Liberal College Student Turns Conservative After Her Mom Uses a Cult Deprogrammer

Liz: 

I am so excited about our guest today. She has a fascinating story, and I’m delighted that she agreed to sit down and talk to us about this story. Now, she works as the development director for Palm Beach, Florida for Prager U. But previously she was a radical leftist who was indoctrinated in college into all kinds of crazy things, and her family took extreme measures to extract her from this ideology. She’s going to sit down and talk to us all about her story. Annabella Rockwell, thank you for joining me. I can’t, I have so many questions for you. I’m so excited to talk to you today. 

Annabella: 

Hi, Liz. Thank you so much for having me and ask away. 

Liz: 

Okay, so some people may not be familiar with your story. I know they’re going to be so interested in hearing about this, especially given what we’ve been talking about on this show for the past month now. but first I want to ask you just a basic question, if you don’t mind my asking, how old are you? 

Annabella: 

Yeah, I’m 30 years old 

Liz: 

And I know, I know my audience is thinking, Liz, that’s a rude question to ask a lady, but it’s pertinent to this story, I promise. So, the background of your story is when, when you were a child and a teenager growing up, was family political at all? 

Annabella: 

I think that we lived in a fairly normal, I’d say moderately conservative household more than political. We loved America. I’m descended from someone that came over on the Mayflower. So I always had pride of country. I’m really well traveled. My mom took me all over the world. So I always had an appreciation for America, and we weren’t so political. Like I, we talked a bit about the presidents and things, but we were not necessarily very far one way or the other. 

Liz: 

Okay. But it, it, it’s safe for me to characterize it as you weren’t raised in a household that was traditionally Democrat or hardcore liberal or anything like that. 

Annabella: 

Correct. 

Liz: 

Okay. So then you go to college and you chose Mount Holyoke to go to college. What made you choose this college? And it is a pretty liberal college. It’s known for that. 

Annabella: 

It’s also a really good school <laugh>. it’s incredibly academic. It’s the first of the seven sisters I got in and it was one of those kind of no brainers. Like, this is such a good school, I have to go. You know, they gave me a great financial aid package. I was recruited to play on the tennis team. I loved that it was a part of the other five colleges. So Amherst, UMass, Hampshire, Smith. It was kind of an amazing, quintessential New England college campus and experience. So I was, you know, very excited about going there. And I didn’t really know that it was so liberal, if you will. I just thought liberal arts meant I could explore a lot of different topics. 

Liz: 

So when you got there, what was your first clue, or what was the eye-opening experience when you realized, oh, wow, okay. The culture here is a little bit different than I thought. 

Annabella: 

So it started pretty quickly during orientation. You know, Mount Holyoke is a, traditionally, it’s a women’s college, but pretty quickly, I was told that I can’t assume someone’s gender. We were given this little paper in all of our mailboxes that said, you know, he may be, she, she may be he, they could be them, you know, don’t assume any, anything, you know, sexuality is a spectrum, gender is a spectrum. A lot of the student body and also a lot of the professors and the faculty were very androgynous. So I was kind of thrust into this environment of, you know, gender is very fluid. And I had never heard that concept before. So that was kind of the first like, whoa, what even is that? And I kind of thought it was funny, but I also didn’t judge. I was like, all right, whatever. Like, I guess this is how college works. <laugh>. 

Liz: 

Yeah. That, that was going to be my question is if you weren’t raised in, you know, a leftist environment and you get to college and you hear about this idea that gender is a spectrum and a girl can be a boy if they identify as a boy and these neo pronouns, I mean, did that seem like weird to you at first? Or was it just so normalized on campus? Like how did you, how did you handle that? 

Annabella: 

It was so normalized on campus that there wasn’t really a grace period for you to question it. It was kind of immediately like, you’re meeting students who are transgender. You’re, you have classmates that are, are women, but they totally present as boys. And this is, I entered school the fall or the fall of 2011. So that’s years before any of this was really in the mainstream media. So I had no idea about any of this. Honestly, it was kind of fascinating. It was very like, oh, you know, liberal arts people are exploring themselves. And I was coming from a place of, you know, I grew up going to church, like, love your neighbor, respect people, be kind, be open-minded, you know, you know, maybe I wasn’t questioning my gender, but I certainly wasn’t going to judge you. And I, and I didn’t really understand how heavy of a self-identity crisis it truly is. I was just like, okay, this is how people do things here, 

Liz: 

Which perhaps is what they were hoping that you would do. The thing about your story that got me, one of, one of the stories that you’ve told before is that they have like a ritual for girls who freshmen who, who are incoming into this school, where they try to bring you into this, I like the word you used, this androgynous type of behavior, and they actually encourage you to cut your hair. 

Annabella: 

Yeah. So we had this little ritual called the MOHO Chop. Where in your first semester of your first year also, we were not freshmen, we were first years. That was drilled into us during orientation as well, <laugh>, and have the MoCo chop <laugh> where you would kind of ceremonially like cut off all your hair and a bunch of the students did it, and, you know, power to them. I did not do it. I’m very grateful that I didn’t, I certainly thought about it, but I still was kind of like, that’s a little too far. But I think it was this idea of shedding who you were prior to walking on campus. And also it’s this, you know, standup against the patriarchy. Again, another word I had ever heard until coming to school. I didn’t understand that we were, you know, this patriarchal society. I didn’t know what that was. My mom, for the most part, my parents are actually divorced. My dad’s, now they’re back together. But for a lot of my life, my mom was a single mom and I went to girls schools growing up. So I always had leaders in my classes that were girls. So it never even occurred to me that we could be in this like, evil man ruling society. But it was made pretty clear to me, like right as I stepped on campus. 

Liz: 

Okay. I’m sorry, I can’t get past the haircut thing. So do you mean this, like, do they like shave their heads? Are you talking about cutting in like a Randy wine garden, sort of like choppy style? Like what do you mean? What is this 

Annabella: 

<laugh>, I mean, from like long hair to no hair <laugh> or just shave half of it, <laugh>, which was, you know, kind of, kind of cool, kind of a look at the time. <laugh>, 

Liz: 

You’re, you’re much nicer than I am, because that sounds objectively hideous to me, honestly, whether you’re a boy or a girl, but especially for a girl. So one of the phrases you just said, I think is really interesting. You said they want you to shed your previous identity when you walk onto campus, which to me is the first red flag. Like, oh wow, okay. That’s, that’s an indoctrination center, right? This is this, they’re, they’re wanting to fundamentally transform how you think, not just, not just educate you, not just open your mind to the lib to a liberal arts education. When did it become clear to you that views were actually changing? That these words like patriarchy and the ideology behind it was something that you were like, actually, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. I want to take part in this. 

Annabella: 

So my sophomore year was the Romney Obama election, and I remember I actually voted from it Romney and everyone on campus voted for Obama. And it was made clear to me, I think really then that like, Republicans are bad people really, really hated MIT Romney. The whole idea about him, the fact that he was Mormon, the fact that he had a career, just every single thing about him was demonized on campus. And I, I think that’s when I first realized like, wow, this is an opinion I have. That’s people are really disagreeing with me. But I also, it wasn’t grounded in that much conviction where by the time I was a junior at Mount Holyoke, that’s when I really started to shift. So I started taking classes, I started taking a gender studies course. You know, I’d been very involved in the student body at this point. 

I had a lot of friends. I was really sympathetic. I had knew a lot of people that were transgender. Like I said, when I walked on campus, there were a lot of girls that identified as boys. And so I kind of was conditioned to really accept that as a fact. Not even question like, is that really true? Like, well, what about science? What about biology? No, I was told that like, it’s a spectrum, and my professors all had Ivy League degrees. What am I going to do? Question them. Like I’m the 18, 19 year old. Like, I came here to learn from you. I did not come here to teach you what’s right. So I was just a sponge, and it was it was my junior year that really, I just started to shift. And it was most noticeable when I would start to come home on vacations. 

You know, I would start to feel like I, as a woman, I didn’t realize that I had been really oppressed, that, you know, the cards were stacked against me. And I would come home to my family and I would say, well you know, mom Nani, that’s my grandmother, like women in the fifties, they were all addicted to drugs and miserable and hated their lives being housewives. And my family would look at me like, what are you talking about? And I’d say, women couldn’t have credit cards until this seventies, like all these things that, and my mom was like, I had a credit card. What are you talking about? Like, these things that didn’t make sense, but I was, so, I, I was so programmed to believe this. And I think that my family, my family at that point started to say that I was unrecognizable because I just was so rooted in these ideas of feminism and like really extreme leftism. so that is, that’s the time. It was my third year that I was there. 

Liz: 

And I think in a sense, this is, this is one of parents’ nightmares to see, you know, another innocent child corrupted with this ideology. And we’re going to get to the part, I mean, the part that’s unique really about your story, a lot of, a lot of young people are indoctrinated in college like you were, but the unique part of your story is that your parents hired a cult deprogrammer to rescue. And I want to get into that in a second, but I, I first do want to establish from your point of view what the indoctrination tactics that, that were used against you were the effective ones. So is it just being in campus that widely accepts, you know, basically Neil Marxist ideology, like the transgender ideology? Is it the fact that you were afraid to question your professors? Was it the fact that there weren’t different viewpoints? What was it, do you think that was effective in the indoctrination process? 

Annabella: 

That’s a really good question. And I think there are a few things. One, I think when you’re completely removed from your environment that you grew up in, and you’re thrust into this new campus, right? You are, everything is new and your eyes are so open and you’re so susceptible because every single experience is new experience. You’re in a new environment, you’re in, you’re impressionable, you’re also young. I think really it’s classic Marxism, if you’re told a lie enough, it becomes a truth. And that’s just that, you know, if I’m told that this girl is a boy enough times, okay, I believe it, this girl is a boy. Like, sure. And then I start repeating it. And then when people don’t believe me, I’m like, well, you don’t know anything because I go to Mount Holyoke and you just don’t understand because you’re not college educated or like, you didn’t go to my school. 

So it, it’s just simple. You’re told a lie enough, you believe it, you’re told it from a person in a position of authority, you’re going to believe it. And also the conservative girls on campus, there weren’t many, but there were a few one actually Laura Loomer who ran for Congress, she transferred after only a year because she was bullied so badly online and had, you know, no friends, people were so mean to her. She was very strong in her convictions. And if you are conservative, there was just, there was no room for your opinion. And for me, like being young, you know, being involved in things in clubs and sports, wanting to have friends, like, it almost was like, it’s easier kind of, it’s the easier, softer ways to just sort of belief follow the line until you believe it. 

Liz: 

Which I think this is so interesting because it’s not like, it’s not like we picture, you know, Chinese communists indoctrination nation camps or you know, the Soviet education system after the Russian revolution, which were like violent and, you know, terrible and brutal. This is literally peer pressure isolation from your family and no dissenting viewpoints. And sometimes that’s all it takes. 

Annabella: 

That’s absolutely all that it took, 

Liz: 

Which is fascinating. So your parents said that you became unrecognizable. This must have been really difficult for your parents. When did they realize that this wasn’t just a phase where it was like, oh, okay, she’s being rebellious, she’s trying to have stake out her own opinions and she’s parenting a little bit of silliness from college. When did they realize that this was like a little more deeply ingrained? 

Annabella: 

I don’t think that it took very long. I’d say it was my, you know, first vacation back my junior year, that Thanksgiving where I started to sort of say things that didn’t make sense to them, really, by the time I was a senior is when I was actually fighting with my family to the point that we weren’t speaking for periods of time. So, you know, that’s a pretty short timeframe. Less than a year. 

Liz: 

Yeah. That, that is less than a year. Okay. So then we get to, and, and on this show the last month we’ve been talking about how woke, which is just a euphemism for Marxism, but how woke is structured like a cult. It’s structured exactly like a religious cult would be, where, you know, the, the people that are sometimes the loudest and the most annoying, repeating the talking points, whether it’s neo pronouns or critical race theory, they’re just the water carriers. They don’t really know the ideology. Then you have the intellectual class like the Ibram X. Kendi who totally know that they are preaching Marxism, even if they don’t admit it. Or like the Black Lives Matter leaders that do admit they’re Marxist. Then you have these leaders of the cult who are maybe not tried and true Marxist, but they know that Marxism modes a way for them to profit both financially and ideologically. We’ve been talking about this cult structure. It’s so easy to understand woke and how to fight back against it when you, when you identify it and define it as a cult. So your parents were ahead of the curve. I mean, we’re talking about this now, this was years ago that your parents were like, wait a second, this is cult-like behavior. So back up and tell me about this process. How does this even work? How does one find a cult? Deprogrammer <laugh>, who was this person? 

Annabella: 

<laugh>. My mom’s very creative and resourceful. I will give her that. I’m also the only child. So as soon as I kind of went off the deep end, like my family was going to do anything to help me and get me back, you know, she had even called rehabs I think, and was like, I need to get this daughter, like my daughter out of this environment, <laugh>. and I, you know, it totally is comfortable to a cult. So she, she did a lot of research, spoke to a lot of people. She did speak to cult to programmers. And I think that she knew the science because be, she is from my mom’s from New York City originally. And I guess maybe like being in the city in the seventies, whatever. she kind of, I think it was in the news then. Like people talked about cults. 

She said e EPS was one of them. I’m not totally familiar with cult history, even though I probably should be at this point. <laugh> having kind of been in one <laugh>. you know, she sort of knew the signs, so she was not going to stop at anything. And she called a lot of people. And truthfully, Liz, she did not get positive feedback. most of the feedback was that people don’t come out of it. You know, the, the small sliver of hope was that girls tend to come out of cults more so than boys or young men. they also told her that the timeline is about seven years from when brainwashing starts to be able to come out of it. Which interestingly enough actually does fit into my timeline perfectly, because I really didn’t snap out of it until 2020. So we’re talking about 2013 to 2020 that it was still like I was sort of fighting all of this. 

And she spoke with a lot of people. And another thing is that I never actually spoke to a cult de-programmer. She’s the one who did. And, and they gave her a lot of different mixed information. Some people said, don’t communicate with me. Others said, yes, her to death. Fortunately, she didn’t do that because I think that yes, someone when they’re going through this is not the answer. We’re seeing that now. And people, you know, medically castrating their children that’s affirming these ideas. That is not what you should be doing. Like you should try to be help. There was an underlying issue. I was searching for something. Ultimately, now I realize, okay, it was, I was very spiritually devoid. You know, I’d grown up Christian going to church, and then I went to school and immediately there’s no room for God. I was really into the party culture. 

So I drank a lot. So I had to make a lot of life changes. You know, I stopped drinking. I started to believe in God again in order to kind of break free of the chains of these ideologies. But apparently that’s like, oh yes honey, you’re right. The patriarchy is destroying America and this place, this country is horrific. Like, I’m just going to tell you yes, and you should be a vegan because of the environment and the world’s ending in 12 years. Like, yes, it doesn’t help, it just perpetuates the problem and then you stay stuck in it. So fortunately, my mom put her foot down and it was a big risk because I didn’t talk to her for a while. 

Liz: 

Well, I mean, I think the word you used before, she sounds like an incredibly resourceful woman, but also a very loving mother. This is the definition of sacrificial love. So what was this strategy that she used? I mean, you said she talked to a lot of people, including some culty programmers who were not who were not encouraging some who had good advice and said, be based in reality. How did she, how did she interact with you? How did she start, I guess, reaching you psychologically and mentally to be like, Hey, there’s a problem here. Even if you, even if it took a long time for you to completely be extracted from that ideology. What was the, what, what did she do? 

Annabella: 

I’m so glad you asked that question. It’s a really good one. So she actually used the tactics of having people blind up from growing up reach out to me. It happened to be a lot of coaches I had. So I, I skated growing up. I also played tennis. She had my high school tennis coach reach out to me just to check in, just to say, Hey, how are you doing? Thinking of you praying for you? Hope all is well. Little ties to who I was growing up. You know, I had a godparent that was reaching out to me that was kind of available if I needed someone. Because I had really disconnected myself, not just from my family, but also sort of my friends who I had from high school. You know, I was really going through this change of being so involved in woke and leftism that I was offended by everything. 

I felt like nobody understood what, how severe things really were in this world and that anyone that you know, didn’t go to kind of a small liberal arts just couldn’t possibly understand like, the weight of the world and what we’re dealing with as a society. So it’s like, I almost was sort of taught to not even bother keeping up certain friendships, like outside of my college friends, because a lot of them really got it or got it right because they were in the same environment. so that was, you know, just kind of ties to other lifelines, coaches, distant family, family, friends, you know, my mom <laugh>, God bless her, she was frustrated. So there would be times when she would try to reach out and it just wouldn’t go well. So I think she realized, okay, I can’t necessarily be the one, I sort of have to wait for her to come back to me, but here I’m going to be able to have lifelines and keep tabs with extended family. 

Liz: 

Which is really interesting because I know that, I mean, a lot of people, almost everybody I think has a family member that is straight in some way, doesn’t matter what area, whether it’s, you know, religiously, whether it’s morally, whether it’s politically, and the depth also varies, but people are at a loss oftentimes to know how to do that. Were these people that were tied to you in your old life or your childhood in your high school years, were they generally conservative? 

Annabella: 

I think, I, I don’t want to say politically conservative, I would say more they were people of faith, 

Liz: 

Right? It, it is one of the classic cult things, right? To separate someone from their family. This is what this is. I mean, it’s both what pedophiles do, trying to separate children from their entire support system. But it’s also what cults do, saying, hey, I mean, think about Scientology for example. Scientology, the first thing they say is, if anyone dissents in your family from what you believe and how you practice this cult, then you should kick them out of your life. That’s a classic cult. Classic cult. So these family members started reaching out to you, and how, how did you, did that, did that touch you? Did that touch your heart? Did that touch your mind? How’d you react to that? 

Annabella: 

I think I was cautious. I think it was like, I slowly, slowly engaged. I maybe didn’t divulge too much. I was wary about who I trusted. I, I actually wanted to just touch on what you just said. So we were told on campus, you know, go home for Thanksgiving and fight with your family at the Thanksgiving table. You know, like put your racist uncle in his place. Like we actually were told. And you, I think you see it all over social media. If you look for, if you fall down kind of like leftist rabbit holes on Instagram, you’ll find the posts that are saying like, it’s your responsibility to teach your, your family about, you know, sexism and racism. And it’s your responsibility to tell them they’re wrong and you create your own new family. You know, it’s, it’s a very big part of the rhetoric and it’s really destructive because true diversity is diversity of opinion. And even if you do disagree with a family member, you know, you should not be shutting them out over politics or ideology. It’s like, it’s very, it’s really dangerous to our society right now. I think it’s part of the reason that, you know, the nuclear family is crumbling because the, these ideas, 

Liz: 

It’s part of the reason the left is attacking the nuclear family because they know the nuclear family is this protection, this bull work against ideology just like woke. So if, if you were struggling with who to trust, when these family and friends, these old coaches were reaching out to you, what, what did your mom do next? What happened next? 

Annabella: 

Hmm. I think I ended up hitting a point where I was very, I was very sad, you know, I was feeling very untethered to my family. Again, I’m an only child. I, I remember I went on a, I went on a trip. I, you know, went to Europe, kind of looking to sort of find myself, I followed myself, <laugh>, regardless, doesn’t matter where you go, your feelings go with you <laugh>. And I realized how much I miss my family and that I was willing to put aside like these differences. So I ended up calling her crying, trying to work on the relationship. You know, it, it was good for a minute and then it got rocky again because enter 2016, I go to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign while my mother is, you know, making calls and bundling for Donald Trump. And so here we are again. 

I’m like, you don’t understand what you’re doing to women. Like he’s the antichrist and <laugh> and all, you know, all the ideas around that campaign. And so it really took, I would say years of me being like, I want a relationship with her. She raised me. I know she’s really good. And it’s this inner crisis of like, well, if she was so good as a mom and she’s so loving, how could she also be all these bad things that, you know, my woke peers say about her? Like, it, there, there’s no truth root in that. So I, I really, you know, part of the awakening, as I say, was I did have a spiritual awakening and I started to accept God again. And just this idea that like, I’m not in control of everything. And I think in that I was just a little bit more receptive to receiving contact. And then, you know, we didn’t talk about kind of politics for a while. She, she also backed off the topic as well. And we just worked on, you know, building our relationship back up from basics 

Liz: 

And this spiritual awakening. Where did, when I say where did that come from? I don’t mean like, obviously it was the Holy Spirit. I mean, what prompted this was this from reading, from study, from someone in your life, what brought you back? 

Annabella: 

So I actually did a 12 step program to help stop drinking. And part of the steps are, you know, give up control, believe in a higher power, doesn’t matter what the higher power is for me, for a while it was just kind of energy or things I couldn’t see or time. So that helped me in that process. And then I later on started to go back to church again and, and build an actual faith. But that was the first introduction reintroduction. 

Liz: 

That was the first step of it. Okay. So now, now we’re getting to the point where it’s like the, the beginning parts of the onion have been peeled back. You have spiritual awakening, you’ve stopped drinking, you want a relationship with your mom. You’re wondering how she can be both a bad person and such a good person to have raised you at the same time. When did you realize that? Oh my goodness, these things that I learned, you know, these radical feminism things, these neo Marxist transgender ideology, things are actually wrong. That Donald Trump isn’t the anti-Christ and that, oh, I can’t believe I was on the Hillary Clinton campaign. 

Annabella: 

<laugh> <laugh>, oh, I can’t believe it. <laugh> 2020 <laugh>, which it took, took a long time. and you know, I started the process of going through this 12 step program in 2018. So it was about two years before, you know, peeling back layers of the onion, as you said, until I finally was like really clearheaded and opened and just really clearheaded and literally sober and 2020 enter lockdowns, enter the b l m riots. My whole entire newsfeed being, and at this point I’m living in Florida, I had been living in New York City, so my whole newsfeed is people I went to college with, people I worked on campaigns with putting up black, black square saying no justice, no peace, right, is your first amendment. And they’re all posting this from their protected apartments in either Boston or New York. And I’m looking at this footage of people burning down businesses in the name of empowerment. 

And finally I’m like, this doesn’t make sense. Like how, how is this helping people? And actually in that silo of Instagram, a PragerU video popped up, I mean, amazing. They broke the algorithm and they found me, and it, the video was, are the police racist? And I remember <laugh> I remember watching this video just sort of 22nd snippet, because it could have gone either way, right? It’s just a question. It could go, they are, they aren’t. I watch it. And this video in the first minute kind of discredits and dismantles, this whole argument that, you know, white cops are disproportionately shooting unarmed black men. And I was like, okay, I need to, I need to relearn this and hear more about this because what I’m seeing does not make sense. And so that’s, that’s how it started. 

Liz: 

Okay, well no wonder Preger you hired you, you’re like their happiest day ever. This is exactly what they do, <laugh> what they do and make this amazing content. And we’ll have to, we’ll have to ask them how they did break into your algorithm, because that’s not easy to do these days. So then when you realize, okay, that’s, that’s your awakening. When you’re a little isolated from Covid, you see these riots, you see that, you know, leftist or hypocrites about them, but you also see that the narrative that it’s built on is like false and destructive and evil itself. Where did you then turn for truth? 

Annabella: 

Ooh a couple places. So definitely watched a lot of prude videos. Also, you know, explored Tucker Carlson a little bit. Had never actually really seen his show. I thought he was a bad guy. I thought he was an enemy. I liked Rachel Maddow at the time, <laugh>. I also, you know, I started to pick the brains of, of my coworkers. So I was working at JP Morgan and also just sort of my peers in Florida, because it was living in Florida. I just really didn’t, I didn’t open the conversation with like, oh yeah, I’m a crazy democrat because I kind of knew that this was Trump territory in 2020. I was like, I’m just not even, I’m trying to not be so involved and so crazy about this. And I just started picking people’s brands and I realized that like, you know, a lot of cool, young, hardworking, happy Americans, like they’re conservative. 

And so it’s like, okay, there’s something to this. Like these are really smart people that I respect and they think this way, so I’m going to keep asking them questions, read some articles you know, love the Daily Wire. Love Ben Shapiro. Definitely would never have explored his outlet had it not been for curiosity of you know, the other side of the argument. And also just starting, I really read things. I tried not to listen to too much. That was another key because if, if you’re reading it, you can kind of remove emotion a little bit when it’s in your own voice. so I just, I mean, I went to a lot of outlets, looked on Instagram, started listening to podcasts, just, you know, the Liz Wheeler show totally is on the list of <laugh> of shows to kind of hear another, hear the truth, hear the truth. 

So I, you know, I did a deep dive and I also, what I love about the internet is that it is anonymous. So as I was, you know, seeking truth, I didn’t have to come out and say anything about it until I actually had convictions of what I believed and like what I knew was correct about this country. So I didn’t have to tell all my friends who were, you know, saying, rah, raw b l m I didn’t have to be like, eh, I don’t know if I agree with that. I just could sort of do my own research and then, you know, approach it. But 

Liz: 

So was your mom aware of this transformation as it was happening? Or was this anonymous from her on the internet too, that you were just like, oh mom, by the way, one day <laugh>, I’m, I’m not radical left anymore now I agree with you 

Annabella: 

<laugh>. I definitely had to eat a, eat a lot of humble pie and be like, okay, maybe you were right about certain things. Like, and I, and I definitely did come to her and of course as soon as I came to her, it was like the floodgates of all the articles just being sent to me. And, and she really loved President Trump’s like a lot of President Trump content. And I had to be like, I don’t know if I’m totally there yet. I’m just trying to figure out the truth about like the buildings being burnt down right now in the name of George Floyd. Like, what is going on? That doesn’t make sense. So I definitely did turn to her and but I think she was maybe <laugh> not the first call that I made, just because I knew that I was going to have to hear a little bit of like I told you so <laugh> 

Liz: 

Well, I mean, you couldn’t, you can’t blame her for that. So let me ask you, your story is so fascinating. I’m so delighted that, that you’ve shared all these details, but what advice do you have? I mean, you’re not the only young person that’s been in this situation. You’re not the only family who’s had a family member go leftist, go into this quote call. What would you first tell families or parents who have children that have been corrupted by woke ideology at the college level? And then what would you tell people like you who are in a similar circumstance where they, they got corrupted by the ideology in college and they feel trapped by it? 

Annabella: 

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So firstly, I would tell parents who are going through this on the side of their kids going through, you know, being woke, the woke, you know, the, what I would ask them is, is this an actual shift in your children? Because of course there are households that are progressive that, you know, there were students that I went to school with that they had already, their, their, their parents were leftists. So this was not anything new for them. You know, who I’m trying to speak to is the person that has radically changed from who they are because they’re in an environment that changed them, not for the good. so I would ask parents like, is do you recognize your child? And if the answer is no, you should not affirm these newfound identities, these newfound beliefs. I think you need a question the root of what’s really going on, you know, of, of course show compassion, but also stand in your convictions and don’t let your child kind of teach you the way of the world. 

Like maybe remind them a little bit of who’s boss and also explain like maybe they’re in an echo chamber. Have they tried listening to anything else? You know, where are they getting their information from? So I would say like, push, push back. Definitely push back. Don’t accept it if you do not recognize your child. I think it’s really important to not accept it. And then for students who are going through this, you know, <laugh>, I started with P PragerU videos, I’d say it’s a really good place to start. You can go to p prey.com and, and put in, you know, any topic and you’ll find something on it. And it’s, you know, we have PragerU personalities, there’s Amla Nobi who also has a show. I’d say, you know, check out the Liz Wheeler show. Just, just start looking at a feed that’s a little bit different than everything that you’re seeing. 

Like push yourself to read something else and pick a topic that maybe you’re not as passionate about. You know, something that won’t get you so worked up emotionally. And also ask yourself realistically, like, are you reacting out of emotion? Are you reacting out of logic or are you reacting at all? Because I have the power now, Liz, where before when I was brainwashed, I would read a title, it didn’t matter, positive, negative, neutral. And I would immediately feel something. And now I read a title and I have a, I’m able to pause and think about it before, you know, I have an opinion or even any sort of emotion. I can remove emotion from the situation and welcome totally praise on people’s emotions. So I would say anyone that’s going through this, like you need to be really honest with yourself and take a look at, look in the mirror. 

Like, is this affecting you? You know, are you anxious? Are you overwhelmed? Are you getting depressed? Like, we see that, you know, throughout this country and young people like the levels of depression of skyrocketed. I do think that some of it is like they’re clinging to this ideology that’s actually really detrimental and, and it’s really fatal a lot of it, you know, the mindset of it. so that’s, I would just start with looking in the mirror and asking yourself like, who’s my reaction to this healthy? And you know what, maybe even taking a social media cleanse, maybe deleting everything for 30 days, maybe not watching the news, the world will actually still continue. And then with a little distance, a little separation, then pick it up again and see if you can even handle it. <laugh>. 

Liz: 

Yeah, that’s, it’s very interesting. It’s very good advice. I always tell leftist either high school students or college students, don’t you, aren’t you a tiny bit curious about what the other side says? Like, when the left tells you that you’re not allowed to listen to Tucker Carlson or you’re not allowed to listen to my show, doesn’t that make you just the tiniest bit curious about what we actually are saying <laugh>, why they don’t want you to hear it. and the other thing that I tell young people is try to find, if they’re on the left, try to find one thing that you agree with about, even if it’s not conservatives in general or the Republican party, find one thing that you agree with these dreaded conservative personalities because you’ll realize the idea that half of the country who are Trump supporters or conservatives or Republicans walking around as absolutely a hundred percent corrupted evil people is just an unrealistic proposition. 

And once you’ve a, allowed yourself to humanize people, which we should do on both sides, not just leftist children or l young leftist people with Republicans, you’ll, you’ll be able to actually hear things a little bit better than through that filter. But this is, this has been so interesting. Annabella Rockwell, thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for being so open. Welcome to the Good side. We’re glad to have you part of the conservative movement. And I, I love the fact that you are now working at PragerU so anyone can follow Annabella on social media, on Instagram and on Twitter. Annabella, thanks for being here. 

Annabella: 

Thank you so much for having me, Liz. 

Liz: 

All right guys, thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.