Anti ND movement backlash part of larger phenomena?

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I have notice a similar narrative running through the Trump phenomenon, Brexit, and the backlash against the Neurodiversity movement. There are a bunch of elitists, clueless about the rest of us, successfully pushing an agenda harmful to the rest of us "Real Americans", "Real Brits", "Real Autistics".

Well, you need to define what you mean by the backlash against the ND movement. There's always a backlash against any social movement and the ND movement has always had some opposition, from the early days when it was opposed by people pushing the medical "cure" ideology of autism to the more insidious stuff that came later on.

I would define it as a noticiable increase in stated sentiment against the ND viewpoint that Autism is not mostly or all about impairments and negatives. When I started here in 2013 it was common to congratulate a poster who announced they had just recieved a diagnosis, that rarely happens now. Nearly everyday somebody it seems critizises ND movement as something harmful created by people who are not autistic or HFA/mild/Aspie.

It is very possible that
1. This sentitiment has not increased but people that felt autism is mostly impairments felt intimidated back then, then somebody criticized ND empowering somebody else, who empowered others and so on.
2. I arrived on the scene at a particularly pro Autism as a positive period.

I joined in 2008 and while this site was always pro ND movement, there were people against it and felt it was mostly impairments even then. I have no idea why there more anti-ND on here now but maybe it's due to the folding of the Asperger diagnosis together with Kanner's autism into a single diagnosis of ASD in the DSM V. Back then, it was mostly people who were diagnosed with Asperger's who were congratulated here but there were always negative sentiments from people on the spectrum who were less successful than others.

I have wondered about the DSM's roll in this. I joined a few months after the DSM 5 manual was published and noticed the change viewpoint in 2014. While I felt somehow the two were linked I never could think of a reason that made more than slightly partial sense. This link I theorized for this thread is a lot more "tight" IMHO.

Jesus, Brexit again, seriously?

Why does Brexit and ASSUMED things about it have to get dragged into EVERYTHING now, even autism, by people with their knickers in a twist about what they ASSUME about it? Sick of this crap.

It is my Aspie pattern recognition superpower . Sometimes I find connections that others do not find, most of the time others do not reconize these "links" for good reason, what can I say?

Tired, scared, angry people.

I'm tired, scared, and angry, and I don't even like my ND self, much less feel motivated to put hope, faith, and effort into the movement.

Maybe people are tired of ND or bored with ND.
ND movement can be obnoxious and sometimes ridiculous.
SJWs don't help the cause at all.
Some ideas in ND are good and worth pursuing towards tangible goals like concrete programs to help autistic people.
Another possibility is some people worriyng about HFA taking over the public image of autism, given the increasing diagnosis of HFA for past 20 years and brain science findings that are almost entirely about HFA.

I believe the quoted part is more on point than the opening post of the thread, with the additional of some historical context.

I joined in 2007. At the time, the hot topic was the belief that one single gene or collection of genes would be identified and there would be substantial ramifications from that (I'm oversimplifying for discussion purposes). As time went on, for reasons that are well beyond the scope of this post, that theme was overshadowed with the dispute between "Curbies" and what we would now call "Neurodiversity".

After that came the great argument over the introduction of DSM 5. As the final draft neared release and acceptance, it served as a yet another dividing point. That said, DSM 5 in it's final draft form was accepted by the APA.

In short, for many of those who believed that what is often referred to as "Aspergers" is a collection of neurological differences, at least some of whom were associated with "Neurodiversity", the acceptance of DSM 5 was a defeat. DSM 5 did not rely on a physical neurological test to place someone on the spectrum, it expressly operates on a disability model, if you are not impaired at examination time, you are not on the spectrum.

The positive acceptance of "Neurodiversity" usually, at some level, requires the understanding that the spectrum is caused by different neurology. Again, the finer points of this discussion are beyond the scope of this thread, but in short, the acceptance by the community of DSM 5, largely without protest, suggests that support for "Neurodiversity" is fairly shallow. The two models really don't co-exist that well. After a few years of operating in the post-DSM 5 paradigm, I can see why a reasonable person could see a backlash.

Joining WP in August 2013 the DSM 5 was a still a hot topic. At the time I looked backwords at the debate that proceeded it and found sustained opposition to the change with on and offline petetions articles opposing it in the psychology and mainstream press. Here on WP it was seen as a defeat but not a disaster. It was felt that the DSM would come to thier senses and revert the decision and feeling and that the "Aspie" culture was too embedded to go away.

I attended a GRASP meeting where the topics for meetings in 2014 was discussed. I proposed how is the new manual actually bieng implemented as a topic. Since GRASP had written a petetion opposing the change and all the opponents were saying they were going to moniter the changes closely I felt this was a natural topic. I was wrong. I was told since it is not going to change again for another 16 years what is the point?, maybe we will discuss it if the topic is diagnosis comes up. Then on WP there were simultaneous threads and numerous posts saying they were glad Aspergers was gone because aspies call themselves that because they do not want to be associated with severe autistics, "Assburgers" was being used as an insult, it was trendy, used as an excuse and over diagnosed. There were an number of blogs from people who said they were against the change but now were for it because Aspergers hurt Autism unity. In just a year the view of autistics who are not supposed to adjust to change well had apprarently completely turned around in a few months. At the time I felt "aspergers" and "aspies" would be mostly gone shortly.

The fervor died down as 2015 began and aspergers as a colloquial term was still around then in September when Neurotribes was published Neurodiversity became the focus which continues.

Had there been a movement to challenge the DSM 5 paradigm, we'd be in a different position, but that didn't happen.

In the post DSM 5 paradigm, how does Neurodiversity move forward in an era of cultural discourse being dominated by external forces? One if the drawbacks of the disability model is that it really doesn't accept or acknowledge activism or the formation of cultures. And without cultures or organization, theres not too much to rally around.

And if the current thread is any indication WP posters nearly unanamously do not think such a culture is possible nor want one.

Cultures belong to those who show up.

If, here on WP, which hypothetically should be the most pro-Neurodiversity online community in the English-speaking world, there's nothing to rally around, the issue referenced in the opening post might not be related to the political discourse of the day, but to the inability of the (online) community to form some form of cohesive structure.