It’s better than “affluenza” but not that much better.
11 Likes
That you can imagine someone falsely describing something that way is a lousy reason to try to spread their false, hurtful characterization
14 Likes
Say someone cuts me off in traffic and I think or even say out loud, “I hope that fucker runs into a guardrail and wrecks his nice car”. That’s transgressive! It’s another to say, “I want to murder everybody who looks like that person because they exist”. That’s just plain bigoted.
17 Likes
Ok, so the argument was that he is actually pro-Israel…:
Peebles said Dai has autism, though it was undiagnosed at the time of the postings, which she described in a court filing as a “misguided attempt to highlight Hamas’ genocidal beliefs and garner support for Israel.”
“He believed, wrongly, that the posts would prompt a ‘blowback’ against what he perceived as anti-Israel media coverage and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus,” she wrote. “Patrick’s flawed logic is a result of his autism. His intentions were the exact opposite of the public’s perception. Patrick is not antisemitic and is not violent.”
???
For what it is worth, the court filing does indicate that someone has actually diagnosed him with autism:
9 Likes
I want to highlight this. There’s nothing in the story that says the lawyer has any evidence the young man has autism. Suggesting he does is, in fact, a diagnosis, albeit a seriously unprofessional one that should not have been made in the first place.
Also even if he is autistic that’s only one data point about him and doesn’t explain his behavior or say anything about anyone else who’s neurodivergent.
11 Likes
Usually I have a lot of respect for public defenders. They are over worked and underpaid doing necessary work.
But the statements this attorney made?! Like @knappa points led out, that is some convoluted bullshit. I don’t know how the attorney thought this would get the asshole a lesser sentence or the hate crime enhancement tossed out. These arguments should have never been made in court and certainly not to the press afterwards
9 Likes
I can certainly imagine
10 Likes
Somebody did.
His attorney, public defender Lisa Peebles, told NPR that Dai had undiagnosed autism when he made the threats, and “functions socially at the age of between a five- and 10-year-old.” She said “Patrick’s flawed logic is a result of his autism…”
16 Likes
Right. If you behave like that, you shouldn’t be in uni. It’s part of the requirements.
1 Like
Perhaps the lawyer should have made the point that it was Opposite Day?
1 Like
Except that, as @knappa has already pointed out, the linked NPR story contains a link to the court filing that demonstrates that Dai has been diagnosed (pg. 4), and by a Doctor, who is willing to work with Dai and support him in getting the support and resources he requires (pg. 23)
The court filing seeks to demonstrate that this is related, and of course that is not saying anything about anyone else.
Apparently there is a doctor who supports those arguments. See the court filing if you’re curious.
7 Likes
There’s at least one doctor on record claiming Twinkies make people violent against their will, so that’s not really much of a proof.
12 Likes
For those who apparently like these armchair arguments:
HOW does being autistic make one violently anti-Semitic? What is the mechanism that would make that happen?
I could see an argument that someone with Tourette’s might make bigoted outbursts that didn’t correspond to their actual beliefs — although full blown threats on a group of people would be well outside the symptoms of Tourette’s — but where’s the connection with autism?
(N.B. There is none.)
12 Likes
The defence argument seems to be that he is a smartarse with no social intelligence, who thought that posing as a murderously antisemitic pro-Palestinian agitator would shift public opinion in favour of Israel.
6 Likes
My lawyer friend refers to these courtroom situations as the “battle of the experts”.
If the autism diagnosis is legit in this case, it does not excuse this behaviour. Time and time again on this BBS, we’ve seen people trying to use neurodivergence as an excuse for others or themselves acting like arseholes. It’s insulting and potentially stigmatizing to people on the spectrum.
So someone who had adequate social and intellectual intelligence to get into Cornell came up with a harebrained false-flag scheme that ended up victimising two groups of his fellow students at the same time. And then he tried to hide behind an after-the-fact autism diagnosis to escape the consequences.
12 Likes
Not just get in, but make it to his junior year without getting kicked out. Could a person last that long in a university setting without getting disciplined when they have so little social awareness that they thought posting explicit violent and misogynistic threats against Jewish people was somehow an act of support for Jewish people?
13 Likes
I was a math major at Cornell many moons ago. My time there overlapped with a young man who was a brilliant mathematician but probably on the spectrum. He was probably the usual student age, from the looks of him, but he definitely had moderate to severe difficulties with basic social interactions and reading other people. He was assigned a faculty advisor, of sorts, who spent a lot of out-of-class time with him, I’m guessing so that he could get some coaching for social skills so that he could successfully matriculate.
And although he could occasionally come off as a bit rude if you didn’t know him, he never threatened anybody with violence to my knowledge. And the math department wasn’t so big that it wouldn’t have gotten around if he did.
Anecdote is not data, but that’s my story.
10 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
