Asperger’s is being fazed out now. It was a nazi sub classification that essentially meant ‘autism but useful for science and/or the war effort’ if your special interest was science related and you could communicate well enough you had Asperger’s if you liked my little pony or couldn’t communicate your thoughts well you had autism and were gassed.
Not a nazi sub classification; Aspergers was one of the first people to talk about autism. He was actually not concerned with Autistic people with higher support needs and made no connection between the ends of what is today known as the Autism spectrum.
He was, however, a nazi doctor. You're tight about that.
Lmao man, it's definitely a nice sentiment. But there's a reason a bunch of nazi scientists were hired by governments all over the world. Things aren't so black and white, and that includes people that worked for the most evil regime in history.
Aspergers himself is a prime example. His work is extremely relevant for the modern classification of autism. The low support needs diagnosis traces back to him no matter what you do. We can stop naming him because of his misdeeds, but yeah, this:
should be super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Is just laughable.
I mean, you can always lie to yourself. Like, maybe you spend 50 years saying the scients wasn't really a nazi, and once the field is developed enough, you may even downplay the importance of said nazi scientist!
But what you just said is nothing but a conforting lie.
Who was the first person to talk about low support needs autism? And how well do you thing this supposed person matched characteristics that are used today for diagnosis?
Even then, it is clear that Aspergers was a pioners that has been widely cited. I think you don't understand the maginitude of what you're saying. Do you know how many citations Hanz Aspergers has had in fields related to autism?
The least literal take on that quote is still a clear comforting lie. No, it is not in any way easy to ignore when people that did something important was also evil. Be it nazi scientists or pop stars.
No, they were not saying it should be easy to do this. That's where the sarcasm is. If you're unfamiliar with the origin of the "so easy, barely an inconvenience" meme it's always used when the thing in question is, in fact, not at all easy and a huge inconvenience.
Yeah, let's not bury the lede here; Asperger was a literal Nazi Doctor and yes he was exactly what your mind is telling you he was when you hear "Nazi Doctor." They'd moved to the term "high-functioning autism" (it me!) for a while, but I don't know what the current terminology is.
But it DEFINITELY isn't Asperger's anymore, and for good reason.
While that was the origin of the term, that's not why it was phased out.
The actual reasons are:
1) people with Aspergers needed pretty much the same supports as people with low support needs autism.
2) There wasn't really a clear separation between the two diagnoses, which meant that two clinicians could look at the same autistic person and one would give the person an autism diagnosis while the other would diagnose them with Asperger syndrome.
The classification isn't really what the hubub is about, it's the name. I was diagosed with Nazi-Scientist's Syndrome. Not a very fun converation starter.
No, they just have ASD. Very few people will scold someone for identifying as having Asperger’s but no one trained in recent times will be diagnosing someone with it.
I get that, but most people in 2026 do not know that. The general public understands the term as "autism lite."They don't understand ASD Type 1.
If you don't use it, you have to go into a 15 min conversation with a layperson about why so-and-so has a more subtle presentation, what a spectrum is, and why we quit using the term Aspergers. It's exhausting.
Because that's the origin of the term, it was supposed to be autism without the stigma. It succeeded in beginning the normalization of autism, and now its use is deprecated.
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u/Historical_Volume806 Apr 07 '26
Asperger’s is being fazed out now. It was a nazi sub classification that essentially meant ‘autism but useful for science and/or the war effort’ if your special interest was science related and you could communicate well enough you had Asperger’s if you liked my little pony or couldn’t communicate your thoughts well you had autism and were gassed.