Autism wars take ugly turn following inflammatory charge
(Stock photo of a man pointing in an accusatory manner.)
By Amy Lutz
I’ve faced many accusations since I began advocating for my severely autistic son Jonah, now 22, and other families like ours. Once my younger kids got old enough to Google me, for example, they wanted to know why I hated autistic people – as they read on one neurodiversity blog. I’ve been called a bad writer, a worse mother, and an ableist. But this is one charge I never in a million years thought I would have to defend myself against.
When a friend on social media recently alerted me to a post that described me as “alt-right,” I assumed there was some mistake. I am both Jewish and a lifelong Democrat – hardly what the Anti-Defamation League was envisioning in its definition of a coalition defined by its rejection of mainstream politics and its embrace of virulent racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism.
It wasn’t just me. A little digging revealed that NCSA as a group and President Jill Escher individually had also been branded as “alt-right,” “reactionary,” and “fascist” by neurodiversity proponents, even though such accusations are patently absurd. In point of fact, our board is a mashup of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Democrats and Republicans, and of course not a single alt-righter. What unites us is our shared personal and professional commitment to the severely autistic and their families, a mission that transcends whatever differences we may have.
Moreover, NCSA represents a broad coalition of diverse people from many backgrounds. We draw public support from across the socio-economic and political spectrum – because that’s exactly what it means to hold mainstream, consensus positions. The issues at the core of NCSA’s advocacy – that severely autistic adults should enjoy the same rights to choose where and with whom they live, work and recreate as the non-disabled; and, if cognitive impairments preclude self-determination, that those decisions should be made by family members, not complete strangers who happen to share the same diagnosis – are not only decidedly not “alt-right,” they strike most people as simple common sense. Just consider the impressively diverse list of signers on this open letter to The New York Times from August 2020, which called the paper to task for excluding those with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities from their coverage of the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Over 70 autistic adults, family members, researchers, clinicians and providers representing the entire ideological gamut – including writers from the proudly lefty Huffington Post to the staunchly conservative National Review – added their names (and we could have included thousands more, but opted not to for obvious logistical reasons). In our extraordinarily polarized political climate, is there anything else that has enjoyed that level of bipartisan support?
Is this the moment neurodiversity proponents “jumped the shark” – when they abandoned any pretense of engaging with NCSA’s actual positions and resorted instead to trying to discredit us with hysterical mudslinging? This is a classic example, in other words, of what is called the “ad-hominem fallacy,” attacking the person instead of the argument, usually because the argument itself is too strong. Which means, I suppose, that I should just explain to my kids that these bizarre insults are really just back-handed compliments that confirm the strength of our positions. Still, I admit my sensibilities were strangely offended at such sloppy character assassination: couldn’t they have made even the slightest effort to come up with a more convincing epithet than “alt-right”?
Amy Lutz is Vice President of National Council on Severe Autism.
Disclaimer: Blogposts on the NCSA blog represent the opinions of the individual authors and not necessarily the views or positions of the NCSA or its board of directors.