In Light Of The Things RFK Said About Autistic People Recently, I Feel Like It's Important To Remember

In light of the things RFK said about autistic people recently, I feel like it's important to remember where the term "Asperger's Syndrome" came from.

It was the nazi's way of sorting between "useful" autistic people that could still work for them, and "unwanted" autistic people that would be sent to the camps. We kept using the term until very recently to my memory, and I'm not one to speculate but I wouldn't be surprised if the distinction comes back into popularity in the near future. Or even becomes legally recognized.

This isn't about whether or not you personally paid your taxes or wrote a poem. People have value and a right to exist regardless of their ability to do those things, and the second we forget about that and say "oh but I'm not the kind of autistic person he's talking about, I'm useful" we've fallen directly back into the line of thinking they had in literal nazi germany.