ARCHIVE 22/01/2025: On Autism (After Reading Some People Justifying Elon Musk's Nazi Salute).
I have been thinking for some time about the symbolic place of autism today, as I increasingly hear parents boasting about having discovered this neurodevelopmental disorder in their children ("it's not that he is not good at school, it's because he is different, somehow superior to his classmates"), or simply acquaintances defining themselves as "perhaps autistic," listing a whole array of reasons gathered from various sources on the different types of autism found on the internet ("I can watch water flow for hours," "I’ve always thought of the number three as being red," "I see words appear when I speak," "I don't really like being around people," etc.). Knowing people who are truly autistic, I have never understood how this condition could be valued as a social superior quality in the capitalistic world. And yet, we hear more and more in the press—and especially on social media—that powerful individuals are supposedly hiding an autism that has allowed them (and has always allowed them, as if it were a gift from nature—we’ll come back to that) to have talents far above the average of ordinary mortals. The recent mythologizing of Elon Musk leads me to believe that there is something worth exploring to understand the new staging of capitalist domination and the fascism that stems from it.
We have transitioned from one myth of capitalist domination to another (both aligning differently with Calvinist predestination, or its American interpretation: "manifest destiny"), from the myth of willpower to that of God's gift (where the sacred and the scientific intertwine). Since the myriad of new billionaires, all coming from privileged social backgrounds, can no longer claim to have succeeded solely through unparalleled hard work ("self-made man"), a new, more religious symbolism emerges—that of the chosen one. And to satisfy a society where religion has merged into capitalism, science, and mass culture, autism has arrived at the perfect moment—positioned between genetics (the randomness of combinations), the sacred (God’s gift), and comic books (superpowers).
Social media has scrutinized (either to mock or to prove the point) every move made by Elon Musk to confirm his self-proclaimed autism (through indirect channels), going so far as to look for signs of autism in Trump and his entourage, notably his son Barron, highlighted during the inauguration on January 20th as a younger copy of his father. This excused Elon Musk's Nazi salute that same evening. It excuses the violence, vulgarity, and stupidity of the powerful. Worse, it elevates their amorality and simple-mindedness as signs of their superiority and legitimization of their position. Like their mythical counterparts— oracles (the Pythia of Delphi), canonized Blessed figures (Basil), populist dictators (Hitler, Mussolini, etc., whom their admirers endowed with superior qualities not derived from education), and other village idiots, miracle workers, and masters of glossolalia—Musk, Trump, Zuckerberg, and their peers have similarly understood (or simply accepted) that this new myth would work in their favor at a time when their power was increasingly being challenged by the emergence and growth of a new class claiming a reversal of dominations, based on mastery of the social sciences (primarily history, sociology, and psychoanalysis) to their advantage.
The danger with this new myth is that it reactivates the same idea of the "superman," the Nazi misinterpretation of a Nietzschean proposition, which fascist ideologies have been cautiously embracing since the end of World War II to justify their will to dominate others. The autistic person—portrayed as someone with superior intelligence but struggling to express themselves and often socially marginalized—can be anyone, provided that science or God has decreed it so. This is an incredible image for those who seek to govern: it essentially conveys the message, "I am not different from you; I am simply a better version of you, and therefore legitimate to serve/dominate you." It is a deceptive image, justifying the presence of opposites without the need for synthesis.
The new billionaires have reached their positions solely due to their lack of empathy and morality, not because of positive superpowers that can be valued in popular culture, religion, and science. Whether they are complete idiots or possess a certain intelligence, it has neither played for nor against them. Only violence mattered. If true autistics were really in power, perhaps the world would be a kinder place today.
