In 2025, the language around autism has, once again, become a political dog whistle for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Trump administration. Their statements, steeped in vaccine skepticism and thinly veiled conspiracy theories, don’t exist in a vacuum. They are part of a troubling lineage — a dark through line from early 20th-century American eugenics to the brutal policies of Nazi Germany.
RFK Jr. has repeatedly claimed that vaccines contribute to the rise in autism, assertions that have been debunked by decades of scientific evidence. The Trump administration, for its part, flirted with similar rhetoric. In 2017, Trump echoed the discredited theory that “too many shots” in early childhood cause autism.
These narratives shift public health from a societal good to a target of suspicion, casting children with autism not as people to support — but as preventable tragedies.
The parallels are chilling.
In the 1930s, American eugenicists championed sterilization laws, claiming the nation could be purified by eliminating “undesirable traits.” This ideology leapt across the Atlantic, where Nazi officials adopted it with lethal efficiency. Autism, intellectual disability, and mental illness were labeled “defects.” The state became arbiter of worth.
To be clear, no modern American politician is advocating genocide. But when public figures traffic in bad science and suggest that some lives are less valuable—or worse, preventable—history shivers.
Words matter. Pseudoscience cloaked in populism has led, time and again, to unspeakable harm.
What’s needed is clarity. What’s required is accountability. And what’s at stake is not just science — but how we, as a society, choose to regard human dignity.