I wrote this a while ago when I was a bad communist. Self criticism is important comrades.

Ableism and the Internet

A Self Criticism

Everybody, everywhere is guilty of doing this at some point. Everywhere you go on the internet, except for some circles, you will find ableism. Your favorite YouTubers and actors are likely guilty as well. We all have said or continue to say things like, “that’s stupid,” “(s)he’s an idiot,” “look at this libtard/conservatard,” and so on and so on. Being a connoisseur of shitposting and breaking circlejerks, I occasionally go on right wing dominated websites to see what kind of a shitstorm I can rustle up. Each time I do this, you would not believe the kind of names I get called. Actually, you probably would. Just go visit /r/altright, (wash your brain out with the strongest bleach you can find afterwards), and you will probably get the idea. I said something ableist as well on my favorite community reddit.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM. Of course, I got banned almost immediately and told to self criticize. The ban was for referring to libertarians as “libertards.” Instead of attacking their disgusting ideas, I used a dehumanizing term to refer to them. After some time, I decided to finally write down my thoughts and hopefully rejoin the community.

    Ableism is discrimination against a person based on a disability they were born with, or acquired. For example, it would be ableist to deny a person who is paralyzed from the legs down an office job, because you do not want to deal with their disability. Some ableist slurs include “cripple,” “vegetable,” “retard,” “stupid,” “idiot,” and so on. While much of this language originated in the medical community, for example, “cretin” used to be a medical term and “mongoloid” originally referred to someone from south or eastern Asia (this term is now not only ableist, but racist as well). However, many of these harmful terms have migrated to the vernacular as a way to insult people. Mentally disabled and neurodivergent people are the butt of this insult. For ages we have called these people and others such harmful terms despite their clear history. And it is now happening again. As you peruse the internet, you will find people calling other people “autists” as an insult, as if being autistic would imply that you are unable to have valid opinions or that you, as a person, are worth less because they have autism. This clear dehumanization should be seen as unacceptable by anyone who claims that they are against discrimination, but even our most anti-discriminatory peers are still guilty of using these harmful, dehumanizing terms. These terms, this dehumanization, is in the very core of the ideology of the amoral capitalist society, part of which states that you are only worth as much as your production value. Of course, this is absolutely nonsense. If this were true, we would not take care of our elderly and let them die of starvation. Ancient civilizations and even tribal cultures would take great care to ensure that the elderly and even the neurodivergent and physically disabled are cared for.

    So, what is to be done? We should eliminate these harmful terms from our collective vocabulary. Instead of calling someone’s argument “stupid”, you can say it is “nonsense,” “unreasonable,” or “unfounded on any logical base”. Calling somebody “stupid” is also illogical. We do not know their whole story, and while we may see some of the things they do in public, they may excel at other activities that we overlook or that they do in private. I, personally, will aim to refrain from judging people based on one facet of their personality that I see. I will also abstain from using such ableist terms in speech as well as in writing. I personally experienced being called these dehumanizing terms my entire childhood, and I will ensure that others will not be dehumanized as I have been. Einstein, one of my favorite socialists, said “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”