfeeder said:

I have plenty of materials in my home that I consider 'opposition research'.

Same here! I love reading about both sides of an argument.

[Seraphim]

2 hours ago, Jibralta said:

Same here! I love reading about both sides of an argument.

Absolutely, we stop growing as a person if we only see one side. 

[Batya33]

48 minutes ago, Seraphim said:

Absolutely, we stop growing as a person if we only see one side. 

The OP seems to have decided that her future children won't grow properly/will be at great risk if exposed to relatives/in-laws who have views that she sees as white supremacy.  I hope she is set up to home school since most schools by definition would not censor information to the extent she would seem to insist upon.

[Seraphim]

Just now, Batya33 said:

The OP seems to have decided that her future children won't grow properly/will be at great risk if exposed to relatives/in-laws who have views that she sees as white supremacy.  I hope she is set up to home school.

Yes, many people share our planet. And we encounter all kinds from childhood on. 

[Batya33]

1 minute ago, Seraphim said:

Yes, many people share our planet. And we encounter all kinds from childhood on. 

If she was willing to photograph a random flyer and confront her new boyfriend over what it possibly could mean - then that tells me her definition of what she considers "hateful" as she put it is very extreme and very broad.  And beyond that whoever she partners with and plans a family with must agree not to expose their children to his own family/relatives should they have views she deems as "hateful" - (if she agrees to be with that person at all if he has a sibling or aunt or uncle that fall within her definition). 

Nothing wrong with this -she doesn't have to change as she'd prefer to not be with a person than be incompatible in this way.  She can choose to be with no one.  But I don't think it's fair to subject her new boyfriend to being confronted with photos of flyers and especially since they are related to his religion.

[Lambert]

If you don't trust the guy, dump him. that's a deal breaker. 

I had just a friend and we had an argument. In the end I realized I just didn't believe her.... and that says a lot. 

[WalterSobcha]

18 hours ago, whyismylifelikethis said:

the issue is i found a flyer for the zionist organization of america on the floor, in his room. it had a date scribbled on it for next thursday.

Does the scribbled date look like his handwriting?

[itsallgrand]

5 hours ago, Lambert said:

If you don't trust the guy, dump him. that's a deal breaker. 

I had just a friend and we had an argument. In the end I realized I just didn't believe her.... and that says a lot. 

That's about the crux of it. 

I'd be out of there if someone started taking pics of my room and confronting me about stuff lying around. So he might fade out and do it for ya. 

[Tinydance]

I must admit that I don't actually know what Zionism is, but I'll Google it later. I'm not political basically at all myself but I understand that some people are and it may be important to them that their partner is of the same or similar political persuasions. Having said that, I think that your reaction is a bit hasty and over the top just in this particular case.

You said you're thinking of ending it just based on finding this flyer but to be honest finding the flyer isn't necessarily proof that he's a Zionist. You've been dating this guy for three months and I assume you have him on your social media. If in three months you haven't seen anything on his social media about this at all and he's never said anything at all, I think it's too dramatic to end it just because you found the flyer. At this stage at least you don't actually have any other proof that he's a Zionist or that anyone in his family is.

I'm not sure what your boyfriend does for work or study.  I remember that when I studied or worked in the city centre, there were always people either at my university or just in the street that belonged to some kind of "society" and would hand out flyers. If I knew I wasn't interested, I didn't take one, but if I didn't even know what it was I sometimes took one just to see. Sometimes it was something I had no interest in or opposed but I'd just forgotten to throw away the piece of paper. 

I'm not saying that you should date someone of an opposite political/social persuasion that you don't agree with. What I'm saying is at this stage you actually don't have any or very minimal proof that this is the case. Your boyfriend actually said that he doesn't know what it is. Yes he may be lying but he also may be telling the truth. Also sometimes when people take flyers, it's just out of curiosity. I know I've done that before.

I think before considering to break up, you should at least ask him or his family more questions. And look more through his social media or something to see if you find anything. If your relationship has been going well for three months, it seems like a big mistake to end it just over assumptions.

[Tinydance]

23 hours ago, whyismylifelikethis said:

my main issue is if i should trust that the flyer is not his when he says it. do you believe him when he says that it isn't his, because that makes a huge difference. please read the whole post.

I could definitely keep my family away from members that are think this way. but if it is him, i can't salvage it at all.

Well at this stage unfortunately that's exactly what it is - you either trust him or you don't. Do you feel strongly enough about your boyfriend just to trust him? Or you're not that invested yet and it's just easier to end it?