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Stephen Fry released a statement: "Elon Musk is not a Nazi. Nazis make really good cars."
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
What's great about this, and Stephen Fry is brilliant, is not that he's absolving Musk, or that he's criticizing Tesla, but that it is an argument likely leading to Elon Musk protesting,
'No, my cars are good enough that I can be a Nazi!'
He has never been diagnosed with autism. In fact, he claims to have Asperger's Syndrome, which was a diagnosis for high-functioning people on the Autistic spectrum invented by a Nazi. And he uses that claim as an excuse for his awful behavior.
If you are an actual clinician, it is absolutely unethical to diagnose someone with autism that way.
And if you were an actual clinician, you would know that no amount of "weird behavior patterns" have anything to do with embracing fascism, being a bigot, and throwing a fucking Nazi salute. And the suggestion that people would sympathize with someone who does that who isn't rich because they claim to have autism says a lot more about you than it does anyone else.
I used the term autism because it's the term used by my wife, a special ed professional for 40 years who has gone out of her way to study brain development and all kinds of disorders. According to her Musk is autistic, regardless of whether he's been diagnosed. People keep using the word "excuse" - apparently it's not okay to wonder WHY people do evil things. It reminds me of people who only want to throw drug addicts in prison and not think about what causes addiction.
A "special ed professional" is not able to diagnose autism from a distance any more than anyone else.
And yes, saying "he is autistic" to explain why he does something atrocious is an excuse.
And yet I'm not excusing his actions. He's an adult and he's fully responsible for everything he says and does. I just don't hate him, I think his fall from "Let's colonize Mars" to sucking Trump's dick and being a danger to society is a sad tale. I also feel sad that people can't even regard him as a human being - that's the exact mentality that eventually lets the government throw people into gas chambers.
And yet you're still diagnosing someone with autism from a distance, which is not possible.
Until you figure that out, nothing you say is defensible.