A Mother’s Warning: If you have white teen sons, listen up

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Joanna Schroeder has a warning for parents of teen and tween white boys: If you don't pay attention to their online lives, the white supremacists will.

"They've studied the way that our young men interact online, and they have looked at what these boys need," she said. "And they have learned how to fill those needs in order to entice them into propaganda."

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"He was scrolling quickly, really quickly," she said. "It was so fast, and he slowed down, and I saw an image of Hitler and I stopped him, and I said, 'Wait, is that Hitler?'"

It was. A meme depicting Hitler and implying a time traveler would have tipped him off about the future to keep him alive had popped into the boy's Instagram suggestions.

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A California mom of three — she has a baby girl in addition to her sons — she says she is progressive and liberal, before adding she does not shun mainstream conservative thought.

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Other terms she tells parents to listen for include snowflake; kek, a form of "lol" that sometimes refers to an ironic white nationalist 'religion'; cuck; chad; femenoid; beta; "Blood and Soil," and the numbers 14 or 88, for their association with Hitler and Nazism.

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Schroeder admits she overreacted when she heard alt-right talking points coming out of her son's mouth, perhaps because it felt so personal to her. She became emotional and threatened to take away his phone.

Her husband intervened and she decided to dial it down.

"Condemning or shaming him would simply push him farther away from me and right into their hands. Shame is a force that I believe leads people to their worst decisions," Schroeder said.

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"The kids and I are conspirators together," she said.

She might point something out and then tell her boys, "These alt-right guys were trying to trick you. Like they think you're dumb and you're not. You're smart."

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