RadicalRNAdvocate

Fascism, deportation, and discrimination are on the rise. Empathy, benefits, and accessible medicine are becoming even more scarce.

Disabled and shielded by my white skin. 

My neurotype makes it even harder for me to understand why hate even exists. It logically doesn’t make sense to me, and it hurts me. Not just my emotions, when I see hate, it hurts my physical body. I feel like it is happening to someone I know and love. Every video that shows ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) abducting a person makes me feel waves of nausea. It causes muscle spasms, headaches, and a feeling of despair that I can’t even describe. 

I am white, I was born in America, and these things are huge privileges in the era of Trump. I hate that I have them. I don’t want either privilege. What made white people ever decide they were better than anyone else? We were and still are the colonizers, murderers, and climate destroyers. 

I am proud of my heritage, that is true. I am proud of my great-grandpop Benny, who came to America from Italy. I am proud of my grandparents and parents. They never closed their doors to anyone. It did not matter what they looked like, who they loved, or what they believed. Everyone got the same treatment: warm smiles, a fresh pot of coffee, and whatever food there was to share. 

I also do not “look disabled” at first glance. So I am “safe” for now, in that regard. But even this is not what I want. I don’t want to be comfortable. Because I am not, I am afraid and know the truth: Fascism will come for everyone eventually. Death will enter every home, affect every family. History shows us this fact. 

Disability and Fascism: A Brief History. 

People forget — disabled people were one of the first targets under Nazi fascism. Fascism and disability are historically intertwined. Long before the Final Solution, disabled children and adults were labeled “life unworthy of life.” They were experimented on, sterilized, institutionalized, and killed.

America has this same history, too. Forced sterilization of over 60,000 disabled people, funded by universities like Stanford and supported by state governments across the U.S. This is part of the eugenics in the United States legacy.

We like to pretend this is a foreign problem.

But eugenics was born here.

It never disappeared — it simply changed its language:

• “cost savings”
• “public burden”
• “non-compliant patient”
• “high utilizer”
• “too complex”

Fascism always starts this way. First, make a group “too expensive.” Then, convince the public that cruelty is a form of fiscal responsibility.

Socio-Political Continuity: Fascism Never Vanished — It Rebranded

Even after WWII, the ideology didn’t go away. It just changed the vocabulary.

It became “quality of life.”

It became “functioning level.”

It became a “productive member of society.”

Instead of calling disabled people “degenerates” or “unfit,” modern society calls us “too dependent” or “non-contributing.”

It’s the same logic, just with more compassionate-sounding packaging.

U.S. Disability Policy in the Trump Era

The current Trump administration attempts to restrict or reduce support and protections for disabled Americans. The Trump era disability policy includes:

• attempts to dismantle or weaken the Affordable Care Act
• proposals to cut Social Security Disability Insurance and tighten eligibility
• Medicaid work requirements in various states
• “public charge” rule changes punishing access to benefits

All of these policy shifts share a common root assumption:

Survival support is optional — not a right.

That is fascistic logic.

This issue is not caused by one singular villain. Instead, this administration is recasting autistic and disabled Americans as “expendable costs” inside the system.

Why This Matters to the General Public

Fascism rarely announces itself.

It slowly normalizes suffering.

It tells the public that cutting services is “fiscally responsible.”

It tells the public that denying access is “fair.”

It tells the public that cruelty is “realism.”

Disability intersects with race, gender, immigration, neurodivergence, chronic illness, and class. Therefore, attacking disabled people becomes a template for attacking everyone else later.

Disabled people are society’s early warning system.

Autistic people and fascism intersect early — because we recognize patterns, we do not ignore the slope.

Final Thought

Being Autistic in this era means I process the world literally and somatically. I feel a political threat in my body like sirens going off inside my nervous system.

I am afraid — but fear is not the whole story.

Disabled communities have survived centuries of attempted erasure. And every time, we stayed not because a government protected us — but because we protected each other.

If fascism and disability are again colliding in the United States, disabled people already know how to resist:

We share medication

We share food

We share safe homes

We share knowledge

We share access

We are not the weak ones.

We are the evidence that interdependence is the only thing that has ever saved us.

We are not burdens — we are proof that survival is collective.

And we are not going anywhere.

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Documented History + Sources

Nazi “T4” Program History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – “Nazi Persecution of the Disabled”:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-persecution-of-the-disabled-euthanasia-program

American Eugenics / Forced Sterilization
PBS – “The Eugenics Crusade”:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eugenics/

Yale – “America’s Hidden History of Eugenics”:
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/americas-hidden-history-of-eugenics/

Trump Era Disability Policy Context + ACA Threats
KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) – “How the ACA Changed the Landscape for People with Disabilities”:
https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/how-the-aca-changed-the-landscape-for-people-with-disabilities/

CNBC – “Social Security Disability Changes Could Hurt Beneficiaries”:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/10/social-security-disability-changes-could-hurt-beneficiaries.html

Lee, M. (2017). Fatal Violence Against Transgender People in America 2017. https://core.ac.uk/download/480180938.pdf

Medicaid Work Requirements
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services – 2018 Approval Announcement:https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2018/01/11/hhs-approves-first-state-medicaid-work-requirement.html

Public Charge Rule Changes
Migration Policy Institute – “Public Charge Rule: History and Current Developments”:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/public-charge-rule-immigrants-history-and-recent-developments

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