Why you should stop saying "Asperger's Syndrome"

Cuz that's some Nazi sh*t.

Hans Asperger’s Nazi-Era Research

As the Aspie supremacy movement gains traction in online spaces and political discourse, it is crucial to examine its deeply troubling origins. I frequently the parents of the children I evaluate continue to use “Asperger’s” and “high functioning” to describe their autistic children (or themselves). Based on their responses when I gently correct them, most don’t realize the ableist language they’re using. But some do. Some people are choosing this language on purpose. Often today’s proponents of autistic elitism present their ideology as empowerment, yet the roots of these labels lie in the graves of children with disabilities. It started with the eugenics-based medical research of Hans Asperger during Nazi rule.

Who Was Hans Asperger?

Hans Asperger was an Austrian pediatrician working in Vienna in the 1930s and 1940s. His work focused on identifying a subset of autistic children who displayed high intelligence, logical thinking, and specialized skills. He described children with these cognitive profiles as “especially valuable” to society.

For many years, Asperger was wrongly believed to have protected autistic children from Nazi extermination programs, but historical research by Dr. Herwig Czech in 2018 revealed that Asperger was not a defender of autistic children—he was an active and cruel participant in the Nazi eugenics machine.

Asperger actively collaborated with the Nazi regime, assisting in its mission to categorize individuals based on their perceived "value to society." Dr. Czech’s report examining Asperger’s work states: “The language [Asperger] employed to diagnose his patients was often remarkably harsh (even in comparison with assessments written by the staff at Vienna’s notorious Spiegelgrund ‘euthanasia’ institution).”

Asperger helped determine which children should be spared as “useful” and which were “unsalvageable.” Children with intellectual disabilities, non-speaking children, or those with higher/different support needs were devalued as assets to the purity of German society. Thus, they were sent to institutions like Am Spiegelgrund, where children were murdered under the Nazis’ child euthanasia program designed to “cleanse” the German race of people with disabilities. Between 1940 and 1945, over 800 children were murdered at Am Spiegelgrund via starvation and neglect, medical experimentation using toxic substances, and lethal injections as part of “mercy killing” policies.

Doctor Hans Asperger was a bad man.

Under Nazi ideology, disabled people were seen as a threat to genetic purity and an economic drain on society. The Nazi regime sought to eliminate those deemed “unworthy of life” through sterilization, institutionalization, and mass murder. For children, this program was called the Child Euthanasia Program and was later extended to adults in the Aktion T4 “Life Unworthy of Life” program. The echoes of the holocaust mass genocide still reverberate through families and society today. As does the ableism that started it all.

The categorizations used by Hans Asperger directly contributed to the deaths of many autistic children and started an insidious ablest ideology baked into the fabric of autism spectrum diagnoses.

How This Ties to Today’s Aspie Supremacy Movement

The disturbing historical irony of today’s Aspie supremacy movement is that it follows the same logic that led to the deaths of autistic children in Nazi Germany. It promotes a hierarchy where only certain autistic individuals are valued. It reinforces the idea that specific types of intelligence and productivity determine worth. It dismisses and dehumanizes autistic individuals who need more or different support than their peers. Us versus them thinking is, quite literally, deadly.

The people who embrace Aspie supremacy today often do not realize that their ideology is built on the same Nazi-era thinking that led to mass murder. They believe their words represent a movement of empowerment. But this language is a modern echo of one of history’s darkest chapters.

Why We Must Reject This Thinking

The autistic community must categorically reject any movement that divides autistic individuals based on their ability to meet arbitrary standards of intelligence or independence. After all, intelligence and independence measures were designed by humans in an effort to quantify skills the majority in that society value, which makes them inherently ableist and racist. IQ is useful as one marker in a complex story of a person, it is not the whole story.

Today, the dangerous remnants of Asperger’s work is re-emerging in political rhetoric, online autism communities, and far-right ideology. In a mimic of racist eugenics practices (which I will explore in my next post) intelligence-based eugenics starts by splitting communities: People outside the autistic community are defining a superior group and devaluing others in that same group, and now the autistic community is wrestling with these pathologizing labels.

|| Autism is a spectrum—not a hierarchy. ||

|| All autistic people deserve support and respect. ||

We must confront and dismantle the historical roots of Aspie supremacy before it does further harm. This starts with us, with our language. Question yourself, deeply on why you use terms like Asperger’s syndrome or high functioning to describe yourself or your child. Are you trying to make sure others know: “I’m not that kind of autistic.” Why? Do you hold an internal bias against autistic people, or the label of autism? This is internalized ableism. It’s not your fault society implanted that notion in your mind. But now you know better, it is your responsibility to change your language. How do you want to be spoken about? What labels, or descriptors feel right to you? If it is a term like high functioning or Aspie, how do you feel about the roots of that language? Let me know.

You can amplify the internal perspectives and preferences of the autistic community: A large, complex, unique community of beautiful, regular-arse humans.