“For [Edith] Sheffer, this taints not only the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome but also, potentially, the broader autism spectrum diagnosis that Asperger did so much to shape. Based on these writings, it clearly had far less to do with medical science than with fascist thought: the Nazis required submission to a supremacist groupthink in order to build the Aryan race. Asperger’s claim that autistic children were pathological because they lacked the capacity for Gemüt was less a medical diagnosis than a highly ideological one about what should constitute normal behavior: he was diagnosing them, quite literally, with a deficit of fascism.” — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger (2023), p. 212
I knew Asperger was a Nazi, but the broader framing of autism — by the people who invented the diagnosis — as a failure to be fascist enough hadn’t occurred to me before.
(And I hope no one reads this as “as autistic people, we’re immune to fascism :)))” - it has more to do with preserving your own moral views even under social pressure, which fascists can also do while living in a society that hasn’t yet gone fully fascist.)
