National Council on Severe Autism

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The National Council on Severe Autism, or “NCSA,” is a reactionary organization that launched on January 10^th, 2019, in response to perception that “severe autism” was being erased by the growing power and visibility of the neurodiversity movement. When they launched, NCSA came out with a broad policy agenda attacking recent and long-held gains of the disability rights movement and declared these gains non-inclusive for people with “severe autism.”

The politics of NCSA are complex. They are neither particularly right nor left wing, combining elements of both far-right and liberal politics. While the organization supports numerous policies which originated in the eugenics era, such as residential schools/state schools and institutions, they reject eugenics technologies such as government-mandated forced sterilization. Most members of NCSA identify as either liberals or Democrats politically. However, affiliation with the center-left end of the U.S. political spectrum has not insulated the organization or its members from embracing political views more commonly associated with the right-wing of the Republican party or the far-right.

The entry point to these views seems to be group of center-right journalists and “thought leaders” who denigrate advocates for justice on racial, economic, gender, and other social issues, known as the “intellectual darkweb.” This month, the official NCSA Twitter account attempted to amplify a post they made about Sia’s film Music to intellectual darkweb figures like Bari Weiss and Quillette, an alternative right online magazine. NCSA’s Twitter account, which only follows 98 accounts, follows the far-right publication Spiked. This is not a coincidence; NCSA brands itself in similar ways as the intellectual darkweb. Both groups claim to be bucking orthodox opinions and both claim to bravely fight fanatical groups of radicals who mob well-meaning advocates. For NCSA, this “mob” would be neurodiversity advocates.

These positions have made it easy for more prominent figures on the far-right of the autism community to become close to both NCSA as an organization and its president, Jill Escher. NCSA’s has repeatedly platformed and amplified Tom Clements (profile), a white nationalist who is also autistic. Escher and NCSA are fully aware of his views. Using Twitter’s search function, we have found that Escher and Clements have had regular discussions--including political disagreements–since June 2017. Similarly, NCSA has platformed and amplified Jonathan Mitchell (profile), an incel, proponent of antisemitic conspiracy theories about George Soros, anti-neurodiversity blogger, and a frequent Twitter troll. Escher and Mitchell have had regular discussions–including political disagreements–since May 2016, according to Twitter’s search function.

Escher, by far the most active online of NCSA members, has also engaged in far-right, conspiratorial thinking around transgender people. In addition to promoting a far-right, anti-transgender book called Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, she promotes a bizarre and unsupported theory that the increase in gender dysphoria diagnoses are a result of “gender-bendy” chemicals. She supports this by looking at the demonstrated positive correlation between an autism diagnosis and transgender identification. Such views are dangerously close to fringe elements of the autism community that believe vaccines are causing both an autism epidemic and a transgender epidemic. However, both Escher and NCSA are clearly not anti-vaccine, much to the dismay of some followers of both NCSA’s president and the organization itself. (See our post “Seattle Children’s Hospital Autism Center Invites Transphobic and Ableist Speaker with Far-right Ties, Brushes Off Criticism” for more information.)

The stated focus of NCSA is on “guardianship, vocational options, personal safety and abuse prevention, access to appropriate health care and crisis care, Medicaid HCBS [home and community based services] residential policies, federal and state housing policies, educational placements, [and the] need for innovative research” (List of Position Statements, NCSA). These policy statements include:

• Opposition to Supported Decision Making and alternatives to guardianships for people with I/DD that they presume to be incompetent
• Opposition to ending sub-minimum wages and shetered workshops
• Opposition to the Keeping All Students Safe Act, a federal reform to restraint and seclusion laws
• Supporting a “broad spectrum of educational supports and services” including “private, specialized autism schools, residential schools, hospitals, or other alternative settings.”
• Changing the HCBS settings rule to allow Medicaid funding intended for home and community based services to go towards institutional settings, such as Intermediate Care Facilities
• Expanding institutions, including “farmsteads” and other rural, cottage-style institutions

These policy positions, particularly the ones supporting warehousing people with I/DD in institutions, are in many cases rebranding of early 20th century (eugenics-era) policies. NCSA partners with pro-institution group Voice of Reason to advocate for many of these goals.

NCSA is largely, if not completely, self-funded. Escher, a landlord and developer in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a major autism research funder and donor.

NCSA’s influence is hard to quantify. They list only 813 Followers on Twitter. However, NCSA and its members enjoy frequent publication. One member, Amy Lutz, is a published author and writes a regular column for Psychology Today. Another member, Alison Singer, is president of an influential and mainstream autism nonprofit, Autism Science Foundation. Singer was previously an executive with Autism Speaks but left to found the Autism Science Foundation over Autism Speaks’ anti-vaccine leanings. NCSA’s upcoming speaking engagement at Seattle Children’s Autism Center and their connections to autism centers across the country speak to its influence in the autism nonprofit, research, and services sectors.