"Some of the [historic] strategies used by the system to exercise violence are sterilization, incarceration or even murder. These strategies have evolved as the capitalist system has evolved. These strategies arise from the need of capitalism to create and promote the idea of an efficient body, capable of producing maximum economic and social benefit. Since industrialization, what prevailed was the body understood as a source of labor. The efficiency of the body, linked to health standards set by medicine, looked for the body’s functionality. The medical standard defined the expected efficiency of the body, and thereby linked bodily health to economic productivity.
With consumer capitalism, production becomes so consumer-driven, that advertising, visual and aesthetic ideals take precedence. Social success, therefore, gets linked to the physical, and social ascent, will reflect how well your body conforms to aesthetic ideals, to the norm…Medicine under consumer capitalism will be responsible for promoting health linked to the aesthetic field, bodies that resemble the idea of consumer beauty will be considered healthy. Which in turn leads medicine to standardize bodies in order to achieve both health and beauty, creating the ideal of healthy, beautiful, good, slim bodies. Bodies will be adapted to fit this standard, which legitimizes the non-genuine."
- Itxi Guerra, The Fight Against Ableism, article from a fanzine, translated from Spanish 5/9/23.
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It’s truly amazing how even leftists often justify the mistreatment and killing of the disabled. Literally everyone hates us. I’ve had some able-bodied person on lemmy arguing against everything I say about the treatment of the disabled, basically telling me I’m wrong, everyone cares for us and we aren’t treated badly. I mentioned how, during covid in the UK, the NHS was getting rid of disabled people by refusing them treatment when they caught covid. A lemmy user said this is fine, it’s just triage. But that was NOT triage. Triage is saying “This person is having a heart attack, so he’ll get treated before the person who has a twisted ankle.” What the UK was saying during covid is: “this person with covid is disabled, so we just won’t treat them at all, and let them die.” Triage is treating the people with the most urgent medical need first. It’s not saying “This person’s life is less valuable and more of a burden to society so we won’t treat them at all.” That is actually eugenics. And that’s what happened in the UK during covid. Do Not Resuscitate notices were placed on the medical files of many people with Down’s syndrome, autism and learning disabilities who were otherwise healthy before contracting the virus. That’s not triage, that is a choice to get rid of people considered useless eaters.
He said malice towards the disabled does not exist. When I gave examples of disabled people being discriminated against throughout history, he said there were other times and places where we weren’t treated so badly so “why only choose those examples?” Imagine if a black person spoke of their experiences of racism and someone just responded by giving examples of all the times they thought black people had been treated well.
Whenever I see leftists talking about how things are getting better, and one day we will succeed and things will be good for everyone, I just totally disagree. When even so many of our own comrades deny our experiences, justify us being left to die because our lives aren’t as valuable as able-bodied lives, and argue that we’re being treated just fine, I see there is no real hope.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/thousands-of-disabled-people-died-after-covid-treatment-withheld-inquiry-to-probe-2970333
Some quotes from the article:
many perfectly healthy individuals received letters from their GPs recommending they think carefully about whether they would want resuscitation if they went into hospital or would even want to be treated in hospital at all, should they get Covid-19.” Specialist nurses told Mencap that DNARs, also called DNACPRs, were “constantly” being put in place for people with learning disabilities “often inappropriately” and they were challenging them daily. DNACPR stands for Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. Denying a person potentially life-saving treatment based on their learning disability is an act of discrimination and unlawful.
Mencap saw DNACPRs placed on medical files of people with a learning disability that were otherwise healthy, without their full understanding and/or consent.
Six out of 10 people who died from Covid between March and July 2020 were disabled, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
In one such case 56-year-old Susan Sullivan, who had Down’s syndrome, was declined admission to intensive care (ICU) despite being seriously ill with Covid at Barnet Hospital in March 2020. She was also given a DNAR notice despite the express wish of her mother that she should be resuscitated if necessary, and she was not seen by a consultant for 20 hours. She died on a general ward 28 hours after being admitted.
People arguing against reality like that usually just end up defending their own ableist viewpoints and beliefs, and they always get real mad about their fragile, imagined world being challenged.
It seems to be the same with everything, disability, poverty, racism, sexism, nobody wants to acknowledge the truth of it, they just want to imagine the world is fine. I don’t have any hope for humanity changing.
EDIT: Now another lemmy user is agreeing with the first one, saying “the other person is right, triage aims to make the best use of limited resources.” So, in other words, letting someone with learning disabilities die instead of treating them is the best use of resources. Why waste resources on the disabled, right?
This very much relates to the quote for this mega, too! Even the concept of triage, as we understand it medically, is biased against those who do not fall under the ideal of “having a high quality of life” by capital’s standards. We are sorted and categorized negatively before anything else.
Sadly, the average person cannot spend the emotional and intellectual brain power to consider the world around them and how it operates. It is a machine oiled by the blood of those unwillingly and meticulously sacrificed, largely ignored by the comfortable masses.
I feel somewhat spoiled by Hexbear, and this comm in particular, precisely because of the experience you’re describing in other parts of the internet. It can turn into a constant battle. I hope you can report and block those users, they’re certainly not worth your energy with those shitty takes.
I have blocked one of them because he kept bombarding me with really rude, abusive PMs telling me how awful, stupid and unrespectable I am. Just because I don’t think medical treatment should be withheld from people on the basis of how useful they are to capitalism. Because that’s what it is - killing the disabled as they’re less likely to work and pay taxes and more likely to cost money for care.