Hey I know
it’s almost the end of Autism Awareness / Acceptance month but I wanted to clarify something
for all my non-autistic followers:
It’s Autism
or ASD.
NOT
Asperger’s, or Asperger’s Syndrome.
Why?
Well, dear readers,
because the man who created/named the syndrome, this spiffy looking guy here:
He was Hans Asperger, and he was linked to
the Nazi’s and their attempts to euthanize autistic children in
Nazi Vienna.
His view on autistic kids was dehumanizing, to say the least. Asperger is quoted
as describing one autistic child as “very difficult, psychopathic boy of a kind
which is not frequent among small children.”
Asperger also refereed to the autistic kids as “Abnormal children,” who had “Autistic psychopathy.”
He shot through the ranks during the second world war, as more and more of his Jewish colleagues were removed from their positions, eventually becoming the national authority on autistic children. After the
war he spruced up his image, claiming he had been ‘saving’ the children’ and expressing how ‘talented’ he thought autistic children could be.
He was basically taken at his word, and Hans Asperger was seen as a hero
for decades.
And then H. Czech discovered government documents showing the true extent
of his involvement with the Nazi party and ideology.
Asperger’s work – how he viewed autism and his views of autistic children being ‘unbearable burdens’ to their families - is sadly still
reflected today in anti-Autistic discourse. His quotes and ideas are still floating around on you’re Auntie’s Facebook feed, or being re-hashed by alt-right political twits.
I’ve heard
some historians and doctors trying to defend him, saying he was never a ‘official’
member of the party (ie, a registered, card-carrying member) but that doesn’t actually mean
much.
Think of this: how many people do you know who agree with or support a political party, but aren’t ‘officially’ registered as Republican or Democratic voters?
Exactly.
And in
2009, government records were found where the Nazi Party vouched for his
loyalty, even though he was not a public member.
( I don’t care if he thought of himself as a Nazi. As a general rule of thumb, if the fuckin Nazi’s eugenics team gives you a official thumbs up, you should probably stop what your doing and re-evaluate several life choices )
So that debate’s gone
kaput.
This is the
official document from the 3rd Reich, stating their trust in Hans
Asperger as someone “in tune with the project’s sensibilities.” (link below)
Understandably,
a lot of autistic people – myself included – don’t want to be named after him. We don’t want to associate ourselves with someone who had such a negative and lasting impact on our community.
Imagine if instead of calling Jewish people Jewish, we said they were ‘Adolfer’s,’ or they had ‘Adolf’s Syndrome.’
That would be insane, you say! Why would you name a entire group of people after someone who actively acted against them?!?! Who hated them, dehumanized them, and saw them as naturally inferior to the larger population?? Who was willing to send them to their deaths, one by one, because he so deeply believed they needed to be removed from society??!
And now you’re getting the idea of why some people are so upset by the term.
I know the term was accepted for a very long time. If your
someone who grew up with the term ‘Aspie,’ it’s up to you to decide what you
want to be called. I can’t tell you what to do, or how to label yourself.
I just want people to understand the history and baggage that comes with the term ‘Aspergers.’ Don’t forget the death and suffering that still clings to that term, and don’t let his crimes OR his victims be forgotten.
For more
reading, I suggest Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna.
It’s about $11.00 on Amazon Kindle.
Or free
online links (and places I got the quotes from):
