During an event organized by Metaforum (KU Leuven), I had the opportunity to reflect and speak, drawing on my own experience, about how we can make the university more accessible to everyone. I offered an autistic perspective.
Today, I want to share a story about a question that has stayed with me over the past few weeks. It’s a question I would never have come up with myself, but it suddenly appeared in newspapers, on television, and online. It’s uncomfortable, strange, and perhaps even dangerous, but I tried to answer it as honestly as I could.
The question is: “Am I like Hitler?”
Why would I even think such a thing? Not because of my own values or actions, but because I am autistic, and because a recent documentary suggested that Hitler might also have been autistic. The documentary analysed Hitler’s DNA and reported that he had a higher “risk of autism” than the general population. The research behind the documentary is scientifically grounded, but the results were presented in a scientifically weak manner. And, more importantly for this evening, it planted a troubling idea: that autism might somehow explain the atrocities Hitler committed.
When you watch the documentary, it is easy to forget that it presents a hypothesis, not a diagnosis. It offers no historical certainty and certainly no moral explanation. What it reveals most clearly is how quickly we use DNA to invent stories about people – how readily we treat biology as character, as guilt, as danger. That’s basically Hitler’s language in a new form: the language of eugenics.
So tonight, I want to reflect and consider what is supposedly the same between Hitler and me.
What is the same? We are both human. That sounds trivial, but it is the start of every discussion on diversity. Autism does not change a person’s humanity. It changes how information is processed, not the fundamental worth of a human life.
What else? We both grew up in environments that could not always, or did not always want to, support us. I have known this feeling my whole life, and I have felt it here as well, at KU Leuven. For example, accessibility seems to depend on accidental happenings and policy decisions. During COVID, lectures were streamed and recorded, and suddenly studying became possible for many students with disabilities without a lot of extra barriers. But once the crisis ended, these streams and recordings disappeared again. It would be easy to keep streaming and recording, the equipment is still there. It is a quiet form of exclusion, but one with a significant impact on many students.
Hitler grew up in an environment where exclusion was far harsher and more brutal. He grew up in a world that offered little to no room for vulnerability, human differences, or failure. This raises yet another question: “What if Hitler had felt welcome as a human being, before ideology gave him a different way of purpose?” This question does not change his horrendous crimes, but it does show how essential an inclusive environment can be for anyone growing up today.
What else do we share? Strong interests and intense focus. For me, that shows up in my research. I finally found a way to contribute to knowledge and to society in a way that fits me, after many failures in jobs where I simply couldn’t stay. Hitler’s intensity, however, was eventually directed toward ideology, power, and destruction. That difference lies not in our DNA; it lies in context, ethics, and choices.
Another similarity: social communication works differently for both of us. I sometimes struggle to convince people of my story, because I think mainly in terms of content, not social strategy. I suspect Hitler also struggled with social strategy, but he compensated with authority and propaganda, heavily supported by his environment. The same vocabulary might apply, but the lived reality is worlds apart.
Another connection is that eugenics plays a large role in both our lives, though in completely different ways. Eugenic thinking (the idea that we can breed a “better” human being) still shapes how people talk about autism today. Thankfully not yet through totalitarian programmes, but through more subtle questions like: “Which abnormalities should we detect during pregnancy? Which lives do we consider desirable? Which forms of human variation do we allow, and which do we quietly reject? What if my child will be “difficult”?” These are not neutral questions. They shape how safe people can feel in their own existence.
And that brings me to the core message. If you watch the documentary, remember that autism does not explain hatred, ideology, fascism, or genocide. Autism is a neurobiological variation. Nothing more, nothing less. Hitler’s actions did not arise from his DNA, but from political convictions, historical conditions, and moral choices. Those do not live in our genes.
By asking the question “Am I like Hitler?” out loud, and in front of an audience no less, I hope to show how absurd the question truly is. And how dangerous it is that the question can still be asked seriously. Because it reveals how easily our society still ranks traits as “normal” and “abnormal” instead of understanding them as diversity. As if variation itself were already a threat.
Inclusion means the opposite. It means that differences are not arranged hierarchically. That the line between “normal” and “different” is not biological, but cultural. Inclusion is not charity, and it is not tolerance. It is not “we will include you if it doesn’t inconvenience us.” It means building societal structures broad enough to hold our differences without trying to erase them.
This is where a meaningful link with Hitler appears: he symbolizes what happens when a society rejects diversity. When differences are treated as defects. When biology becomes a tool for ranking human beings. When “normality” becomes a political project, variation becomes a danger.
So, the real question was never whether I resemble Hitler. The real question is why our society so quickly attaches moral meaning to biology. Why we are so eager to read differences as moral judgements. Why the idea persists that some forms of human variation ideally should not exist.
I would like to end with a minute of silence. Not for Hitler. Not for me. Not for pity. But to take a moment to consider the assumptions we all carry with us, the reflex to moralize traits, the speed with which we draw conclusions about people based on biology.
And so I return the question back to society: “Are you like Hitler? How quickly do you let biology determine the value of a human life? How do you choose to see diversity in a society that claims to be just?”
And finally, I ask you to not applaud after this talk. Applauses closes discussions. I hope silence will open one.
——- silence ——-
kathetgedacht 