"[Hans] Asberger's claim that autistic children were pathological because they lacked Gemüt was less a medical diagnosis than a highly ideological one about what should constitute normal behavior: he was diagnosing them with, quite literally, with a deficit of fascism."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

You'd think that mean us autistics would be particular valued by anyone who wants to preserve and realize the potential of antifascist social systems like democracy. So are we?

(3/3)

Klein then goes on to parrot a common claim that, ironically, is a good example of shifting blame for collective failures onto individuals. Which is the main topic of the previous chapter.

"Their debunked claims have contributed to to a resurgence of diseases including measles ..."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

A drop in vaccination rates *may* have contributed to this. But the evidence available only proves correlation, *not* causation.

(3/?)

"In many ways, the most successful influencers in the wellness and fitness worlds - the people who make fortunes selling us idealized versions of themselves and the idea that you, too, can attain nirvana through a project of perpetual self-improvement - are a perfect fit with far-right economic libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, who also fetishize the individual as the only relevant social actor."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

This is one place Klein and I part ways a bit.

(1/?)

"Rather than attack nurses and teachers, experts in wellness could have joined with them and fought for kids to have more outdoor education and access to nature, and for their parents to have shorter workweeks with better pay and union protections - all of which make it easier to lead an active life, and to choose and prepare healthier food."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

Also, it's not too late. We can still build alliances around goals shared by leftist, unionist and wellness folks.

(3/3)

"Many people who are knowledgeable about alternative health and preventative medicine could, like [Dr Rupa] Marya and [Raj] Patel, have used their expertise to advocate for collective and structural responses to our collective health crises during the pandemic. That is what happened during the Great Depression in the US, when New Deal programs created millions of jobs building public swimming pools as well as hundreds of state and national parks."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

(1/3)

"These are ideas with blood-soaked histories in the Americas, reaching back to the stories European conquerors and colonists told about how the infectious diseases that ravaged Indigenous populations - already weak after settlers stole their lands and decimated their food sources - were actually God's handiwork, a divine sign that these continents were meant for white Christians."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

(1/2)

#colonisation #pandemics

"It seems so distant now, but there were a few months in 2020 - a good half year - when there had been a widespread belief that the pandemic might be a catalyst for a great many of the structural changes our societies had been collectively procrastinating and avoiding."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

(1/?)

"This was another kind of exploration of doppelgangers: Roth presented the gun-toting, muscle-bound Israeli 'Jew' as a kind of collective doubling of the Old Jew, the artists and intellectuals, like Roth himself, whom many Israelis branded as soft and useless from inside their tough nationalist project. Or perhaps the New Jew was a Macabbean mirror of the chauvinist nationalists in Poland, Ukraine and Germany who had used Jews as their scapegoats for so long."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

"Johnson & Johnson, one of the major vaccine makers, not only is caught up in the opioid lawsuits but also has been ordered to pay out billions in legal settlements in recent years over alleged harm caused by several of its prescription medications and even it's ubiquitous talcum powder (found to have contained asbestos)."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

I wonder if this could be connected to the pandemic of asthma that seemed to affect every second kid when I was young?

(1/2)