High Functioning Autism and Internet Dangers, Part 2: Yes, Grooming is a Real Thing

In this episode, we look at the right-wing radicalism that has exploded online and its effects in the real world.  Ironically, many leaders and influencers in the movement, those who are most active and extreme in their online communities, are either autistic or at least self-identify as autistic.

We use the book, Black Pill, by CNN correspondent Elle Reeve, as a guide to the alt right world.  Ms. Reeve did extensive reporting leading up to and after the Unite the Right Charlottesville demonstrations in 2017.  She was at the rally, and the book covers the events. 

Ms. Reeve’s reporting puts into plain language what research has been showing, that although the actual number of autistic kids who become radicalized may by relatively small, the effects on their families, communities and society in general can be profound.

Thanks to soundimage.org for the free access to the AI generated music used in this podcast (https://soundimage.org/) 

Transcript

Is the Internet safe for Autistic Youth?

 Episode Two

 Yes, Grooming is a Real Thing

 This is the Second of four episodes that discuss internet dangers and ways to keep children and youth with autism safe online. 

Today I’d like to talk about a book that I recently read, Black Pill, by Elle Reeve.  Ms. Reeve is currently a correspondent with CNN.  But the book is based on her journalistic work leading up to and after the Unite the Right Charlottesville demonstrations in 2017.

The relevance of the book to our discussion of autism and radicalism is that many of the people who groom kids with autism may be autistic themselves.  Many have been either formally diagnosed or self-identify as autistic.

While the book does not focus on autism, there is a theme throughout of the types of people who are attracted to and get affiliated with right wing groups. The ideas of being an outsider, of others being “normies”, the social isolation, bullying in childhood, the difficulty transacting the daily social agendas and rules that neurotypical people follow without difficulty…are all parts of the attraction of radicalization.

While the book goes into significant detail about right wing radicalism in general, I am concentrating on the autism aspect, which comes up several times.  If you are interested in what led up to Charlottesville and after, the book is a fascinating read.

 To give you a bit of context into the scene that young autistic people faced prior to Charlottesville the author introduced Fred Brennan, who created and ran the website 8chan, which is described by Wikipedia, “(it) has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt right, racism, antisemitism, hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings”.

 The story about Fred is compelling as a person as he has very significant physical disabilities that make it impossible for him to lead a normal life.  He created a space for people like him, who thought of themselves as outside society but, in many ways, superior to it in intellect and understanding of the world.

 As noted previously, autistic young people were attracted to it for the same reasons Fred started it; to have a place they could feel control over how they interacted with society.

 One of the trademark ways the site’s users interacted with one another was the use of jokes or memes to justify what they said, It’s just irony, it’s just a joke, it’s just a meme”.  

 Pepe the frog, a cartoon character that is widely recognized in the US as a right-wing symbol, which is taken from a very non-right-wing artist in California, is an example of the use of a wink and nod to justify ugly behaviors and comments.

 Quoting from the book, “Social rules are much more complicated and contradictory than average people realize and so autistic people can become isolated by their ability to understand those rules, said Alexander Westfall, an associate professor at Yale who is a forensic psychiatrist and specializes in autism”. 

 Westfall continues, “It was easier to understand how to behave in extremist forms than at a cocktail party. Just be more cruel than the next guy. It's just a matter of saying something more awful. There's no subtlety at all”.

 Some of the culture of these sites began with humor, but then they erupt into beasts of their own making, which are not even slightly funny and no one's even looking at it laughing. It's just horrendous. 

 Average people might visit an extremist site, see some horrible images and read some horrible comments and then look away, Westfall said. They might imagine a person with autism doing that, but with times 10. 

 But it's not like that at all. There's something very, very different about the way some minds of people with autism work, for better or for worse. We can't even begin to conceive of the kind of intensity of focus it takes to do some of these things, he said. 

 I do think autism contributes something really interesting and powerful to the equation, but he's not yet sure what exactly that is.

(Starting on page 116 of 295,)

 In terms of the people who were (and in some cases still are) leaders of the movement, the author introduces Richard Spencer, a one-time leader who has recently disavowed his ties to the movement, Matt Parrot (one of the organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlotesville), Matthew Heimbach (longtime collaborator with Matt Parrot), and Jeff Schoep, who ran a neo-Nazi group for three decades.  

Schoep is an example of what people like Spencer and Parrot called “old men” or “vampires”, “who groomed the movements leaders with money and ‘just enough’ praise to get them hooked.”

Now, as to the connection between autism and the movement, there was a particularly clarifying moment where the author was interviewing Parrot.

Ms. Reeve writes, “I asked Parrot in a tone of shamelessly fake casualness what he thought of the ubiquity of the word "autist" in quotes in white nationalism. It was like whispering the secret password in a fairy tale. The whole side of a mountain opened up. He said he'd been diagnosed with Asperger's in the 90s and then Heimbach had too.  (The American Psychiatric Associates has since drop Asperger's as a diagnosis in favor of autism spectrum disorder). 

He looked delighted as I slapped the arm of my chair and shouted, "I knew it!" Now we had a language to explain their lives.” 

And further down in the chapter she writes, “from the very first day I started going on 4chan to figure out what the alt-right was, I noticed that a stunning number of posts on the website used the term "autist" as in autistic or someone with autism spectrum disorder. It was both a term of endearment and derision.”. 

To be too autistic, to engage in some part of mainstream society, could be either a badge of honor or a shameful confession. 

The products of obsessive and meticulous internet research were sometimes called weaponized autism. Neurotypical people with mainstream politics were called normies. 

I couldn't find mainstream people talking about it anywhere and when I told friends or colleagues about it they seemed extremely skeptical. 

I called Heimbach the next morning. "You've cracked the code," he said. "The secret of the alt-right is that it's actually a movement of autistic guys with internet access. They all got their start on the internet back when there were no rules." 

Heimbach added, "The only sort of people that are going to have the energy to do all that is a bunch of autistic people”. "Of the alt-right," he said, "I'd say a quarter to half of us are on the spectrum."  That's the dividing line between the old movement and us. We all have the tism. 

However, the author later writes, "Every expert I spoke to cautioned that there is an enormous difference between people with clinically measurable symptoms of autism and people who think identifying as autistic gives them a little cachet on the internet. 

The relative size of these two groups is impossible to know because of the forum's anonymity." Three mental health professionals told me they had seen a wave of people seeking autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of them said many of these people were actually depressed. 

It might be that a huge number of 4-chan users really are measurably different from neurotypical people according to rigorous analysis based in science, or it might be more like astrology, a way to talk about your personality and how you move through the world. Saying you're a Gemini is shorthand for a fast-talking charmer who loves a good party. Saying you're an autist could be shorthand for a misunderstood outsider who can never navigate the unspoken rules of the normal person world.

I have heard from a few parents, not a large percentage, but measurable, that their child is “alt right curious”.  And although the numbers may be small of actual people trapped, it is certainly not insignificant.

The damage even one radicalized teen with autism can do tremendous damage to others. Heimbach said, who else has, “the energy to do all that is a bunch of autistic people”.

In the first episode of this series, Who is at Risk, we talked about the who and why of on-line dangers.  

 In the third episode, Realized Radicalization, you will hear stories of kids who got caught up and became radicalized.  A group of young people were interviewed after they were able to escape the life.  But the article concentrates on how they got in and why they stayed as long as they did.

 And in the fourth and final episode, Keeping Your Child Safe Online, we’ll look at what research says about how to respond to the dangers.