Thunberg as an “Autistic Climate Justice Activist.”
I take an interest in the public perceptions of autism following in the trail of the climate campaigning of Greta Thunberg. Sadly, these correlate precisely with whichever side of the political divide people are on. And Thunberg’s approach is divisive if it is anything. Her supporters are happy to praise her gift of autism with respect to her clear-eyed insight and objectivity; her detractors are just as happy to see her unresponsiveness when off-script as evidence of her autistic stupidity. None of this does the cause of autism understanding any good. It’s an issue because she and her handlers have put her autism at the forefront of her climate campaigning, with her supporters being happy to follow. She has nearly six million followers as an "autistic climate justice activist." Given that there is still precious little understanding of autism among the great public, its association with a very divisive form of political campaigning may serve only to reinforce stereotypes we can well do without. She has made many political enemies who cannot wait to subject her to questioning and cross-examination. She has been protected so far. Her pursuers clearly think she is a stupid stooge, a construct who can only repeat the lines she has been fed. They are intent on exposing her and the operation behind her. Should they succeed, we can expect an extreme swing from the identification of autism with genius to stupidity to occur - she has been set up so impossibly high that a fall is well-nigh inevitable (unless we do indeed move to the world of remote control exercised by planetary managers, Thunberg finding a safe space among the bureaucrats who order ad organise one and all from above).
I’ll be as brief as I can. Because any comment that falls short of fawning adulation here attracts a braying mob accusing you of all manner of evils, in the mode of ‘how dare you, a white privileged male bullying and abusing a poor little autistic girl.’ As the graphics above indicate, that vulnerability doesn't stop some nasty abuse from being fired back.
It’s a perfect strategy, with Thunberg launched into the public world as both sword and shield, advancing very contentious and highly political positions whilst being them insulated from critical scrutiny and debate. It’s not her that is protected, but the forces behind her.
I’ll begin with some very sharp words on the miserable state of contemporary politics.
There is a war on humanity, nature, and all life underway, all being recreated as so much cultural clay in the hands of the totalitarian potter. The process is accelerating in accordance with commercial imperatives, and goes unchecked as a result of the wilful blindness and misguided, diverted resistance of the many. Massive resources are being mobilised to manipulate youth into embracing and asserting ideologies held by the very worst in society.
Friends object to the phrase ‘climate porn.’ I appreciate the reasons behind their objection. Because there most certainly is a crisis in the climate system, and the politics we have is utterly inadequate to deal with it.
But… there is a clear difference between arguing that there is a climate crisis on the one hand and taking outliers in the science and normalizing extremes on the other.
Porn there is, in many forms. And perversion and pathology.
With respect to politics, the dominant form of environmentalism is the managerial, austerian, regulatory form which fits the hard fist of corporate capital like a glove.
Climate porn is part of a pervasive celebrity pathology and perversion. The more excessive the wealth, the more idolized the campaign and campaigner. This has swallowed leftist politics, and those inside the politically engineered cultural grid are too blinkered to see it. Truth is inverted and perverted through media and culture, with the complete destruction of standards normalized with the erasure of political and class consciousness. Tame conformists perfectly accommodated to the
latest transformations within the capital form are made iconic in the key media. How many of those who praise an “autistic climate activist” backed by a coalition of 24.8 trillion market capital support the people who make, move, build, and grow things whenever they are on the receiving end of instructions from members of that coalition, demanding, like the socialists of old, the restructuring
of power and resources in favour of ‘ordinary’ working class people? The Left is dead, socialism has been colonised, enclosed, incorporated along with everything else. And too few Leftists see it. They are cheering and jeering shadows on the wall, failing to see how various multi-stakeholder initiatives and partnerships (UN, World Bank, OECD, UN, WHO, WEF, philanthropic, not-for-profit organisations and NGOs are building a steel-hard cage that places the corporate form at the centre of global power. Many erstwhile radicals are sucked in by the ideal of the "global citizen." It’s a great idea, linked to the old ideal of political peace and world governance, but it has long since been expropriated, uprooted from particular places rendered prey to over to corporate forces proceeding according to their own commercial imperatives and power dynamics.
So where is the force with the structural capacity to challenge and uproot the corporate form and in the process reappropriate, socialise, and democratise power?
Far too many have abandoned the old socialist project of the practical restitution of social power to become ‘progressives’ and ‘reformers’ working hand-in-glove with the corporate form.
It seems that people see problems mounting but, having no idea how to challenge the corporations, throw their hand in with them, thus allying with the corporate form that looks set to consume the world. The extension and entrenchment of the corporate form proceeded apace as left and right fought it out at the level of nationalisation and privatisation. Neither socialists nor economic liberals hunkering after the return of free markets and free trade seem to have much idea, except that the latter seem to have the character of corporate ideologues and apologists. Privatisation was never about free markets and free trade, the liberalisation and globalisation of economic relations that came with it freed the TNCs to engulf the world and complete the enclosure of the global commons. It came to pass. The political options available to us are now so utterly puny as to be worthless to serve as anything other than giving us the pretence of making a difference.
I’m seeing another outbreak of Thunberg mania on social media, after something of a quiet spell. I suspect another big media push for ambitious and expensive climate ‘action' is underway. Is it linked to Davos? (I try to avoid giving critics reasons to shout 'conspiracy' and go back to sleep).
There is, indeed, a meme in which Thunberg claims that ‘action’ generates hope being widely shared by climate campaigners.
Does this “trigger” me, in the way that Thunberg cheerleaders jeer in the face of critics? As someone who has argued for effective environmental action to deal with the ecological crisis for a quarter of a century, it does indeed annoy me. Because all I see here is a deliberate and calculated vagueness that a) creates a sense of urgency; b) solicits an unreasoned response on the part of panicked citizens and politicians; c) paves the way for some very unecological corporate forces to appropriate climate politics to their own ends. This is not politics as the reasoned debate and deliberation of various options by all parties, but something strategized and engineered in a very calculating way. It is the antithesis of the ecological transformation of the political and political transformation of the ecological I have spent a lifetime arguing for.
I went to business school and can spot elementary branding and marketing when I see it. It's effective. But it's crude. I thought 'progressives' were smarter than 'the herd' (they tell us they are often enough).
Action. What action? Any action? It is beholden on those demanding ‘action’ to specify details, thrash out policies and programmes, explain costs and benefits, argue and engage, create consent and a sense of ownership and responsibility on the part of those charged with bearing he costs and consequences of climate action.
I see none of this being done. What I do see is a public being constantly ‘nudged’ by fear, crisis, and necessity into accepting austerian policies that will greatly reduce their standard of living whilst extending and entrenching the wealth and power of global corporate elites.
This is the wrong type of environmentalism, one that is perfectly fitted to the corporate capitalism that is the driver of the socio-ecological problems we face. Too many who see themselves as ‘progressives’ and ‘reformers’ have tailored their environmentalism to fit the contours of the clean green corporate form.
Is Thunberg a puppet, as some suggested from the first?
I'd prefer not to go down that route. I don’t doubt that she is genuine. Whether she will be discarded depends on how sincere her environmental concerns are. If they are, then she will inevitably collide with some very powerful interests - finding that doors that were once opened to her being closed. I would never underestimate the capacity of people to convince themselves. I shall write more of this later when I come to autism. As an autistic person I know the tendency to become convinced that you can see things that others cannot, to relentlessly pursue your ‘special interest,’ to find the meaning, purpose, direction, and belonging your life has been lacking in a cause or campaign. All with the most passionate idealism. All you want to do is save the world and save people from themselves. (I know it because I have done it, having been a member of The Green Party, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and countless other environmental groups for over a quarter of a century. No more. I now see management and manipulation by way of the most anti-ecological as well as anti-political and anti-social practices).
I’ll come to this later. I’ll give a quick comment here. The strength of passion with respect to a cause or a topic is no proof of its truth or even its worthiness. Such a thing is of personal significance, certainly, but offers no reason why anyone else should take it seriously. I’m seeing Thunberg’s statement that climate campaigning gave her a meaning in life being recycled by climate campaigners. It may well have done. But that’s no reason to believe that any of the campaign claims she advances and causes she supports are true. They may be. But that's a matter of reason and evidence, not personal biography. This is a blatant attempt to exert emotional pressure. Emotional blackmail is utterly pernicious, not least to the emotions. I am someone who has argued for the need to recover the emotional intelligence and set the emotions alongside reason. People who manipulate the emotions for political ends actually damage, pervert, deaden, and destroy the emotional intelligence and reinforce the bad odor that attaches to the emotions. The people who do this are psychic engineers, psychocrats.
I’ve campaigned long and hard for climate action, so cannot be accused of being a ‘denier.’ But as someone who argues for environmental action, I want to see the details, the policies, the costs and benefits, the specific change-agents, the institutional channels. These things determine whether an end is attained and how it is attained. When an end is strongly and repeatedly asserted in abstraction from means, there is a need to be sceptical and critical. Those with a modicum of historical and political knowledge will sense that we may well be being strategized, gamed, groomed, trolled, nudged, manipulated, managed, and herded by people serving interests and agendas of their own. Sadly, those who do know politics and history well will also know that people often succumb.
It’s basic branding and marketing: create a need, stimulate a demand, offer the solution.
I can see Thunberg "growing up" and becoming a fully paid up member of the corporate form. It's a better career option than being sincere, irrelevant, and discarded. It depends. She'll be comfortable. And it will be easy to persuade yourself that a techno-green neo-feudalism is the only realistic game in town.
I see a whole class of these classless managerialists tied to the corporate form. Many of them are often failed politicians who make their way to the UN or a top-NGO job, from where they promote the same policies, free from the need to win the support of that most awkward of beasts, the democratic electorate.
I don’t remotely trust the strategists of global environmental ‘politics’ one bit. They, and not Thunberg, are my target. They are remote from people and politics, advancing pre-political climate truths for governments to enact without consent and deliberation.
The demand for ‘action’ is a calculated vagueness. The people sponsoring such ‘action’ have very definite things in mind. These are not to be publicly presented for debate, but withheld for governments who buckle to the pressure. The demand for ‘action’ is all about building that pressure.
There’s nothing more dispiriting than wasting energy (not to mention time, money, and resources of all kinds) on the wrong ‘action.’ Action can often be simply a neurotic response to problems. Those who know about psychiatry and mental health will be aware of people who will do the same thing, day after day, repetitively and unproductively, to calm themselves in a chaotic world. The fact that it is also an autistic trait is something that interests me in this context. I see a fixation on a ‘special interest,’ a relentless repetition in speech and action, and I see certain negative stereotypes with respect to autism being confirmed. Some refer to Thunberg’s autism as a ‘superpower,’ enabling her to see things others can’t. The way that autistic people can live at a degree of detachment from society and its everyday imperatives can yield a certain other-worldly objectivity. The problem is that Thunberg is repeating truths and insights developed by others. To be fair to her, she has said this herself. Further, she never claimed that autism is a superpower, only that is can be in the right conditions – within a supportive and nurturing environment. Praise be! That’s what we all want, autists and neurotypicals alike. But it's not for the asking (I should know, having asked for it many times now, only to receive the message loud and clear - 'society' is unbending, unchanging, and uncaring). It’s the nature and motives of the 'environment' that is around Thunberg I would question.
‘Action’ is meaningless in itself.
This is just evasive.
It’s when we get to ‘action’ that the importand debates on policy and political economy start, debates that people asserting ‘the science’ do not address.
But if we are indeed happy to embrace stereotypes, then I, as an autistic person can, with a clear-eyed objectivity, see right through the political games being played here. I’m very sceptical of those who create a sense of urgency, put politics on a clock, and urge ‘action,’ not least when they advance claims and make demands from outside of the political sphere, beyond debate, deliberation, beyond the need to create popular will and consent.
Politically, environmentalism is in a very bad place.
In my doctoral research, whenever academics would ask awkward questions, I would fall back on ‘praxis,’ with the philosophically very contentious things I was claiming coming to be proven true by 'action.' The academics, rightly, saw this as the plainest evasion on my part, and a dangerous one to boot. Smart people don’t buy a pig in a poke, although, sadly, they can quite often be found selling one to unsuspecting others.
There is a need to specify the action to be taken rather than simply demand it, and by ‘action’ I don’t just mean listing the off-the-shelf policies to be enacted from above by enlightened environmental despots. This isn’t the stumbling block. I mean ‘action’ in terms of policies and programmes that people will be prepared to support and pay for, voluntarily, as a matter of conscious will and choice. I am presuming that we are still talking a democratic politics here. I have grave suspicions that those seeking to engineer action care nothing for democracy. Tyrants will do fine for their truth. The problem is that once you have 'suspended' liberty and democracy, you have to fight to reclaim it. And rather than being used to good ends, the power conferred tends to proceed according to its own demands.
Those are the hard questions of political action.
And Thunberg the autistic climate campaigner? She’s the perfect sword and shield, able to advance highly contentious political demands which are simultaneously removed from scrutiny and criticism.
People tell us that Thunberg has written four books. They are word perfect, I don’t doubt, making me wonder why I and the various doctoral students I have had the honour to have worked with developing a political ecology bothered. People lap it up, for the reason she is saying things they already believe to be true and which they are happy to have confirmed. This should set all the alarm bells ringing. It is precisely the moment you agree with something that you should be most on your guard, seeking to check its veracity and cogency lest you are fooling yourself by way of wishful thinking. It's when you agree with something that you are most in danger of being fooled. (I trust it is clear that I am not challenging the facts of climate change and global heating here, only ‘climate facts’ used as a surrogate politics and ethics, which is a very different thing indeed).
The strategy is plain. Put crisis on the clock, create a sense of urgency, shout ‘emergency’ and demand ‘action,’ and all the difficult bits of politics and policy – who pays for what – are all ignored, left to the extra-political realm of experts. And instead of the genuinely ecological transformation required, the corporate form cleans up.
In Thunberg, those advancing extensive and expensive climate policies have found the perfect sword and shield. Try criticising this most anti-ecological form of environmental managerialism and brace yourself for a whole heap load of abuse.
The abuse tends to be some variant of ‘how dare you, a triggered white male, abuse a poor little autistic girl.’
This is pernicious for many reasons.
The truth of any matter is independent of identity. A case stands and falls on its merits. Colour, sex, gender, ethnicity have nothing to do with it.
But it is the way that autism has been dragged into the fray that is of most concern for me here. Or, rather, the way that autism has been deliberately put into the political frame. It is almost as if Thunberg is being deliberately presented in stereotypical autistic identity in order to draw the critical attention of those who, rightly, feel that the positions she is advancing ought to be subject to criticism. Present the autistic stereotype, invite criticism, shout abuse. It’s as sweet as a nut. And it is my view that this will serve only to reinforce misinformed public perceptions of autism.
I monitor comments within the autistic community a lot, to try and make sense of my own views. On the rare occasion I see Thunberg mentioned, opinion is divided at extremes. This is to be expected, because Thunberg's approach is quite deliberately divisive. Some see her as an inspiring figure who reveals the power of autism, showing autistic people the range of their abilities. OK. But if we are going to take this approach, then why not Elon Musk? Others see her as a puppet, a literal-minded autistic girl whose gullibility is being exploited by powerful elites.
I don’t see her as guileless at all. She strikes me as very knowing (or very comfortable). I think there is a climate crisis. I think powerful forces see the global shift underway, and are organising to ensure that when power relations are e-adjusted, they remain dominant.
I remember one heated debate on an autism site between pro- and anti-Thunberg voices that caused the post to be removed. Autistic people turn to such sites for comfort and community, not contention.
I admire inspiring figures who show the wide-ranging power of autism. I can see why people, including autistic people, could see Thunberg as an inspiration. She's everywhere, after all, whilst they are all too often nowhere.
But people need to be sure that it is the power of autism they are valuing, and not the power of a wider media and institutional setup to make or break preferred idols of some instrumental purpose and use.
Austistic people seeking help and support find doors closed to them. Thunberg has had all the doors opened to her. There is a disparity here. But Thunberg has climate insight? She’s saying nothing others haven’t said (myself included).
I'm autistic too, suffering two chronic illnesses grace of the relentless anxiety brought on by a then undiagnosed condition. I've had no help for autism and no doors opened to me for my philosophical work. You receive a diagnosis and are then told to spit in the wind. There is zero help and support, beyond advice as to what you can do for yourself. We all have different ways to find meaning, purpose, and certainty - they are not necessarily right. It’s in those special nterests that an autistic person finds meaning in a world s/he can control, offering a safe space in a chaotic world. I, too, thought I had found a meaning and a purpose and, also, a community and common cause with Green politics. I was a member of The Green Party, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other such groups. The curious thing is that I never actually made many, or any, friends. Loyalty was to pre-determined principles and not to persons. My loyalty and support was assumed, but zero interest was taken in my views. Much of that can be explained by the fact I was a somewhat reserved and distanced participant. I was always concerned to preserve a space from others. But in time I was to find that the more I offered criticisms of my own, withholding the automatic support I had previously given, the more I was simply ignored. Worse, the more forceful I became in the attempt to get Greens to answer the awkward questions that needed to be answered, the more I was subjected to hostile criticism. My criticism of “the science” was abused as an “anti-science rant.” It comes as no surprise to me that such people can’t see the clear distinction between science and scientism. Wittgenstein identified scientism as one of the greatest vices of the age. Ludwig was right. Some characters, social media ‘friends’ of ten years standing, simply unfriended and blocked me without a word. Such people see themselves as “telling the truth” to others, they don’t take questions, don’t engage, don’t listen. People who present themselves as 'truth-tellers' tend never to be 'truth-seekers.' Why seek truth when you already know it?
As an autistic person who has been ostracised for exercising his insightful superpower, I would caution other autistic people against the deluded belief that they have found friendship and community in the company of like-minded others. People are loyal to their causes and politics and don’t give a damn about you. Stop being a supportive little sheep, and such people drop you and cut you out without a thought.
Were my criticisms too sharp, too pointed? Possibly. But they were pertinent. As Bronowski said in The Ascent of Man, if you want a pertinent answer you often need to ask an impertinent question. Was I overly blunt? It has been known. Can autistic people be construed as rude in the way they assert truth? Most certainly. Do people who celebrate autistic climate campaigners and affirm 'the power of neurodiversity' quickly cut their links with autists who refuse to sing from the same hymn sheet? They did with me.
It’s the anomalies that strike me as most odd. As an autistic environmentalist thinking outside of the Green politics box and asking impertinent questions, I get ignored, cold-shouldered, and sidelined. Thunberg extols the virtues of autism for enabling her to think outside the box, only for her to recycle the arguments and facts of others and wins praise for never putting a foot wrong. As an autistic person, I have put my feet wrong many times. I am doing it now in daring to question a poor little autistic girl, that is, the hard-faced manipulation that is diverting and perverting a genuine environmentalism and using and abusing autism to its ends. And for that, I will most certainly speak out of turn. Because this weaponising of autism will do autistic people no good, merely reinforce the worst stereotypes. Unless you think Thunberg really is a genius.
My approach to climate action is very different to Thunberg's. The fact that I’m autistic doesn't make my approach right, no more than it makes hers right.
It doesn't make me a hater, either. Because I am indeed very different from the norm, should the day come when those who make a point of praising difference actually cease to be the dull conformists they are. When I first read a collection of Thunberg’s speeches and writings my reaction was to ask ‘is that all there is?’ There was little there I disagreed with (or didn’t know). It’s just that all the important, interesting, difficult, and contentious stuff was missing, especially with respect to capital, class, and the critique of political economy. I concluded that any environmentalism getting excited over this is a plain infantilism. I would say it is a manipulative cynicism above and an infantilism below.
Rightness or wrongness here is determined by the quality and coherence of the argument. I don’t doubt that Thunberg would agree, should she ever present herself for questioning, in the manner of other public figures. So what role, then, is autism playing in her Twitter description of herself as an “autistic climate justice activist”? The designation “climate activist” should be enough. I’ve been a “climate campaigner” for a quarter of a century. My website documents my efforts at spreading the climate message. It has never once occurred to me to add “autism” to my political identity. That still strikes me as an odd thing to do. I campaign for Autism Acceptance separately.
The designation is not innocent. Autism is clearly playing a role in Thunberg’s description. What is it?
Thunberg says she has found meaning and a community in climate campaigning. Isn’t that what all cult members say? So what? Lisa Marie Presley said she found exactly the same in Scientology. We can happily lose the identification of autistic people as sad inadequates who will clutch to any old thing in search of compensation for the ‘normal’ things they lack. I certainly argue for the necessity of meaning, purpose, and direction in a life well lived. The same with respect to community and friendship. I honour the search whilst remaining sceptical of the places where people claim to have found what they have sought.
But that’s not the role autism is playing here. That tale is told to create an emotional shield. The clear implication is this – anyone who dares criticise Thunberg’s community of friends and meaning is destroying everything that brought her back from the pits of depressive illness and are knowingly, with malice aforethought, sending her back to the wretched desolation from which she came. The heartless fiends!
As someone who argues in favour of an emotional intelligence, seeking its recovery alongside a cognitive rationalism, this manipulation of the emotions is unconscionable, confirming every rationalists misgivings with respect to emotionalism. It’s fake, ersatz, and inauthentic, a blight on the real thing.
We are being gamed, groomed, triggered, and trolled by technocrats and psychocrats. They take things that are integral to a truly human life and instrumentalize them.
As an autistic person, I am definitely triggered by seeing this trope of Thunberg the autist doing the rounds again on social media. Whatever us behind it, it’s not a concern with autism acceptance, that’s for sure. On the contrary, the use and misuse of autism here is reinforcing some of the worst stereotypes associated with the condition in the popular mind – mental illness, lack, deficiency, obsession, fixation, monotone repetition and so on. That will be the abiding image of autism for those whose who feel that their legitimate political queries with respect to the specifics of climate action are being silenced or deflected.
To ask again, what role is autism playing in these presentations of Thunberg as global climate superstar with superpowers?
Obviously, autism is being used as a vulnerability that cannot be criticised, effectively allowing a free-hit to be taken in public space.
Cases stand and fall on their merits. You may well argue that the case here is strong. I find little reason to disagree with the science here. My disagreements are elsewhere. I disagree with the way that science is being extended as “the science” in order to do the job of politics and ethics (practical reason).
My point is that, being necessarily political, the questions of climate action are always arguable. I dislike the weaponizing of autism through its use as a sword and a shield. Because it draws a political fire that is properly aimed at climate politics on autism. Because it reinforces negative stereotypes of autism. Because it associates autism with what critics – and members of the public – consider ‘lunatic’ climate actions. Because it reinforces the popular idea that autism is a mental illness (it is not, it is a developmental disorder). And because I know that the vast majority of people who are happy to use autism as a shield for climate politics do nothing for autistic people. They are interested in advancing their climate cause and don’t care how they do it. Autistic people who seek help and support quickly find that people with time and resources to offer are very thin on the ground. My fear is that the association of autism with political campaigning may well reinforce popular negative stereotypes to the effect that autistic people lack a grasp of nuances and ambiguities (political and otherwise) and think in simplistic black and white terms. My autistic 'special interest' is mediation, bridging the gap between theoretical reason (our knowledge of the physical world) and practical reason (what we do in light of that knowledge, ethics and politics). That involves lot more than "telling the truth," stating facts, and demanding "action" from "government." My view is very nuanced indeed. I see very clearly that a sense of fear, emergency, and urgency is being created around climate crisis. It’s a very low politics. In fact it is an anti-politics, an attempt to undercut political engagement and deliberation.
I object to the appropriation and instrumentalistion of autism by the technocrats and psychocrats in our midst. They invite the abuse and incite the outrage. Michael Knowles was taken out by raising the issue of Thunberg’s autism, implying that her unbalanced climate rhetoric was related to her unbalanced mind. That hit was as unwarranted as it was invited. There’s nothing Thunberg is saying that ‘normal’ people haven’t been saying. The extremism of climate politics is indeed unbalanced, as in lacking proper mediation between theoretical/scientific reason and practical reason, but that has squat to do with autism. Autism is the patsy here. Julia Hartley-Brewer used autism as a term of abuse and received tens of thousands of critical comments. She’s been reminded of it daily ever since. My question is where all these people expressing concern for autism are when it comes to extending help and support for autistic people in society, because they aren’t there in anything like the same numbers. They are more excited by the possibility of using autism as a political stick with which to beat their enemies than they are by the hard work of furthering autism acceptance in society.
And this has all been deliberately engineered by those who have decided to put autism up front in their climate politics, shielding the target from a direct hit.
Hartley-Brewer describes Thunberg as “a half-educated, autistic, doom-mongering, eco-cultist.”
She later removed the “autistic.” But I wonder how many of those who have legitimate differences with this particular species of climate politics will retain the association of autism with the rest of the description, as in the popular stereotype of autistic people as stupid and obsessive.
Autistic people are not necessarily obsessive and monotone.
I am now involved in the campaign for "Autism Acceptance," having seen how little help, support, and understanding there is out there. I see it as entirely independent of my environmental politics.
I return to the words from Autism-101:
“Autism is so often portrayed negatively in the media. The media likes to ‘other’ us. This bullying needs to stop.”
I agree, whilst urging autistic people to stop “othering” themselves with claims of superior intellect and superpowers. That’s the problem with stereotypes: if you celebrate the positive, you won’t be able to shake off the negative.
The bit that concerns me most of all is the damage this will do to public perceptions of autism.
If you think the issue unimportant, then take a look at the way Thunberg’s critics portray autism. Below is just a snapshot which took me less than a minute to find. To sum: Autism = “Spastic weirdo without a brain.”
So, yes, I am alive to the way that autism has been weaponised and instrumentalised by people seeking to shield the very contentious political agenda that they are pushing. The abusers are wrong, but that’s the easiest thing to say here. It is the way that an autistic young girl has been used as both sword and shield that has attracted this fire.
There are two aspects to this.
First there are those who cheer that which they already believe to be true. To them, Thunberg is a towering intellect, a sharp wit and a million other good things besides. For them, autism is indeed a superpower (losing Thunberg’s crucial qualification ‘in the right circumstances.’ Few autistic people have the support that Thunberg has). Autism? No problem. Autists are all geniuses. Conclusion: there’s no need for social support and help.
Then there are those who jeer. I shall condense the acres of abuse she attracts on social media into this one line drawn from her refusal to respond to Rebel Reporters’ questions:
“She is thick, stone cold, a low IQ person who can’t speak without a script, she is definitely on the spectrum.” Conclusion: autistic people are stupid, wooden, and devoid of emotion.
That people have said both things of methroughout my school and university years indicates a need to go deeper.
It has taken years to challenge and subvert the second stereotype, and the first stereotype does more harm than good when it comes to winning that fight.
I have as little time for those who cheer as I do for those who jeer, the responses of both are motivated by political commitments. The campaign for autism awareness thus gets mired in a world of stereotypes.
Thunberg has been set up by some to be taken down by others, presented as a brave, knowledgeable, independently-minded climate activist, whilst being shielded from questioning and criticism as a vulnerable young girl. In the tough world of politics, you don't get to pick and choose between one and the other depending on which questions you want to be asked, which answers you would like to give, and issues you would prefer to avoid. Thunberg the autist has been launched into the public world, damning and dividing as she goes. Her accusative tone has made enemies who are unlikely to be sympathetic towards her autism. Autism gives no one a free pass. For every action there is a reaction, for every accusation a counter-accusation. She has been the public face of autism, but has done the struggle for autism awareness no favours. To her supporters, she is super smart, thinking outside of the box; to her detractors, she embodies the negative autistic stereotype of extreme black and white thinking. The cheerleaders celebrate her ability to cut through and cleave to the truth; the jeerers point out that in real life and politics, the truth is thrashed out in the complex ‘grey’ areas in between, of which Thunberg, as the socially inept autist of stereotype, is oblivious. She is seen as obsessive and monotone, seeing only her ‘special interest’ and nothing and no-one else. The highly erroneous conclusion is then drawn that autistic people are mentally disturbed, suffer from learning difficulties, and can thus be safely ignored as having nothing to say beyond what others have told them to say. I'll state for the record here that I, as an autistic person, have sought to emphasise the 'grey' area of practical reason from the very first. It has been largely ignored by neurotypical green and climate campaigning friends and associates who obsess over 'truth' and ends. Who is 'autistic' here, if we insist on using autism as a negative stereotype? Who is wearing the blinders? Who is missing the complex human dimension of politics? Check my work here and know the truth when I say, as an autistic person: not me. If Thunberg is lacking here, then it is her enthusiastic adult backers and supporters who show much the greater lack. If we are going to use autism as a term of abuse, then it is the 'normal' folk of climate campaigning who have been the most 'autistic' in their monotone monomaniacal assertion of 'the science.'
The endless abuse Thunberg attracts indicates the extent to which the association of autism with an emotionless, witless stupidity remains widespread in society. I could explain the autistic reasons for Thunberg’s less than convincing responses to questioning, her apparent lack of spontaneity, and all the other things her detractors draw attention to. I, too, avoid questioning and prefer to address the world by way of my writing voice. I prepare research notes and rehearse scripts before speaking. Always. Even when I would ring my dad I would insist on writing a little list of things to say. It doesn't mean that I always refer to the list when speaking; often, I need something in hand before me as a safety blanket, something I know I can fall back on if stuck. Approaching the world by way of a writing voice is not evasion. An answer in writing is as good as an answer in speech. In fact, a written answer is much the weightier. Q&A at media level is mere surface slickness. How telling that those skilled with quick superficial words place greater store in the spoken than the written word; it favours the quick over the slow, the surface over the depths, the easy over the hard. I don't condemn Thunberg for her poor performance here. I have been that poor performer, too, many times, and it never improved with age. I have refused questions and, overwhelmed, reacted violently to questioning. I have suffered meltdowns when being subjected to questioning at the end of talks. Only stupid people would conclude that that makes me or anyone stupid. I am reflective, go deep, and do the hard stuff. The problem is the way that autism has been drawn into a very divisive strategy of climate campaigning, with the result that thepolitical backlash against her and her contentious claims cannot but take aim at her – and others’ – autism.
Autism is trending on Twitter again in the aftermath of the latest Thunberg circus.
Opinion divides along political lines. Austists are geniuses, autists are morons. Autism can well do without beind dragged into a political world that is just circling the drain. The last thing we need is for autism to get entangled in the self-cancelling zero-sum quagmire of identity politics. I'm as little impressed by the shout "the power of neurodiversity!" as I am by those who consider autistic people to be stupid, emotionless, and humourless. It all depends. And the worth of each person isn't dependent on intelligence in any case.
Addendum
A comment on the gaggle of reporters at the World Economic Forum who peppered Greta Thunberg with questions in the street, “asking the climate prophet tough questions she’s never been asked before.” People are getting very excited over this on social media. I'm not out to expose and destroy Thunberg. I thought the questioning which she was subject to to have all the character of harassment, especially given Thunberg's autism, and I thought that the reporters embarrassed themselves. They followed and cornered her. She tried to laugh it off and has been abused as stupid, flippant, and privileged as a result. Some have even questioned whether she is autistic. Privileged and elitist, maybe, that's the company she is in - power never likes to be questioned, and aristocracies old and new are above the law and are never held accountable for their mistakes. But this is to focus only on the political level.
People who put themselves forward (or allow others to put them forward) in politics and public life should make themselves available for questioning. This is not too much to ask. No one gets a free hit in politics. This applies in many other areas of life and work, too. Autistic people are not stupid; and autistic people who enter politics need to behave politically. Politics is a discursive, dialogic business. But as an autistic person I would find being surrounded by people and bombarded with questions overwhelming. The reporters concluded that Thunberg is a “child actor.” That’s the conclusion they had set out to draw all along, of course. She sensed the hostility and clammed up out of self-defence. It is true that other journalists are covering for Thunberg, indicating that there is a narrative. These reporters can be heard answering the questions that Thunberg is avoiding.
But none of this proves that Thunberg is a phoney, a puppet, a child actor.
She is being pursued in the street by reporters precisely because she has never been subjected to close, intensive interview on the key questions. That's why the reporters are getting excited and she is getting afraid - they've caught her and she's been caught.
But this is all decidedly off.
Had I been followed and cornered in this way I would have exploded in a rage and hit out, verbally in the first instance and, should the pursuers persist in their pursuit, physically. I loathe being questioned and need to prepare long and hard before subjecting myself to such an ordeal. I get flustered, overwhelmed, and angry whenever I am questioned, let alone pursued. I will refuse to answer and seek an escape. There are people claiming that this episode proves that Thunberg is not autistic, merely a puppet actor. I would be careful of anyone whose conclusion confirms and conforms to what they had believed to be true all along. Thunberg is judged to be suspiciously quiet when asked about her driving passion. Yes, when asked about my ‘special interest,’ I could talk forever. But, and this is a very big but, I do this only when in a friendly space. This was not a friendly environment at all, it was most hostile, and Thunberg must have felt distinctly uncomfortable. I think she survived by trying to laugh it off. I don't criticise her for being evasive here. In fact, I praise her for keeping calm under pressure. This harassment was very uncomfortable to watch. I would also laugh as an attempt to diffuse an awkward situation, evade conflict, and avoid an angry response on my part. I’ve not always been successful in my attempts here. Even into my fifties, I have been known to fly into a rage when people have not read my discomfort and have persisted in asking questions soliciting information. So I don’t condemn Thunberg for giggling and evading here. She was being provoked.
That said, despite a pathological fear of being questioned and speaking in public on my part, I did put myself forward for presentations, debates, and discussions in public situations. I would prepare hard and face tough questioning in appropriate contexts. I found university hell, but I slogged through it, a battery of colour coded notes always to hand. That should be expected of a public figure, autistic or otherwise. This doesn't happen with her, hence the excitement of the reporters.
If not among friends, I struggle to speak spontaneously and rely upon copious notes whose contents I have revised at length. I would never answer questions from hostile strangers in the street, I would seek to escape and, failing that, be inclined to give harassers a punch up the bracket. If people refuse to take the hint of discomfort in my nervous laughter, I can get very angry. Had Thunberg done what I would do in such a situation, and hit out at the surrounding mob, she would doubtless have been criticised. I’ve taken classes and suffered disorientation in face of so many talking student heads. It’s the reason that I never became the professional academic my qualifications more than entitled me to become. She did well to keep her cool. I’ll not join her critics here.
It's the evasion of pertinent questions in any context that is the issue for me. I braved my way through sixth form college, first degree, masters, PhD, the lot. I hated every minute of it but I put myself forward for intensive questioning at every stage. I had no protectors and no hiding place. I was told bluntly that I needed to 'earn my spurs,' like everyone else. I did. Tutors will testify to the fact that I was very awkward and tetchy, often uncommunicative, sometimes overly communicative, talking to much to avoid further questioning. Thunberg is far more communicative than I ever was or am even now. I would have burned up long before now. Like other autistic people I suffer from sensory overload.
It’s the use of autism as a screen for politics and policies formulated by others that I abhor.
“No carefully written script, no reply, very telling,” someone writes. Telling of what? Telling of autism, I would say. Such people, instead, think Thunberg’s spiel is all scripted to fit a narrative created by others. It may well be, that's not my concern here. But I always insisted on preparing extensive research notes before attending a tutorial or a seminar, and would sit holding those notes tight throughout. I think that’s pretty telling of autism. “The real Greta. No script, no clue,” says another. The same could have been said of me.
Such comments are ignorant, they are also cruel. But I see their origins in the very low politics that is being practised here. I don’t simply condemn the reporters for their street harassment. Their excitement in the hunt here expresses the release of their pent-up sense their frustration. Where else are they able to ask the hard questions of Thunberg? When will they ever be able to properly ask these questions? Because they are questions of energy policy, finance, and economics that need to be answered by someone some time. It is this bit I object to, the clear attempt on the part of some to develop climate policies and programmes outside of the properly political realm. There are much bigger players than Thunberg who need to be answering questions here. And in this episode you got an indication of how Thunberg could be destroyed as easily as she has been made. Where were her backers and protectors when she needed them? Without support, she will struggle.
As for autism, predictably it is getting battered in the criticism. “Everyone is autistic now,” one social media genius writes contemptuously.
I did warn when this all started that this would be a consequence. But who gives a damn about autism in the political bear-pit?
People are being ruthless in their criticism. “Are you saying a 20 year old woman is too fragile to be questioned about her words and actions and should be protected?” asks one. That's a barbed comment aimed at the feminists who have proclaimed women all-knowing and all-powerful and men as feeble. This kind of nonsense will always catch up with you by way of a reality check.
Autistic people are going to appear stupid, weak, dumb, and “stone cold” as a result of this cornering of Thunberg. I dried up, literally, in my viva voce. I was scared stiff by the prospect of facing rigorous academic examination in person and drained of energy by the intensive questioning. I remember suddenly realising that I was licking my lips constantly as I was examined. Then it struck me that my mouth was actually dry. You can call it fragility, you can call it fear. My strengths were elsewhere. My written work was so good that I was tipped off the day before the exam that I would be passed even if I fell apart in the oral examination. My supervisor knew my rather reserved character and rightly anticipated that I might well dissolve under pressure. But I turned up all the same, despite being literally petrified, and I answered as best I could.
I’m afraid that Thunberg, having been put forward as a climate prophet, is in the sights of reporters all over the world who are leery of the climate policies and actions she is associated with. There will be no mercy. People can see what the game has been, using an autistic little girl as a screen to advance big climate demands. Reporters will be merciless in their attempts to get behind that defence, and savage once they are in.
This is the bit where the designation “autistic climate campaigner” becomes very problematic for one and all. She will be shown no mercy. I can see it in the criticisms of her reaction to this questioning now. “Greta is hardly a teenager and if you are going to get up on a world stage you need to be able to handle yourself and answer straightforward questions. They did not harass and they were not rude,” says one person. Had I been subjected to such a pursuit in the street I would have felt it to be harassment of the most aggressive kind and hit out violently. At the same time, had I made big scientific claims and issued huge and expensive political demands, I would have made myself available for questioning. This hasn't happened with Thunberg, everything has been stage-managed. It is that that people rightly resent. That approach is technocratic and threatens to bring the curtain down on politics as the means by which citizens resolve their common affairs peacefully and rationally.
People have had enough of the protection. Read the comments on Twitter. People want answers to questions and will not accept autism or youth as a screen.
“She is an adult, and a paid spokesperson for an aggressive internationally funded campaign to change how people live their lives. She deserves to be asked questions from any reporters.”
If that is true, then I would suggest that it is more profitable to unmask that aggressive internationally funded climate campaign.
Try to preserve questionable climate policies from legitimate questions by using autism as a screen, and there will be huge damage inflicted on the public image of autism and, as a result, on autistic people. The political use and weaponizing of autism will rebound badly on the cause of autism acceptance. People will associate autism with a scam and a grift, with stupidity and duplicity. The people who thought this a good way to advance climate policies are a disgrace. It is their anti-democratic prejudices and political ineptitude that should be in the dock. Instead, reporters have Thunberg in their sights. As an autistic person, I would be burning up and melting down under the pressure. I don’t care for the reporters who did this. I don’t care either for the climate cheerleaders who raised Thunberg to the status of prophet for merely asserting repetitively the things they’ve been saying for years. Everyone involved, everyone, needs to get back to doing politics properly, asking the hard questions, and answering them. Fear, alarm calls, slogans, demos, the lot, all of it needs to be ditched.
‘Thank you for explaining exactly why they chose this young girl to be the face of climate change.
Because you can’t question her and the topic without being labeled some overused label…or on this case “harassing “
The classic playbook of the “elites.”’
Or new aristocrat technocrats in the making.
This may get ugly.
It’s those “elites” who need to be pursued. And ecologists and greens need to reclaim the environment from their clutches, as I am reclaiming autism.
Greta Thunberg strikes me as a young woman who is not so much out of her depth as out of her milieu. I spent many years in academia with an undiagnosed autism. I could be uncommunicative and uncooperative, anticipating questions to answer rather than answering the questions I was asked. I drove tutors to distraction. I found my true metier in research, reading, and writing. For many years at school I was abused as being ‘stupid.’ This followed me around in the years after school. At the age of 19, I ran into a former pupil in the street, who simply called me a ‘moron’ as he walked past. (I'd developed physically by this stage and would have flattened him had it not been for the fact I was carrying two of my prized Queen albums under my arm at the time). Thunberg is being called 'stupid when she is without a script.' I was called stupid for the self-same unresponsiveness and apparent slowness. In my written work and in competitive exams I stood at or near the top of most every class I attended after 18. I blossomed at night school, where I was in control of my own learning and shared classes with adults. That indicates that I was never out of my depth so much as out of my proper milieu. Thunberg looks distinctly uncomfortable facing the questioning that her handlers have sought to shield her from. This is the danger of using autism as both sword and shield – it is a divisive strategy and builds antagonism over the long term. The people who have been poked repeatedly from a safe distance will not go away in silence. They will resent the fact that they are not given a target to hit and will wait for the day that the defences fall. Thunberg faces a gathering storm. She’s been put in this position. Or, if you believe the right-on claptrap about strong young females, she has agency and autonomy and had put herself in this position. It’s just that she doesn’t cut the image of the self-made strong woman at all. She’s vocal, but only when safe from the right of reply.
I would suggest that she has been manoeuvred and manipulated into serving a political agenda that seems to fit her 'special interest' in climate change. The strategy worked well. She’s still all over the media and social media, with climate campaigners cheering her every word and action. But is there a long-game for her? Because if there is, hard questions of policy, finance, energy, economics, and democratic will and consent have to be answered. A ouple of years ago these questions were deflected with the apology that she’s just a little girl. The response back was that she should maybe get back to school, then. (And that the adults advancing extensive and expensive climate programmes should offer themselves for hard questioning in the political arena, rather than raining down edicts from the Empyrean heights they inhabit). As an autistic person, school and college were extremely difficult for me. But I made my way through. At the same age that Thunberg was moralising that Britain’s industrial revolution bore the greatest responsibility for the Earth’s climate ills, I was top grading in the economic history “A” level, learning the details and nuances of industrialisation. I learned from history that nothing is so clean-cut as to fit the division of good and evil. In fine, I avoided the negative stereotype that autistic people think in terms of crude antitheses. I learned that truth, like life in its living, is a package deal and not a matter of some simple, singular Truth. The apology that she is young and it’s up to the adults doesn’t wash. I was young when I earned my spurs. That's what education is all about. Again, this seems like nothing so much as emotional blackmail, instrumentalising and exploiting the natural human impulse to protect children and the vulnerable. If that is the case, then it is unconscionable. For the result will be to breed a general scepticism, even coldness, with respect to all such appeals to the emotions in the future. And should that happen, it will be the vulnerable who will lose most. (I write knowing that there is already precious little help for autistic people available in society. I see a crude Darwinism at work, people exploiting the evolutionary advantage that comes with appearing to be virtuous, a performative compassion that gives the appearance of goodness, whilst the weak continue to be winnowed out and away).
Cui bono. Of everything that costs you time, money, effort, and energy you should ask: “Who benefits?”
It’s an ancient lesson that those responsible for a certain event or demanding a certain ‘action’ will more than likely be the ones who stand to gain from it.
“Who benefits from Green policies?”
We all benefit from planetary health, and we all suffer from planetary despoliation, comes the response.
So far, so deliberately vague as to command common assent. We need to develop the habit of disregarding all statements which all could agree on - they say nothing and are designed to evade the hard questions.
The problem is that there is no “we” in the social environment, neither within nor between nations. “Humanity” exists only biologically, not politically nor socially. Human beings live within asymmetrical relations of class and power, distributing resources in accordance with power structures. These asymmetries also impact on agency. Some people have far more power than others to make decisions (or ensure non-decision). To say that “humanity” in general benefits from green policies has the same quality as the trickle down assertion that a rising tide lifts all boats. That’s the kind of thinking that led to the rise of the superrich. The thing that trickled down most from of all from the top was greed and immorality. We now live in a world of technocratic managerialism presided over by a ‘classless’ and purportedly politically neutral overclass.
And I’m not buying any of it. People who shout ‘emergency’ incessantly are attempting to incite people into an unreasoned response in the direction of those who have some very definite ideas as the precise nature of the ‘action’ to be taken. You can be sure that such people have their own best interests at heart, not yours.
Another way of putting the question is to ask: who has the power, structural and organisational agency, and capacity to push technology to the scale envisaged in the large-scale climate transformations which we are told are required to avert climate catastrophe?
It’s a fair question for one and all to answer.
It’s a question that those demanding “system change, not climate change” are required to answer. I have put that question to green ‘friends’ and climate campaigners only to be unfriended and blocked. They either know the answer and don’t like it or know that it is imperative to keep the answer hidden from view until the public are presented with a de facto political settlement beyond debate.
Those who would transform “the system” need to answer – what have you got? Show your hand. We should know that they know they cannot get people to vote for the policies and programmes they want, which makes their manipulation anti-democratic and anti-political to the core.
It’s when the ambitions of climate programmes are set against the puniness of small green capacities that you realise that it is the big boys who will clean up. Who else? Marx identified the proletariat as the agent of socialist revolution given that their structural position within the capital system gave hem the capacity to act. Who is the structural agent of the green industrial transformation that is in the pipeline? And how does that agency take us beyond the accumulative drives and imperatives of money and power endemic to the capital system?
What we are seeing is not a systemic social transformation that restructures power and resources in favour of 'ordinary' people but one of those internal transformations by which the capital system renews itself for another burst of expansion and exploitation.
‘Progressives’ in every era are suckered in to serve as the footsoldiers in these waves of internal upgrading.
It is deeply depressing to see Leftists seek to deflect pertinent questions such as this by claiming that big business will lose out by climate transformations, therefore it is anti- rather than pro-capitalist. This point is utterly ignorant of political economy. Big oil and fossil fuels may well lose out, but the losses of some fraction of capital will be the gains of others. That's precisely how the capital system changes over time. The nature of internal transitions within the capital system is that some business interests will lose and disappear into history and some will win and carry on in further expansion. It is hard to credit such naivety and ignorance on the part of so many Leftists. ‘Action’ and endless activism work like a magic spell, with people in a cause persuading themselves that they are on the 'right side of history.'
My criticism is not that Thunberg is a protected person who should be questioned (still less interrogated and destroyed, which is what these very excited reporters chasing their prey are seeking to do), but that her ‘vulnerability’ is being used to protect a very contentious politics from critical scrutiny. Thunberg’s autism is mere grist to the clean green corporate mill.
This pack of reporters plainly see her as a stupid puppet, someone who is unable to speak without a script. That’s not stupid, that’s autistic, and the two things are distinct. All through the various universities I attended and beyond, I would clutch a battery of research notes tightly. I prepare for everything, writing things down, anticipating questions, revising and rehearsing answers. As a climate campaigner I’ve been targeted too, hit by a barrage of hostile questions from those opposed to climate action, and had my motives traduced for not giving immediate response. I sensed the hostility immediately and knew that I was being drawn into a zero-sum scrap. Thunberg clearly sensed the very same thing and did well not to be drawn.
My criticism is reserved for those who have put Thunberg in this position (and I accept that putting the point that way could be construed as denying her own agency and responsibility as the "autistic climate justice activist" she presents herself as, reducing her to a puppet indeed). I think she is sincere and convinced, (neither of which make her right), and I think she has been inveigled into a political strategy that is not of her making. And I think that in becoming a prominent public figure demanding actions that impinge on people, power, and social interests, she has made herself a target for legitimate questioning – and very hostile interrogation. Such is politics. Or do we want a technocratic tyranny of unquestionable top-down edicts issued by the new aristocrats of knowledge and power? It makes me suspicious to see other “journalists” seeking to answer the questions that Thunberg sought to avoid. There’s a narrative, a script, an agenda, and Thunberg has a role to play. It’s hilarious to hear supposed radicals defend her against critics by saying that they are triggered by strong, autonomous women. Thunberg doesn’t have autonomy within this arrangement, and doesn’t speak off-script either. I have a good idea what strong, autonomous women look like. I come from a family of them and very nearly married one. They speak out of turn, and frequently. Thunberg seems too careful and too cautious to be one of those, as if constantly in fear of departing from a script.
There is little point in asking Thunberg questions, other than to expose how little she knows and reveal her as a puppet. The people motivated to do this don't understand how autism works. Her answers are in her written speeches and books. There are indeed question-begging evasions and omissions there, especially on policy and political economy. In person, she tends to pass questions off to ‘the scientists’ and other experts. There is a huge agenda driven lobby behind her. It is that that needs to be questioned and unmasked.
Conspiracy theory?
It’s just the view of someone steeped in Marx’s critique of political economy, from the days when the Left was on nodding terms with the working class and socio-economic realities. It has been a long time since activists have been on speaking terms with the working class. Besides the strategists, the people who really annoy me in this charade are those who have been cheering Thunberg on so uncritically from the first, with her every pronouncement and action hailed as genius. Such people simply revel in the free hits that Thunberg gives them. I'll guarantee that the only thing about autism that interests them is its 'superpower' quality, but only when it confirms what they already believe to be true. I'm autistic, and my 'superpower' tells me that they are wrong.
