Conservative MP links Autism with right wing terrorism

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Rising threat from young right-wing terrorists radicalised in their bedrooms, MP warns

This doesn't surprise me, the alt-right pipeline is designed to radicalize people and politics, or particular flavours of ideology seem easy enough to end up as special interests.

Weren't some portion of western ISIS recruits autistic as well?

https://theconversation.com/are-autisti ... ised-76726

Of course, most right-wing radicals are neurotypical, like most people are, but this is not commented on. There may be some autistics who are easily led into extremism, however, I think that most autistics are less open to manipulation, as they are less impacted by social pressures. Many autistics are highly individualistic.

Right wing radicalism, like all dogmata, offer simple clear answers to complex societal problems and hard and fast rules to follow. It wouldn't surprise me if those things appealed to autistic people - and I can sort of see why they might appeal more to autistic people than NTs. But unless someone wants to point us to some proper research on this, it's just speculation.

Sir Julian Lewis ticks all the boxes for fully fledged “Swivel-eyed-loon”. He’s more of a danger to the British people than a radicalised aspie.

pretty irresponsible of him to make reference to any minority group as being a danger, etc

Ignorance and stigma abound and needs to be pointed out when it happens.

Politicians are widely disliked for lots of reasons, stupid stuff like this might be part of the reason why. Did he make points with the audience he intended his comments for?

I hold a view that the conservative party has lost its way and has become rotten. I blame them for brexit, the whole thing started as an internal problem in the conservative party. They then managed to get a bunch of turkeys to vote for an early christmas. Brexit is harmful to honest industries and the citizens.

I think that the conservative party had a process in which they cleared out all the sensible voices and then ended up with just a bunch of rabid brexiters left. They wanted people who would support the brexit loving leadership no matter what.

I also note that some years ago UKIP was "BNP light" for those people who did not want to admit to themselves that they were racist. But then UKIP went further right, a lot of disgruntled conservatives joined it. I saw reports of UKIP people making extreme comments like one farmer who was in local goverment who advocated putting down disabled children as if they were malformed farmyard animals (Sounds like something from T4 in Nazi Germany). Then these UKIPers were then readsorbed into the conservative party. It is not hard to understand how this how you can end up with the current conservative party. I sincerely hope that labour get in at the next election !

I entirely agree, but blame for Brexit has to be also laid at the lazy millions who did not vote in the referendum and also the total idiots who voted leave as some sort of generalised protest.

As always conservatives and right wing political party members love to scape goat anyone whom, acts in a unorthodox manner outright; when in fact the majority of terrorist activities, tend to be carried out by members of their party.

A Dangerous oversimplification. We cannot know for sure to what extent autistic people are susceptible to any form of violent extremism. He may as well have said a ridiculous statement like all autistic people are murderers. The motivation of Conservatism has always been to scapegoat and oppress an already misunderstood and stigmatised group of people in society.

Frankly, I think Conservative politicians and right-wing newspapers have a larger role in radicalisation. Last autumn, we did the Home Office's "Prevent" counter-radicalisation training at work. At that time, the new Home Secretary was daily coming out with things that the training would 100% have flagged up as extremist recruiting rehetoric. Her predecessor was just as bad.

Now, let's double-check what was said:

So yes, there is a gross oversimplification but it's in your post, not the quote from the MP.

Reporting that some people convicted of x or y offence isn't saying all autistics engage in that behaviour or are prone to engaging in that behaviour.

But, if we're over-represented in some category, it's worth understanding why so that the problem can be addressed. I'd much rather have vulnerable people drawn towards extremism caught before they've done anything criminal so that they don't need to be handled like criminals.