Autism, terrorism, and counter terrorism

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In 2018 Alek Minassian rammed a truck into a group of pedestrians on a sidewalk in Toronto, killing 11. Minassian, who had initially justified his atrocity as part of an “incel rebellion”, had autism and at his trial his defence tried to argue that this played a role in his decision-making and lack of empathy. Is there a relationship between terrorism and autism?

A recent investigative report in The Financial Times tackles this very question, answering broadly in the affirmative: yes, there does seem to be a relationship between the two and we should all be alarmed about this. The report’s author, Helen Warrell, writes that according to estimates from psychiatrists working with UK counter-terrorism police, “people with autism account for about 13% of their casework, against a population base-rate of 1%”.

She also cites alarming data from the Home Office about Prevent, the UK’s de-radicalisation programme. Of those who are referred to this programme and whose cases are deemed serious enough to warrant an intervention, one-quarter have autism. “It seems that a high number of minors with neurodiversity are being swept up in a programme designed to reduce the threat of violent extremism,” she writes, alluding to the nub of the issue. Which, roughly, is this: are autistic people a threat to national security in the UK or is the national security state creating a threat where none really exists? The report largely dodges this question.

Warrel correctly notes that the “vast majority of people with autism pose no terrorist risk or danger to society”, but “they may be more vulnerable to grooming and radicalisation”. She further explains that extremists even have an expression for the process by which autistic people can be manipulated to join their causes: “weaponised autism”. This, I must confess, was news to me.

What is the evidence to show that terrorist groups are deliberately targeting autistic people for recruitment? And when did terrorist groups decide that recruiting autistic people was a good idea? And if indeed autistic people are especially vulnerable to terrorist recruitment, which is questionable, why do so few go on to commit actual terrorist attacks? Warrel says little about this and concedes that the available evidence is thin, noting the “relative infancy of research into autism and extremism”.

What she does instead is relay an anecdote from Alistair Barfield, who was diagnosed with autism as a boy and who now works as a consultant for Prevent. Here’s the anecdote. At university, Barfield discovered a game called “Warhammer”, which led him to 4chan and gaming sites and then it happens. “Before long,” she notes, “he was wearing a Maga cap and had become a disciple of the American far-right conspiracist Alex Jones. Barfield wore a T-shirt that read “facts don’t care about your feelings” to lectures and sought out arguments with “the Libs”. He’d started down the path to extremism but, at the last moment, pulled back.

It’s a revealing tale, not just because of its faux coherence, but because it tells you something about the biases of the journalist who thinks it’s worth relaying: that wearing a Maga cap is a sign of extremism and that the journey towards politically motivated mass murder starts with owning the Libs.”

The bigger story that is obfuscated in Warrell’s report is how the involvement of young and autistic people in UK counter-terrorism casework reflects not a new reality of terrorism but the changing reality of UK counter-terrorism, where the definition of terrorism is stretched to include watching extremist content on the internet.

It turns out that one of the vulnerabilities that autistic people suffer from is not the risk of being recruited by terrorists, but that of getting dragged into an anti-extremism apparatus whose very existence depends on manufacturing ever greater numbers of extremists.