Reset time!

I have just done a mess of updates and added two blog entries (this being the second) in the space of a minute. This is because of an event that caused a big refocus on matters.

The event was the Memorial service of Australian football legend Ronald Dale Barassi last Friday.

He lived by the motto – If it is to be, it is up to me.

And after trying to be a team player basically since I joined the Labor Party, I’ve had enough. It’s time to take the whip and get things done myself as far as I can.

It starts with the Disability Royal Commission final report. I am going to push for all the recommendations to be accepted. The government in Canberra and all the state and territory governments are required to respond to the report by the end of March 2024, but I’m not waiting. I have particular interests that I won’t detail here for now but I will be focusing on them. They are important to me, but they are also important to everyone in the Autistic community going forward.

But that’s not all. The rubbish in the Autistic community needs to be cleaned out. My focus here first of all is to put the brakes on the nonsense about Hans Asperger. It is anti-Semitic. Why? Because Asperger worked with two Jewish psychologists in Vienna before the war. Why would a fascist do that? Why would a Nazi party member do that? Face facts – they wouldn’t. They would have trapped the Jews in Austria and let the SS grab them. Asperger didn’t. In fact – I think he helped them get out. I have no proof of that of course, but it makes sense against the alternative rubbish. Then there’s the idea that he sent disabled children to be killed. Wrong again. He had no say in it – in fact, he worked to protect those that he could. That’s why he called the subjects of his paper in 1943 (the paper that gave us the term Asperger’s Syndrome) “little professors”. To protect them, and to promote them as part of the Aryan Race to pacify Hitler and his goon squad. Now by the strict definition they were not, but Hitler and the Nazi Party fell for it – and thank goodness too.

One anti-Semitic fool made their way onto the Ideas Wall at the National Autism Strategy website. I saw that and quickly reported it after making one attempt to pull them into line (and failed). The posts were removed and rightly so. We will not tolerate that in the Autistic community. That is genuine anti-Semitism – attacking by default the two wonderful Jewish people who escaped Austria – Georg Frankl and Anni Weiss. They were the team mates of Hans Asperger, just as Frankl was later team mates with Leo Kanner.

There is also the use of the term neurodiversity and neurodivergent the wrong way (see the page I have updated). That is – using it is a political term. That needs to stop. It’s divisive and in some respects is reverse ableist. Reverse ableism is a prominent enemy within the Autistic community, and that needs to be controlled if we are to achieve true equality.

There is still so much to be done, and not all of it will be achieved in my life time although it might. I am aiming to beat Donald Triplett’s record of living to 89 as an Autistic. That is of course not a guarantee and can never be one. All I can do is try. But if I can get some things done – I will consider that a victory.

Let the battle begin! (Again!)