Asperger was not a nice man.

PostAsperger was not a nice man. by **Denster** » Thu Apr 19, 2018 8:02 am

Claims that Asperger (whom the syndrome is named for) was a Nazi collaborator who sent children to the Nazi eugenics program as opposed to saving them (as previously thought).

Source is from the telegraph which is behind a paywall.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... study-says

Feel dirty quoting the guardian.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by KK » Thu Apr 19, 2018 8:04 am

Americans already knew this, thus they renamed it ass burgers.

Denster wrote:Feel dirty quoting the guardian.

As far as I knew, he identified the condition but didn't necessarily have any interest in curing or preventing it (which isn't really possible anyway), and collaborated with the nazi's to keep funding and shelter from the rain. So not really a good person but one of those people similar to the rocket and atomic scientists I guess who weren't really bothered about the people they were affecting.

One of a few reason to prefer the higher functioning autistic diagnosis. There are also inaccurate stigma around the Asperger diagnosis such as a narrow range of interests and being anti social, neither are necessarily the case. So I would welcome the term disappearing.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Denster** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 12:32 am

I think he's significantly worse than the rocket scientists. He sent disabled children to the 'death doctors' for their experiments and knew full well what was being done. He then enjoyed privileges, funding and position in return for this and turning a blind eye. he also claimed to have shielded his patients from the Nazi experiment and extermination schemes.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Moggy** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 7:39 am

Denster wrote:I think he's significantly worse than the rocket scientists. He sent disabled children to the 'death doctors' for their experiments and knew full well what was being done. He then enjoyed privileges, funding and position in return for this and turning a blind eye. he also claimed to have shielded his patients from the Nazi experiment and extermination schemes.

That’s what I was going to say. The rocket scientists used slave labour, but as far as I know they didn’t hand children over to the regime knowing they were going to be exterminated. That’s another level of cruelty.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Qikz** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 7:40 am

I'm not sure how this is really news. Sadly people do horrible things if it benefits them. At first it's possible they threatened him, but we'll never know. The thing is when you're living under a dictator I imagine it's very easy to give up your own morals to do whatever it takes to avoid yourself getting into trouble.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Moggy** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 7:45 am

Qikz wrote:I'm not sure how this is really news. Sadly people do horrible things if it benefits them. At first it's possible they threatened him, but we'll never know. The thing is when you're living under a dictator I imagine it's very easy to give up your own morals to do whatever it takes to avoid yourself getting into trouble.

Yeah, that's mostly bollocks.

An editorial in the journal, written by Cambridge academics, said that Asperger "willingly became a cog in the Nazi killing machine" and "part of the eyes and ears of the Third Reich".

A total of 789 children are said to have been killed at the Am Spiegelgrund clinic.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43820794

Is it news? Well it depends on what you class as news I guess. I would say that it is news that a man who claimed to have shielded children was actually willingly sending them to their deaths. Especially when that man has a famous syndrome named after him.

I'm not sure if Asperger himself made those claims, but I was never of the opinion he was a good person. I simply didn't know, and so this clarifies that he wasn't.

I meant "what I knew" literally by the way, as I'm analysing this from my personal circumstances as I wear this badge. I'm sure they exist but it's hard not to be extremely suspicious of anyone working with the nazis especially when so much of the world were dying to fight Hitler.

It's an awkward situation to further distance oneself from someone who supported eugenics and possibly the extermination of your whole type of person. Which is what I mean by I wouldn't miss the term Aspergers.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Moggy** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 8:08 am

Green Gecko wrote:I'm not sure if Asperger himself made those claims,

He did.

In a 1980 inauguration speech at the University of Vienna, shortly before his death at the age of 74, he said he was wanted by the Gestapo (Nazi-era secret police) for refusing to turn in children to them.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Denster** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 8:20 am

It’s news because a man has now gone from famous to infamous. He could have left and pursued his career elsewhere and perhaps been less successful, well backed etc. He could have come out in later years and said - actually I suspected or knew these atrocities went on or I turned a blind eye - whatever.
He didn’t. He claimed to be the scientific equivalent of Schindler when in fact he was closer to Mengele. His complicity and collaboration has been sanitised and airbrushed and these documents - believed to have been destroyed are important in exposing this man.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Pedz** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 8:43 am

Aspergers isn't a term used anymore, it's high functioning autism that is used.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **False** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 8:45 am

Aspergers is very much still in use.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Pedz** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 8:54 am

people still use the term, but when getting a diagnosis from a doctor the term is now out of date.

It is still used both derogatorily and clinically only experts disagree on whether it and high functioning autism are the same thing (they are). Its existence seems to linger mostly because it is popularly used to describe someone with low social functioning and an intensely narrow range of interests or obsessions even though that is not universally true, and so in some ways it feels like a scapegoat for autism, but it is a worse stigma in my view, because it is used in this way. It is the equivalent perception of "dyslexic" versus "someone who can't write or is thick", the former is generalshic, the latter tends to more judgmental. We don't have different words for dyslexia so it is very strange that we do for autism. Hopefully the negativity brought by these revelations will see it fall into disuse.

I much prefer the form autism, I even embrace how it is used jokingly, because you can describe autistic behaviours even if someone isn't autistic while remaining somewhat descriptive. Whereas Aspergers (ass burgers etc as just seen above) seems to have become some kind of wilfully stupid Americanism for people who are strange or simply idiotic.

PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Pedz** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 8:57 am

I only say this, as with my son being diagnosed autistic not too long ago, I was told by the Specialist and several people who helped with things that Aspergers is now an out of date term.

The terms they seem to use now are a level of functioning and a range,

My kid has high functioning mid ranged autism.

It is outdated but still used yes. This was 10 years ago now though.

Why don't they call it meningitis?

Not just the meningitis, but the womaningitis and the childreningitis too

YouTube · PostRe: Asperger was not a nice man. by **Earfolds** » Fri Apr 20, 2018 1:09 pm

Actually, they don't use the term Asperger's disorder any more. It's long been replaced by the range of Autism Spectrum Disorders, or ASD. Diagnoses that don't fall under Autism Spectrum Disorder now come under Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder.

Asperger was not a nice man.

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