The Nazi History Behind Asperger

[Judi Lynn]

By Edith Sheffer
March 31, 2018

PALO ALTO, Calif. — My son’s school, David Starr Jordan Middle School, is being renamed. A seventh grader exposed the honoree, Stanford University’s first president, as a prominent eugenicist of the early 20th century who championed sterilization of the “unfit.”

This sort of debate is happening all over the country, as communities fight over whether to tear down Confederate monuments and whether Andrew Jackson deserves to remain on the $20 bill. How do we decide whom to honor and whom to disavow?

There are some straightforward cases: Hitler Squares were renamed after World War II; Lenin statues were hauled away after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But other, less famous monsters of the past continue to define our landscape and language.

I have spent the past seven years researching the Nazi past of Dr. Hans Asperger. Asperger is credited with shaping our ideas of autism and Asperger syndrome, diagnoses given to people believed to have limited social skills and narrow interests.

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/opinion/sunday/nazi-history-asperger.html

[katmondoo]

1. Now it is time to get rid of Fox News and their hateful rhetoric

What gives them the right to bully every person that disagrees with them. Are they policing all Americans and the whole world with their nastiness and extreme right wing garbage, why do we have to take it? I say BS and we start striking back hard, really hard against this crap.

[FM123]

2. very interesting article, thank you

[dalton99a]

3. Kick

[appalachiablue]

4. What brutal treatment & killing of children under the Nazi Eugenics Program.

If I hadn't known some of this already, the articles' descriptions would've been more shocking.

After reading this it's doubtful that Herr/Doktor A.'s name should remain on the diagnosis. More background on him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger

[Mosby]

5. magaret sanger was a eugenicist

It was accepted science for a time, I literally read about it in my mom's biology textbook.

The theories were also presented in the scopes monkey trial as a way to discredit the racist textbook he was using.