22/09/2025
Autism, Trump, and the Return of “Useless Eaters”
How political theater on September 22 echoes history’s darkest lessons
The way leaders talk about autism matters more than people realize. History shows us that language and authority can change how societies view disabled lives.
The N**i Aktion T4 program between 1939 and 1941 systematically killed disabled children and adults under the cover of medical care. Parents were told their children would be transferred to advanced facilities for treatment. In reality, these were killing centers where patients were starved or given lethal injections. The program relied on bureaucracy, medical authority, and propaganda to convince families they were making the right choice. Parents trusted official letters and trusted doctors. They were told it was for their children’s own good.
The ideology that made it possible was lebensunwertes Leben, life unworthy of life. Disabled people were defined as burdens, written off as “useless eaters” who drained resources. Once that framing took hold, killing became routine. Aktion T4 became the testing ground for the Holocaust.
Now it is September 22, 2025, and Trump is on stage announcing what he calls breakthroughs on autism. He has teased that they have found the cause and the cure. What he and RFK Jr. are really doing is recycling old research, exaggerating preliminary findings, and packaging it as revolutionary. They frame autism as a tragedy, a crisis, a burden. They prime families to see autistic lives as broken. This is propaganda. It is politics dressed up as science.
The parallels are impossible to ignore. N**i Germany persuaded parents to send their children to killing centers by claiming they would be cared for. Trump and RFK Jr. persuade families today with promises of miracle discoveries and cures. Karl Brandt gave Hitler’s program its medical legitimacy. RFK Jr. is giving Trump’s program its political credibility. Different century, same tactic.
And behind it all is the same logic. A society that measures human value only by productivity will always treat disabled people as expendable. In Germany they said “useless eaters.” Today they talk about cost, burden, and lost potential. The words are different but the message is the same. Some lives matter. Others are disposable.
Families do not need political theater. They need schools that support their children, healthcare providers who understand autism, workplaces that value neurodiverse people, and research that improves quality of life instead of pretending to eliminate difference. The disability rights movement has been clear for decades. Disability is not about broken people. It is about societies that refuse to adapt.
History demands vigilance. In N**i Germany it began with propaganda that persuaded parents. Today it begins with speeches that frame autism as a national crisis and politicians who claim they have the answers. The slope from persuasion to persecution is steep and fast.
The lesson is clear. Never let governments or political movements decide which lives are valuable and which are not. Families deserve truth, dignity, and support. Autistic people deserve acceptance, not to be branded as burdens or future “useless eaters.”
