Autism in the time of politics
One of the ways that my autistic brain works is that I pick up on tiny little things which most people seem to ignore and build up a bigger picture from there. This can be great in certain situations, and not so great in others.
Over the years one way I have noticed that this can get me in, shall we say, trouble is with making judgements about other people.
Throughout my life I have been faced with people, in friends’ groups, work etc, who I have just immediately felt can’t be trusted, but haven’t been able to verbalise why. Often these have been the very same people who others in the group think are amazing. In order to fit in I have allowed my “people pleasing” nature to overcompensate and tried to do everything I can to be nice to the person. Inevitably this has led to me being taken advantage of many, many, times, and made to feel like a gullible fool who deserved to be used.
There is a significant benefit to the way I think in this regard though, and it is with work. I should stress here, not so much with colleagues at times, still have the same old issues on that score. No, it is more to do with having to deal with people such as politicians and journalists.
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t have the ability to take people at “face value”, even if I may bury my concerns at times. I am constantly astounded therefore when so many people do when faced with those in a profession which is based almost solely on presenting a manufactured image of yourself to the public.
Don’t get me wrong, there are wonderful people, who choose to be Members of Parliament for genuinely noble reasons. The thing is that in order to be elected you have to be liked, or at the very least not disliked more than your opponents, by thousands of people. The reality is that this involves having to put on some form of act.
In the UK we have the General Election in full swing, but 2024 is already being called the “year of democracy”, with 4 billion people globally voting at some point. We are bombarded with politicians making promises, and telling us what great people they are. It baffles me how so many people take them believe them without remotely looking deeper into what they are actually saying, doing or acting, or, more to the point, why.
This isn’t something restricted to any one party, or even ideology. It appears to be fairly comprehensive. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told I “have to” support such and such a politician because they believe this or that, and here I am with my, for want of a better phrase, “gut feeling” that they can’t be trusted.
The difference between friends’ groups is that I don’t have to socialise with politicians, beyond work commitments. As with colleagues though, I do need to deal with them on a regular basis and have found that people are less likely to do that if you say to their face that you wouldn’t trust them as far as you could throw them. I am a pretty skinny person, so anything I throw isn’t going very far, let alone a fully grown human being.
I am constantly amazed by how people, who I know know better, including those who work in the same sector of advocacy as I do, still will tell me that I “have to” trust such and such a politician. I am even more amazed when they will argue “what they actually meant” when the self-same MP has said something which absolutely shows contempt for our sector and those we work to support. Again, this is very much not party political. I have seen it happen with MPs from across multiple parties.
I think it was Maya Angelou who once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time”. When it comes to politics it seems that someone can show you who they are repeatedly, and yet people will still claim that isn’t who they are.
Don’t get me wrong, I have already tried to explain how autistic people who think the same way can get taken advantage of in social groups and at work, the same can be true with politics.
There is a disturbing trend of, predominantly, younger autistic men turning to far-right ideology, but the same factors can play to tribalism of all types, left, right and center. I have no basis for my next statement other than my own experiences, but I suspect it is back to that idea of burying our own feelings to people please and try and fit in.
It isn’t uncommon, quite the opposite, for autistic individuals to struggle to fit in. Honestly, when I was a kid I was convinced that I must be either an alien or a changeling who was dropped off here, because I felt so different from the people around me.
We look for ways to be part of groups. On its most basic level this takes the form of “masking”, where we try and act like everyone else. It can make some autistic individuals, particularly I would imagine those who are undiagnosed and therefore don’t have the framework for understanding why they think the way they do, more susceptible to being “radicalised”, as they try and find people to accept them.
Some politicians will take advantage of this deliberately, as they also take advantage of people feeling ignored and disconnected in general, to stoke division. Some will do it subconsciously. At the end of the day though, they are all trying to tell people “I am someone who can relate to you”. That’s just the business.
I am fortunate, I grew up around politicians. It has given me a healthy cynicism of party-political promises. A lot of people, neurotypical and neurodivergent, seem to genuinely want to believe politicians though.
Politics, especially when it is around election campaigning, can be especially difficult for neurodivergent people at times, again based on my experiences and people I have spoken to. As an autistic individual I can find people lying difficult to comprehend at times. I like things to be direct, and politics is far from that. Navigating all the unsaid things, as much as dissecting the things which are to figure out if they are true, can be exhausting for anyone, for neurodivergent individuals it can be even more so though.
The way in which someone can make one promise in the morning and then a completely contradictory one in the afternoon is infuriating for everyone though, I am sure that isn’t just limited to neurodivergent individuals. When I was a journalist and newspaper editor it would annoy people when I used to write articles which flagged these inconsistencies. I had more than one person contact me to say that I should only be writing about the latest thing which their candidate had said, in more than one country.
As we face elections around the world, I would suggest it has rarely been more important for people to follow their gut instincts, even if they cannot verbalise why they feel it and others tell them to believe something different.
It is nice to feel part of groups. It is nice to feel accepted. This isn’t the playground though. It isn’t even, for most people, the workplace. We aren’t talking about people who will actually go for a drink with you. We aren’t talking about people who will necessarily even remember your name tomorrow, if they knew it in the first place. We are talking about people who will be running the country. If something doesn’t feel right, then you don’t have to just go along with what everyone else says to do.
