#tw holocaust
The problem with the Asperger’s label
This post contains mentions of the Holocaust, ableism, and eugenics. Please do not read if you are sensitive to these topics.
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There have been conversations regarding whether the term Asperger’s should still be used in the autism community. This post will explain the biggest issue I and other people have with the label. There’s no way to gently segue into this so I’m just going to start.
The term Asperger’s was coined by an actual Nazi. Hans Asperger worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. He saved some children who he deemed intelligent enough by giving them the label of Asperger’s and sent the rest of the kids to die.
Some people call him a hero for saving kids during the Holocaust, but he sent children to be murdered because he saw them as genetically inferior. He saw some of us as a “hardly bearable burden” to our families. He believed that they should be put out of our misery.
I do not believe allistics should use the term Asperger’s to describe an autistic person. I do not believe that autistic people should use it for themselves either. However, I’m not saying that you should assume someone is a bad person for using it. I figure that most do not know the history. There are autistics who use the term for various reasons even knowing the history, which I heavily disagree with.
And I’m not the only one who feels this way. I learned this from listening to Jewish autistic people speak on the subject. If you are not Jewish, it is best to listen to those who have the authority on the matter.
Here is a video of a Jewish autistic person explaining how use of this label harms not only Jewish autistics, but autistic people as a whole. She also makes a very good point about Asperger’s being a functioning label.
Here is an article about Hans Asperger being a Nazi.
Some of the information here is correct. However, Asperger did not name the condition he studied after himself. He actually called it “autistic psychopathy,” back when psychopathy meant something different than it does today. A psychologist named Lorna Wing named Asperger’s Syndrome after him decades before it was clear that he was a Nazi. (Source: Neurotribes by Steve Silberman, paperback edition)
To be absolutely clear, I don’t think what Asperger did was okay. It’s just important to be accurate in informational posts.
The problem with the Asperger’s label
This post contains mentions of the Holocaust, ableism, and eugenics. Please do not read if you are sensitive to these topics.
—————————————
There have been conversations regarding whether the term Asperger’s should still be used in the autism community. This post will explain the biggest issue I and other people have with the label. There’s no way to gently segue into this so I’m just going to start.
The term Asperger’s was coined by an actual Nazi. Hans Asperger worked with the Nazis during the Holocaust. He saved some children who he deemed intelligent enough by giving them the label of Asperger’s and sent the rest of the kids to die.
Some people call him a hero for saving kids during the Holocaust, but he sent children to be murdered because he saw them as genetically inferior. He saw some of us as a “hardly bearable burden” to our families. He believed that they should be put out of our misery.
I do not believe allistics should use the term Asperger’s to describe an autistic person. I do not believe that autistic people should use it for themselves either. However, I’m not saying that you should assume someone is a bad person for using it. I figure that most do not know the history. There are autistics who use the term for various reasons even knowing the history, which I heavily disagree with.
And I’m not the only one who feels this way. I learned this from listening to Jewish autistic people speak on the subject. If you are not Jewish, it is best to listen to those who have the authority on the matter.
Here is a video of a Jewish autistic person explaining how use of this label harms not only Jewish autistics, but autistic people as a whole. She also makes a very good point about Asperger’s being a functioning label.
Here is an article about Hans Asperger being a Nazi.
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
11 million+ murdered. Jews, Roma, Sinti, the disabled, queer folks (mostly homosexual men), Soviet POWs, Slavs, political prisoners…
It seems so long ago. It wasn’t. My great aunts were there, my grandmother (z”l) was there. This happened in the modern world, in living memory.
Stand up. Fight back. Never forget. Never again.
Why should I care about you? You don’t care about how atheists are mistreated and instead just lump us in with Christians.
Why should I fight for you when you wouldn’t do the same for me?
This really is a masterclass in Western Athiest morality. All the righteous fury of an evangelical and the rootless nihilism of Western Capitalism. Maybe you don’t care about the Jews or the other groups the Nazis would kill, but think about this: a Nazi takeover would almost assuredly delay or cancel the next Marvel/Star Wars/Harry Potter movie. That’s enough to get every Western atheist in America forming militias right there
Again why should I care about anyone that doesn’t care about me? Op would gladly watch me die. She already doesn’t care about atheists getting killed all over the world.
Wow, leave the internet for a couple of days to handle things in meat space, and people start saying exactly what they mean. Good to know. I should try that at work.
Dude, I have no problem with atheists. I genuinely do not care if you believe in a deity or not. I never have. And, as I have mentioned, multiple times, atheists also can face persecution in various countries to include my own. To use a phrase common in my day job: what evidence do you have?
However:
1) An atheist raised in a Christian hegemonic country is still inculcated with Christian worldviews and culture whether they themselves are Christian or not.
2) Structures built under Christian hegemony disadvantage, on a systemic level, people with minority religious cultures (including those that are atheist) to a greater degree than others. Including other atheists.
3) To equate the non-systemic oppression of individual atheists in the west to the Holocaust, which resulted in the death of 11 million people regardless of faith (at the hands of an officially secular state no less), shows you for who you really are. It’s amazing how many fascists wear leftist hats these days.
I’ve never wished harm on atheists of any cultural background, I simply point out how much of the culture of the west is steeped in Christianity. Your discomfort with acknowledging that says nothing about me.
I am willing to entertain a fair amount of debate, but debate with those who “don’t care” about the Holocaust (which, again, murdered 11 million people) because they dislike one Jew? No. Get the fuck out. Enjoy the block, it’ll begin in one hour to give you time to read this. And don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, the door doesn’t deserve that.
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
11 million+ murdered. Jews, Roma, Sinti, the disabled, queer folks (mostly homosexual men), Soviet POWs, Slavs, political prisoners…
It seems so long ago. It wasn’t. My great aunts were there, my grandmother (z”l) was there. This happened in the modern world, in living memory.
Stand up. Fight back. Never forget. Never again.
it’s holocaust remembrance day, and in light of the most recent news, here is maus iandmaus ii.
especially important in light of this:
A Tennessee school district has voted to ban the Holocaust graphic novel ‘Maus’
Petition to protest the book’s banning
Refeeding syndrome occurs when someone experiencing long-term malnutrition/starvation suddenly begins to consume a high calorie diet. This can result in hypophosphatemia (low phosphate levels) which lead to cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure, and potentially death. It was first discovered following the liberation of concentration camps in WWII but continues to be relevant, even as a factor in the recovery of patients suffering from eating disorders. Patients recovering from starvation must have their diets monitored carefully under the supervision of dieticians in order to avoid refeeding syndrome.
I started these posts on a whim talking about lanugo hair (goodness knows why), and perhaps I’ll stop on a whim too. But there’s a chance you may learn an interesting tidbit or two and possibly a detail that may be useful in your writing. Let me know if there are any topics you might like to know about though!
European Jews on Ellis Island protest against their deportation to Germany, 1936
viareddit
Don’t forget this part either. While the 1924 Immigration Act essentially cut off Jewish immigration to the U.S., further action by officials enforcing anti-immigrant law was a huge issue in the 1930s too. Being a refugee did not save you from deportation.
And the same thing is happening today with all the refugees from the west and south Asian, and Central and South American countries we’ve either destablized or aided in the destabilization of. We can’t let ICE and their minions deport these immigrants to be killed.
Post link
I am absolutely begging non-Jews to stop framing the Holocaust as a “more respected” tragedy in comparison to other genocides and atrocities. There seems to be a general belief amongst non-Jews that everyone knows a lot about the Holocaust and is respectful of it. In reality multiple studies have shown that this is not the case. The general public in many places (yes including America) know little about the Holocaust and a shocking number hold antisemitic beliefs about it. Personally in America the education I received on it went only so far as to paint America as a heroic nation while glossing over its own rampant antisemitism including its refusal of Jewish refugees all while showing me graphic images of dead and tortured Jewish people.
I think it’s also important to acknowledge that a lot of meaningful awareness, documentation, etc. of the Holocaust has been fueled by Jewish people in spite of how society has treated our history and not because of it. Nations have minimized their involvement, history has been avoided, justice has often been denied us. We, like every other marginalized group who’s faced similar atrocities, have had to fight to keep our history alive when oppressive systems have done their best to erase it. To believe otherwise is to minimize the effects of both past and present antisemitism on the treatment of our voices.
I also often see non-Jews say things like “well [x] insensitive thing would never be said/believed if it was about the Holocaust” and every time it’s something I absolutely have heard said/believed about the Holocaust. I have had people defend their nazi soldier grandparents to me, been casually told the Holocaust was for the best, met my fair share of Holocaust deniers. Not to mention the general insensitive misconceptions I regularly hear tossed about.
All this to say that y’all need to stop treating Jewish people like some OppressedLite™️ group. Stop talking about antisemitism in the past tense and talking about our history in a way that erases our continuing struggles to keep it alive. Don’t bring us up as a coddled minority. It’ not only inaccurate but fucking dangerous for us when you completely ignore the oppression we’re still facing.
If you blame Jews for their own suffering and oppression, you are the one standing idly by as children are gassed and thrown into the incinerator. You are the one assisting the “physician” injecting boiling water into the bowels of purposefully-frozen Jewish victims. You are the one celebrating as thousands are forced to convert at threat of exile or death just to maintain the homogeny of your society. You are the one who ignores the screams of thirty thousand people with lives and hopes and families, murdered in a one-day pogrom.
If you look at the pain and the millions dead and lost to the Jewish people and say that it must be our fault, that we must have done something wrong, things wrong that endured for centuries that even the youngest children are guilty of, then you are the one encouraging our oppressors. You might even be the one administering the poison or spitting at us in the street or tearing our children from us for experimentation and murder.
If this seems grotesque, that’s because the suffering that’s been exacted on the Jewish people for millennia is more brutal than any nightmare you could ever have, and it haunts us to this day.
Mikey Walsh (@thatbloodyMikey) says, “I don’t know what I should be more gutted or disgusted by here… the kind of Racism that GRT people are forced to live with every day… that’s it’s still absolutely ok to demonise us & our demise as a joke… or the reactions of whooping & cheering from the audience..”
On video, comedian Jimmy Carr says, “When people talk about the Holocaust[…] they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.”
The audience proceeds to clap and cheer.
******
This comes from Jimmy Carr’s 2021 Netflix special, Jimmy Carr: His Dark Material. No, I didn’t link to it. I don’t recommend you watch it. Don’t benefit Jimmy Carr financially. Don’t bolster Netflix’s decision to stream the special.
The entire hour is full of truly horrifying shit. He has an extended bit about people with dwarfism toward the beginning that is just awful.
At the end, he goes to great lengths to explain that he’s presenting “career ending” jokes. The Holocaust joke finishes out this section, 5 minutes and 40 seconds from the end of the hour-long special.
This joke receives the biggest reaction of the entire “career-ending” bit. The audience lovesit. People actually whistle in agreement.
Carr goes on to say, “That’s a very good joke for the following three reasons. Firstly, fucking funny. Well done, me! Secondly, edgy. Edgy as all hell. A joke about the worst thing that’s ever happened in human history. And people say, ‘Never forget.’ This is how I remember! I keep bringing it up. Third reason that’s a good joke is that there is an educational quality.” He then goes on to mock the murder of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
I understand that Jimmy Carr’s comedy is, in general, not meant for me. I’m not white enough for it. I’m not rich enough for it. I’m not nihilistic enough for it. I’m not his target demographic.
That said, the joke itself–coupled with the audience reaction–is a fucking nightmare. It’s disgusting. Can I call it moredisgusting than the rest of his special? No. The whole thing is terrible. Can I honestly say I’m surprised by the audience’s reaction? No. People have been gleeful about murdering Roma for thousands of years. All that said…
You never really get used to hearing people cheer your own death.
Anyway, keep yourselves so safe for me.
XOXO, Earnest
Something’s getting lost in the response to this…
Non-Roma seem fixated on Carr, on his bigotry, on what an asshole he clearly is and apparently has always been. That’s all well and good. But I don’t give a fuck about Jimmy Carr.
It’s the audience. Look at the audience.
That’s a full house. It’s not a laugh track. How many of the people in the audience went home after that show feeling good, feeling happy? How many told their friends it was a great night out? How many laughed again, days later, thinking about some of his funnier bits?
Now let’s expand on that.
Jimmy Carr didn’t debut any new material at the taping of his special, friends. He’s been traveling around the country performing these jokes. He’s workshopped the shit out of it. Carr would never have taken a risk this massive, right at the end of his set, unless he was absolutely sure of the audience’s reaction.
This wasn’t about one particularly bigoted audience… but about audience after audience after audience, across the U.K. and possibly around the world.
He knew that the majorityof people would laugh at that joke. He was absolutely sure. That’s how deep the anti-Romani bigotry runs.
It’s easy to look at a man like Jimmy Carr and say, “He’s the problem! Eliminate the problem!” But the problem wasn’t really Jimmy Carr. It was the people clapping and cheering and whistling their agreement. It was their enthusiastic approval of Roma genocide.
So, yes. Fuck Jimmy Carr! But don’t get comfortable, thinking he’s the problem here. How many of your neighbors would’ve gone home feeling good, feeling happy? How many would have cheered?
XOXO, Earnest
Mikey Walsh (@thatbloodyMikey) says, “I don’t know what I should be more gutted or disgusted by here… the kind of Racism that GRT people are forced to live with every day… that’s it’s still absolutely ok to demonise us & our demise as a joke… or the reactions of whooping & cheering from the audience..”
On video, comedian Jimmy Carr says, “When people talk about the Holocaust[…] they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.”
The audience proceeds to clap and cheer.
******
This comes from Jimmy Carr’s 2021 Netflix special, Jimmy Carr: His Dark Material. No, I didn’t link to it. I don’t recommend you watch it. Don’t benefit Jimmy Carr financially. Don’t bolster Netflix’s decision to stream the special.
The entire hour is full of truly horrifying shit. He has an extended bit about people with dwarfism toward the beginning that is just awful.
At the end, he goes to great lengths to explain that he’s presenting “career ending” jokes. The Holocaust joke finishes out this section, 5 minutes and 40 seconds from the end of the hour-long special.
This joke receives the biggest reaction of the entire “career-ending” bit. The audience lovesit. People actually whistle in agreement.
Carr goes on to say, “That’s a very good joke for the following three reasons. Firstly, fucking funny. Well done, me! Secondly, edgy. Edgy as all hell. A joke about the worst thing that’s ever happened in human history. And people say, ‘Never forget.’ This is how I remember! I keep bringing it up. Third reason that’s a good joke is that there is an educational quality.” He then goes on to mock the murder of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
I understand that Jimmy Carr’s comedy is, in general, not meant for me. I’m not white enough for it. I’m not rich enough for it. I’m not nihilistic enough for it. I’m not his target demographic.
That said, the joke itself–coupled with the audience reaction–is a fucking nightmare. It’s disgusting. Can I call it moredisgusting than the rest of his special? No. The whole thing is terrible. Can I honestly say I’m surprised by the audience’s reaction? No. People have been gleeful about murdering Roma for thousands of years. All that said…
You never really get used to hearing people cheer your own death.
Anyway, keep yourselves so safe for me.
XOXO, Earnest
