I really do think the current rise of global fascism is going to be especially bad for the massive and rapidly growing population of disabled people.
Already-inadequate social safety nets are already being dismantled and I think the cultural environment is going to become more and more brutal to disabled people.
We've seen some of this already obviously. The socially-acceptable, earnest explanations that the r slur is okay now because everyone's saying it, the refusal to do literally anything to protect disabled people from covid, the austerity so many governments are enforcing on the most vulnerable members of their populations.
Politics and culture are in lockstep on the insistence that disabled people are expendable. I think this has already changed the social landscape dramatically and it's only accelerating.
As the number of people too disabled to work surges from the longer-term effects of an unusually disabling virus, as work becomes increasingly brutal and underpaid (your actual income number MAY be the same, but you can't buy as much food or housing with it, and new hires are being paid even less), as social services continue to be gutted, people who care for disabled people are going to increasingly see us as burdens and see our survival as incompatible with their own.
If you aren't yet disabled, PLEASE stand up for us and find ways to organize additional support instead of just dumping your disabled loved ones on the street to die.
"I'd never do that!" Good!! Hold on to that!! Bc the Overton window will shift your opinions and politics if you let it.
So many people who were righteously angry five years ago about governments suggesting killing disabled people was an acceptable price to keep the economy running, are now repeating those same conservative party lines almost word for word and thinking it's different because they're used to it now.
It's going to become increasingly common to abandon disabled people. It's going to be described as setting boundaries and protecting your peace and prioritizing reciprocity.
But if those are your real priorities, organizing additional support is a dramatically better option than removing every source of support a disabled person has all at once and comforting yourself with the thought that finding new help all at once is the responsibility of the newly homeless person who is seriously disabled.
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