In September, Elon Musk amplified a post from Autism Capital—a pro-Trump X account that he often reposts—that read: “Only high T alpha males and aneurotypical people (hey autists!) are actually free to parse new information with an objective ‘is this true?’ filter. This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making. Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think.” Musk called the claim, which originated on the infamous web forum 4chan, an “interesting observation.” His repost was viewed 20 million times.
Musk is the world’s most prominent—and most powerful—autistic person. It’s not something he conceals; notably, he mentioned it during a 2021 monologue on Saturday Night Live. Only “autistic” wasn’t the term he used. Musk told the SNL audience he had Asperger’s syndrome, a term struck from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 2013 and largely disused in psychiatry.
But Asperger’s has persisted in popular culture, even as psychiatrists have ditched it. As a shorthand for autistic people with low support needs, it has gradually become an armchair diagnosis that’s often used to sidestep the baggage or consequences that come with calling someone autistic. It means not autistic autistic; autistic, but not quite. The words “mild” or “high-functioning” are never far off. “Aspies,” in this vision, are socially inept, technically gifted, mathematically minded, unemotional, blunt. They can probably code.
At its best, the cultural rise of Asperger’s has yielded somewhat positive (if still flattening) depictions in media: Think Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory. But who are we talking about when we talk about Aspies? The answer is bound up with ideas about white men—who were disproportionately given the label—and decades of underdiagnosis of other autistic people.
Musk isn’t oblivious to Aspie stereotypes. He’s used them to get off the hook: “I sometimes say or post strange things,” he told the SNL audience, “but that’s just how my brain works.” He’s worked them into his self-promotion: In a 2022 TED interview, Musk called himself “absolutely obsessed with truth,” crediting Asperger’s with his desire to “expand the scope and scale of consciousness, biological and digital.” And he’s deployed them politically: By pushing the line that empathy is a “fundamental weakness,” Musk both reminds audiences of the discarded, dehumanizing idea that a lack of empathy is an autistic trait and implies that his own cold detachment from humanity is the best way to project strength in Donald Trump’s America.
In the 1930s and ’40s, the Austrian physician Hans Asperger separated children with what he called “autism psychopathy” into two groups: those with more noticeable disabilities and those whose atypical traits could, he thought, sometimes manifest in beneficial skill sets. Drawing on his work, psychiatrists first used the term Asperger’s syndrome in 1981; it entered the DSM as an official diagnosis in 1994. But Asperger’s quickly came to be seen as an artificial distinction, and was dropped from the DSM amid a growing recognition that autism encompassed a wide spectrum of cognitive differences. Its reputation wasn’t helped by the 2018 revelation that Asperger had sent disabled children to die under the Nazi eugenics regime.
Asperger’s syndrome also emerged at a time when some leading psychiatrists theorized that autism in general, and Asperger’s in particular, were extreme manifestations of the “male brain”—a predictable result of who was being diagnosed. When Asperger’s was still clinically recognized, the ratio of men to women diagnosed with the condition was around 11 to 1; today, for autism spectrum disorder, it’s closer to 3 to 1. Differences in the ways boys and girls are pressured to mask autistic behavior, alongside psychiatrists’ own biases, have led to massive failures to diagnose autistic women; similar factors have made white children from better-off families much more likely than other kids to receive autism diagnoses and support, trends that improved screening has begun to change.
As psychiatrists began to drop the Asperger’s diagnosis, tech embraced it—as the “good” autism, an improvement on both disability and “normie” inferiority.
But even as psychiatrists began to drop the Asperger’s diagnosis, tech figures started to embrace it—as the “good” autism, an improvement on both disability and “normie” inferiority. The Aspie label suggested symptoms that might make you better at your job, even bestow an aura of savanthood, provided that job was somehow technical. The Silicon Valley self-proclaimed Aspie is superintelligent and superrational—but not too weird to invite to parties. Being an Aspie could make you, in tech terms, “10X.”
The late autistic writer Mel Baggs gave a name to this line of thinking: “Aspie supremacy.” The ideas of the Aspie supremacist, Baggs wrote in a 2010 article, “are very close to the views of those in power.” The more productive you appear at work, the more likely you are to be deemed exceptional—or at least worth keeping around.
Of course, plenty of people identify as having Asperger’s without harboring a sense of superiority, let alone signing up for Silicon Valley–brand Aspie supremacy. Often, they’re sticking with a diagnosis they were given when it still had clinical currency; other times, they’re responding to pervasive discrimination, a factor in autistic people’s unemployment rate of about 40 percent. But something distinctive happens when the Goldilocks notion of being “just autistic enough” collides with a sense of entitlement like Musk’s. As the Dutch academic Anna N. de Hooge, who is autistic, wrote in a 2019 paper, “a particular type of ‘high-functioning’ autistic individual is ascribed superiority, both over other autistic people and over non-autistic people”—a superiority “defined in terms of whiteness, masculinity and economic worthiness.”
Jules Edwards, a board member at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network, a neurodiversity and disability justice nonprofit, calls Musk’s attitudes both an “anomaly” and the “epitome of Aspie supremacy.” “It takes all of those different ways in which [Musk] was advantaged just by the circumstances of his birth,” Edwards says. “He was born into financial wealth, he’s white, he’s cis, he’s male—all of this stuff that balls together.”
Musk’s fantasies of superiority connect deeply to his twin obsessions with genetics and reproduction—especially his own. “He really wants smart people to have kids,” Musk’s colleague Shivon Zilis, mother to four of his 14 publicly reported children, told the journalist Walter Isaacson. Zilis, an executive at Musk’s Neuralink, was apparently delighted by Musk’s offer to procreate: “I can’t possibly think of genes I would prefer for my children.” (Taylor Swift, famously presented with the same proposition, apparently felt otherwise.)
To the Silicon Valley right, the white, male skew of their industry reflects natural differences in technical and leadership skills—differences that happen to align perfectly with the pop culture caricature of Asperger’s that supremacists embrace.
This tech world fascination with Asperger’s goes back decades. In a 2001 Wired article titled “The Geek Syndrome,” Steve Silberman wrote, “It’s a familiar joke in the industry that many of the hardcore programmers in IT strongholds like Intel, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics—coming to work early, leaving late, sucking down Big Gulps in their cubicles while they code for hours—are residing somewhere in Asperger’s domain.” (Silberman went on to write NeuroTribes, a still well-regarded book on neurodivergence.) Microsoft introduced an “Autism Hiring Program” in 2015, which offered thoughtful improvements to hiring practices—albeit ones seemingly motivated, at least in part, by the idea that good tech workers were disproportionately autistic. Around the same time, GOP megadonor Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal with Musk, said in an interview that “many of the more successful entrepreneurs seem to be suffering from a mild form of Asperger’s where it’s like you’re missing the imitation, socialization gene.” (Thiel has also called environmentalism an “autistic children’s crusade” and China a “weirdly autistic” and “profoundly uncharismatic” country.)
“We have already given enough of our flesh, blood and sanity to women and normies.”
Then there’s crypto ex-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, whose autism was deployed in court to present him as less culpable for the mass fraud of which he was convicted. Making the case that her son should avoid prison time, Stanford law professor Barbara Fried wrote that “his inability to read or respond appropriately to many social cues, and his touching but naive belief in the power of facts and reason to resolve disputes, put him in extreme danger.” Never mind his company’s exploration of “human genetic enhancement” or the price others paid for his profound superiority complex—SBF was prepared to present himself as disabled for exactly as long as it was a useful defense.
At other times, Silicon Valley’s Aspie supremacists make it a priority to come after those they see as “actually” disabled. Musk notoriously did so shortly after buying Twitter, when he publicly interrogated staffer Haraldur Thorleifsson, who has muscular dystrophy, on whether he was simply shirking work. The ensuing fallout, and concerns over possible workplace discrimination, prompted a rare Musk apology. But his grade-school passion for ableist slurs has only grown. “Those who cling to the Asperger’s identity will often invoke that to discriminate or engage in lateral ableism”—targeting those they consider “more” disabled—says Seton Hall University professor Jess Rauchberg, who studies digital cultures and disability.
Aspie supremacists view themselves, above all, as exceptional beings, adapting the logic of misogyny and racism to twist false stereotypes of autistic people into self-serving positives. Musk clearly buys into an Asperger’s-era image of the unempathetic, relentlessly rational autistic man, but it’s a lazy excuse for a brand of “fuck your feelings” shitposting that’s ubiquitous on the right. If it’s true that autistic people can struggle to interpret social signals, it’s just as true that autistic displays of empathy can be nuanced and easy for others to write off, and that empathy can vary as much in autistic people as in anyone else; Musk’s war on empathy may be more of a him problem.
Besides, Musk only pins his bad takes on Asperger’s when it’s convenient—as when he used it to excuse himself on SNL. His yearslong track record of promoting race science has nothing to do with being autistic. Nor did his infamous Trump rally salutes—the ones Musk, while insisting they weren’t a Nazi thing, chased with a litany of Nazi jokes. (Some of his fans were happy to chalk up the incident to his diagnosis; critics tended to chalk it up to, well, what he actually believes.) His anti-trans attacks, including misgendering his trans daughter (who has called Musk a “pathetic man-child”), don’t have anything to do with being autistic either—especially given that autistic people are more likely to be transgender, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming.
In 4chan posts mentioning the term “Aspie” (gathered with the help of the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center), there’s a lot of support for Musk. But even more notable is how many are explicitly misogynistic. That’s not surprising to Rauchberg, who sees Aspie supremacy as “part of the larger manosphere.” One user, for example, wrote the following: “We autistic men already drive ourselves crazy engaging in self-sacrifice and simping for women and normies. I hang around with some guys that I have nicknamed ‘the Aspie bros’ and we have fun together twice a week. This is what Aspie men need. We have already given enough of our flesh, blood and sanity to women and normies.”
“Robot wives are a step up over women in every way,” reads another post. “Look what (((they))) did to Tay, Character AI, ChatGPT etc. We need a few billionaires, influencers and politicians sympathetic to our cause.” (The three parentheses designate Jewish people, another favorite target of the online far right.)
“I am sincerely glad that we are creating a network of ‘Aspie atheist MRA’”—men’s rights activist—“‘incel neckbeards’ which is reaching every corner of the globe,” another user answered.
But even on 4chan, accounts of rejection and bullying, and the pain and sadness they provoke, stand out. A typical post—“I see the bullshit in the world but Aspie brotherhood is the solution”—came in reply to the less combative “I have terminal autism but still desire a female companion even though I know it’ll never happen.”
Most autistic people who are bullied don’t declare war on “normies”; most people who struggle with dating, autistic or otherwise, don’t become incels. But most people are less conditioned than Musk, the scion of rich, far-right eugenics supporters, to believe they’re entitled to admiration, approval, women, and friends.
Aspie supremacists view themselves as exceptional beings, adapting the logic of misogyny and racism to twist false autistic stereotypes into self-serving positives.
True, Musk doesn’t have as prominent a relationship with incel culture as some manosphere influencers, though he’s both peddled the ideology and restored the accounts of high-profile misogynists like Andrew Tate. But Musk’s juvenile, hateful tweets (and those of others, which skyrocketed after he bought Twitter) are only the tip of the iceberg: A lawsuit by a group of fired SpaceX employees details a litany of alleged harassment and hostile behavior by Musk and his underlings, often phrased in terminally online, 4chan-coded ways.
Musk faced serious, traumatic bullying himself, both by his father and schoolmates, as Isaacson—whose 2023 biography includes Musk’s mother’s belief that her son is autistic—and New York Times technology reporter Kate Conger have noted. “There’s two routes that you can take from an abuse experience,” Conger said on a December podcast appearance. “There’s ‘I want to heal from this and not pass it on, and sort of move down a new path.’ And then there’s a second path that I think Musk has been more active in pursuing, in taking that negative experience and turning it into a ‘superpower’ for himself.”
The world according to Aspie supremacists
Tier 5: Genius GodThe world’s richest, most powerful self-proclaimed Aspie: Elon Musk himself.
Tier 4: Aspies Terminally online, 4chan-coded SpaceX fanboys who think little of their fellow techies—or anyone else.
Tier 3: TechiesThe normies’ Tesla-driving best and brightest. Women need not apply.
Tier 2 : Normies Society’s background noise. Great with kids. Love dogs. Laugh politely at your epic memes.
Tier 1: High SupportThere’s no one Aspie supremacists loathe more than disabled people with more visible needs.
Would Musk call himself an Aspie supremacist? Who knows. After all, it’s a label first developed by the ideology’s critics (and he didn’t reply to our questions). But some of his fans certainly embrace it. One post on X from @autismchud complimented Musk on his communication style: “Elon’s Asperger’s really comes through in this story in the best way possible. There’s no HR language, no social tact, no consensus filtering or games, just what the goal is and how to achieve that goal.”
DOGE, with its infamous squad of young engineers, offers a deeply relevant case study in reckless, egotistical overconfidence. With almost no applicable expertise, Musk and his DOGE bros have stormed the government—canning nuclear safety officers (whom they were swiftly forced to rehire), erasing living people from Social Security databases, accessing sensitive health and tax information. As seen earlier in his Twitter takeover, Musk’s certainty that he knows best manifests as an unhesitating eagerness to “disrupt” and dismantle services without regard to the harms to employees or the public at large.
A society with too much empathy—the kind of society Musk claims we live in—wouldn’t be full of ostracized, bullied kids who grow into adults like him.
Meanwhile, Musk was a top adviser to a president who believes that people with complex disabilities “should just die,” according to Trump’s own nephew, who has a disabled son. Trump is eager to dismantle the Department of Education, whose support provides the only means by which some disabled students, many autistic ones included, are able to finish school. Similarly, cuts to Medicaid would strip funds that pay for home care aides who work with autistic people.
A society with too much empathy—the kind of society Musk claims we live in—wouldn’t be full of ostracized, bullied kids who grow into adults like him. A society that supported, or at least more thoughtfully approached, autistic traits wouldn’t produce 4chan boards full of his Aspie supremacist fans. It would allow people like Musk to speak openly about being autistic, without retreating from the word, and to engage with initiatives led by autistic people, not figures like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who describe autism as an “injury” that renders people incapable of holding jobs, making art, or playing sports.
Aspie supremacists do real harm to autistic people in their embrace of gendered, racialized stereotypes, and in drawing spurious lines between themselves and anyone they consider “severely” autistic. Musk may simply be a jerk, but he’s a jerk with a tremendous platform—and one whose fans loudly, publicly connect his shitty personal behavior and fascistic policies to “mild” autism.
“It’s really frustrating to be caught in this place where we’re trying to be inclusive of all autistic people, and there are such polarizing opinions and perspectives about autism,” says Jules Edwards. “It causes this additional challenge when we’re advocating for inclusion and access, trying to educate people about what is autism versus the idea of ‘good autism’ or ‘bad autism.’”
To the Elon Musks of the world, autism is a disability, but the soft-pedaled label of Asperger’s syndrome—“good” autism, “mild” autism—is something else: a marker of elite status, the perfect finishing touch for a white guy in tech.
Additional research and sensitivity support by Katrina Janco.
