Autism in the Cross-Fire
This is the kind of thing that seriously annoys me.
I have spent the past year attempting to incite interest in the wretched state of autism services in the UK, drawing attention to the the lack of resources, the lack of help, the lack of care, the basic lack of everything that would smooth the path enabling autistic people to become fully participating members of society. The little help and advice that I have found is meagre and utterly inadequate, reducing quickly, and almost solely, to the teaching of self-management techniques with respect to health and employment. Like autistic people haven’t been self-managing since ever! You are on your own, as ever! I approached the Integrated Autism Society in desperation at the lack of help in light of diagnosis. We started off doing what was called a Star Chart, going through key areas to check how well I was doing. I came out as doing very well indeed, scoring 7,8,9 out of 10. It soon became clear to me that I was being measured in terms of ll the things I could do for myself, since no-one was going to do anything for me. I soon drew the lesson that there would be precious little outside help forthcoming. I was supposed to be pleased with myself for already practising so many of the self-managing techniques advised by various autism bodies. To give an example, I suffer badly with noise stress. I was advised to use earplus and headphones. I replied that I have for years
worn both earplugs and headphones together. I was praised handsomely and given a score of 10/10. I approached this society asking for help and instead was advised to do the things I was already doing and received praise for doing them, despite the fact I was telling them clearly that these things alone are utterly inadequate, leaving me barely surviving, existing far short of thriving. There is, in other words, little or no help beyond self-help. The external world and the people in it are not for changing, all the emphasis is on you. As we have always known.
It's the message that is given to everybody in a competitive market society based on the war of all against all.
Hence my annoyance at the sudden appearance of so many apparent warriors for autism on social media. The numbers struck me as surprising.
I have posted on autism awareness and acceptance on social media, to precious little interest. I have received sporadic sympathy and the occasional celebration hailing ‘the power of neurodiversity.’ Power! Great! Being so powerful, there seems to be little reason for me to be asking the much less gifted neurotypicals for help. I should be more than capable of helping myself. (I was told to help myself, because no-one else would). As soon as you dispense with the cheery soundbites and get into the social difficulties of autism, asking the cheer leaders to actually put themselves out and commit something of their time and money, there is disappearance and silence.
Julia Hartley-Brewer made a derogatory comment about Greta Thunberg’s autism.
It should go without saying that I condemn the identification of autism as a negative condition to be patronised, mocked, denigrated, devalued. Of course, of course. When people do that directly, it is easy to call out. This is the easy stuff. To condemn people who mock autism is as easy as falling off a log. This is the kind of activism that social justice warriors in the keyboard world specialise in, social media pile-ons. Ask people to put a shift in on the ground and the numbers are much less impressive. There is a dramatic fall-off of numbers when people are asked to turn up in the real world, to put some service other than lip-service in.
The point should also be made that "Thunberg inc." has quite deliberately flagged up the climate activists’ autism precisely in order to entice critics in making deragotory reference to it, as well as to shield the campaigners' contentious demands from criticism. This, for me, is the most patronising and demeaning aspect of the whole shooting match - the idea that an autistic person is so mentally feeble as to have to be protected from criticism. I had to earn my academic spurs the hard way, like everyone else, and count it as quite an achievement in face of social and communication difficulties. I fronted up and faced the questions rather than hid - autistic people can do it, albeit in their own special way.
Thunberg describes herself on her Twitter account as an “autistic climate campaigner” and has spoken about her autism as some kind of special power. It’s garbage. Her case – as she herself has said repeatedly – rests on the work of climate scientists, not some special autistic insight. Autism has squat to do with the strength or otherwise of the case for climate action. But try calling that out without being accused of abusing autistic people.
Autism is being deliberately put out in front, made available as a target to be hit, inviting critics to make negative comments and connections.
The crucial point for me is that this approach effectively turns science, an ever open and critical approach to ascertaining facts about reality, into ‘the science,’ something fixed, frozen, and authoritarian – something satisfying the need for order and certainty – putting politics as a legitimate sphere of dissension and disagreement on ice.
I have criticised the anti-politics of climate campaigning at length in my work on Academia and Being and Place and refer those who want to go deeper to those sites. Here, I simply wish to comment on the way that autism is being weaponised for political reasons, used as a sword and a shield that effectively renders climate politics from criticism. Thunberg has consistently advanced climate demands that involve large expenditures, commitments, and investments. These policies and programmes may or may not be deemed necessary – this is a matter of politics, debate, deliberation, choice and consensus. To cite autism as conferring some special power or status, some essential magic, makes as much sense as elevating science to the status of unquestionable, unanwerable ‘Science.’
This is bad faith as well as bad science and bad politics. This does autism an immense disservice, dragging the condition into the political quagmire, associating it with highly contentious political claims whilst attempting to use it to screen those claims from criticism and scrutiny. This weaponising of autism invites criticism motivated by legitimate political concerns in order to silence and suppress questions. In effect, this returns autism to the very negative traits and associations autism advocates and activists like myself have been trying to escape – the idea that autistic people seek to impose certainty, order, fixity on a chaotic world, are capable only of stereotypical black and white thinking – asserting ‘the science’ over against the yes/no human world of politics and society. That’s the game that environmentalists have been playing, and "Thunberg inc" have thrown autism into the mix deliberately to use the condition as a screen and a shield warding off criticism as well as a stick to beat critics with.
Describe yourself as an “autistic climate campaigner” and you are inviting comment on autism – you are over-selling the virtues of autism as special power and insight in order to provoke critics into pointing out the negative traits, thereby trapping them into making careless statements which allows them to be portrayed as bigots.
The climate campaigning steamrollers ahead, silencing criticism and crushing opposition. And autism? It’s just grist to the anti-political mill. For autism read ‘the science’ and tereotypical, authoritarian imposition of impersonal, inhuman truth, certainty, and order. This is everything that I, as a philosopher, social ecologist, and autist have sought to uproot in favour of an appreciation of dialogue, nuance, and the messy, complicated stuff that is humanity.
Early in December 2022 I posted a message I had received on autism awareness and acceptance and made some comments on recent communications I have received from people working in autism services to the effect that there is next to no help available for autistic people. The post was received with complete silence. Well-meaning people like slogans and expressions of passive sympathy, clearly hoping that somebody somewhere else is offering help. I tell people plainly that there is no help, effectively calling upon them to put their resources where their mouths are, and they retreat.
So imagine switching Twitter on and seeing that autism is trending. This is interesting, I thought. Is there some great breakthrough in autism campaigning underway?
You must be joking! Julia Hartley-Brewer had stumbled over the trip-wire and referenced Thunberg’s autism alongside her eco-doomsterism, identifying it as a negative trait which explained her regressive, obsessive eco-proselytising. (Is it otherwise? Then please stop launching demands on ‘government’ from the sidelines and enter the political arena of questions and answers, public criticism and scrutiny, responsibility – the Thunberg approach is power without responsibility, something that is destructive of politics and democratic governance. I thoroughly reject it and do so as an autistic person and autism advocate - I want to reclaim autism from the clutches of politically motivated hucksters and grifters furthering their own interests).
Hartley-Brewer has received well nigh on 30 thousand critical comments and counting in response to her abuse. It is clear to me that the only interest in autism here is its potential to be used as a political stick with which to beat political opponents. There is more interest in hounding, silencing, and suppressing Hartley-Brewer than there is in autism awareness and advocacy.
A pox on the lot of them. Their politicisation of autism stands in the way of autism awareness and acceptance. Precious few of this 30 thousand show their faces when it comes to helping autistic people play a full role in society. I’ve been searching for them – they are not to be found. Virtue signallers empty the virtues of meaning and content, too. Isolated as a party of one, I am free to tell people the blunt truth, destroying the self-images they have crafted for themselves. I see the reality behind the masks and don’t feel the need to keep the peace – there is no peace to be kept, only war and weaponisation. People are being had. They are being gamed, groomed, triggered, and trolled by technocratic, neurocratic masters of the art, who are massaging your values as preferences and prejudices, and you are falling for it hook, line, and sinker. Being alone in isolation – such is the fate of many autistic people – I am free to tell an unpallatable truth, and free not to care what people make of it.
