@ImaniBarbarin@disabled.social Profile picture
Oct 2, 2020 9 tweets 2 min read Read on X
A lot of pundits tweeting about Trump’s diagnosis have no experience or desire to evaluate ableism in news media.

Many more have an active hand in perpetuating it. I am begging you all to listen to disabled people on how this would be used.

Thread 🧵
Let’s assume that all of the conspiracy theories as to why his diagnosis could have been faked don’t matter and that without a shadow of a doubt, he is 100% confirmed and believed to have COVID.

Here are 3 scenarios regarding his ailment and how it will play out in media.
1. He recovers fully and downplays the effects of the virus. His supporters continue to gaslight the public about the veracity of the virus and they make him into a folk hero for “overcoming” his diagnosis. They will effectively erase his record as president and substitute in
A “beating covid” storyline. They won’t bring up anything else he’s done and that will be the entirety of what they talk about.

2. He “doesn’t come back” from the virus and they blame Dems for the effects the virus had on him. They break out into violence because “the Dems”
Did it to him and were in a conspiracy all along to perpetuate biological warfare. They enact domestic terrorism in retaliation.

3. He becomes disabled in which there are two scenarios:

A. The overcoming narrative still applies and people in INCREASING NUMBERS rally around him
Because of the inspirational narrative of him “governing with a disability” and “understanding humanity now that he’s lived through such a terrible ordeal.” Dems are again demonized for bringing up his actual record and he wins the election in a landslide.

B. His governance
Shows marked evidence of sliding because of disability even to his supporters and the GOP tries to find an alternative candidate at the last minute to “let him live the rest of his days in peace.”

All three of these scenarios are the exact reason why his diagnosis needs to
Be relentlessly tied to his Own actions/inaction. Use this as an opening to the rest of his record.

Also continue to talk about the rallies and donors who were exposed because of his carelessness. Ruin those relationships.

You have to be very careful about how you talk about
This because resorting to ableism usually comes back to haunt you.

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More from @Imani_Barbarin

Jan 18
TW: suicide

By the way, you all fundamentally do not understand the stakes: people are not afraid of your threats of fascism because they feel that their greatest relief would not be Biden, but death.

Have you been paying attention? Do you hear how people are talking about
Suicide? People lament waking up and not dying in the sleep in the form of jokes. They see no advancement in their lives, they see themselves being worked endlessly until death.

People are hanging on by a fucking thread and you’re chomping at the bit to punish them for not
Voting for Biden with fascism and concentration camps? They’ll kill themselves before that happens.

They see no hope in the future you’re advertising (assuming you have any plan for the future to communicate to begin with).

People can’t buy a home, they can’t afford it.
Read 6 tweets
Dec 30, 2023
I’m just posting this for posterity: but the thing that pisses me off with how disabled people are treated every single election cycle is when people offer or organize rides for disabled people to vote.

Most disabled people struggle with freedom of movement, it is extremely
Hard to get anywhere when you have a disability and that is even in cities with existing transit infrastructure. Even still it can be a demeaning process and there’s no assurances.

Never mind if you live in a rural or suburban area where transit options may be scarce or
Nonexistent.

So, whenever people, particularly liberals find themselves with all the organizing prowess in the world to make sure disabled people have rides to vote, I think about all the times they didn’t.

Did they have a ride to go hang out in town? To go to the doctors?
Read 4 tweets
Dec 29, 2023
The sad reality is that COVID is likely to be one of the greatest political blunders in the history of the U.S., let alone the globe.

And, for the “resistance” crowd, the fascinating part is how you all seemed to miss that the spread of Covid was literally a part of the plan.
Jared Kushner signaled in 2020 that they WANTED Covid to spread, specifically to “Blue” states so that Dems would shoulder the political brunt of the fallout—only for democrats to walk head first into that themselves when Biden took office.

We are only at the very beginning of
NBC article titled Did Trump and Kushner ignore blue state COVID-19 testing as deaths spiked? It's easy to get numbed by this presidency's cascade of awfulness, but, even by Trumpian standards, the amorality of such a suggestion is breathtaking.
Selection from NBC article that is highlighted and reads: Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner's team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. "The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy," said the expert
Seeing the impact of COVID on global politics. We are in its infancy.

And while Long Covid rates appear to be on the decline, the reality is still that millions of people are struggling/will likely struggle—and we haven’t even begun to fully unravel its impact on future gen’s.
Read 5 tweets
Dec 22, 2023
While I will never tell a person with a disability how they should describe themselves, I mostly hear the phrase “differently abled” from nondisabled people speaking about disabled people and the use does more harm than good.

Firstly, it releases society of any responsibility
In making an accessible society but rather puts the onus on the disabled person presenting societally disabling barriers as merely difficulties that do not need to be systematically addressed.

Also, people, while you can be gentle with introducing disability into their
Personal identity, need to be able to use the word, particularly when applying to services and supports that legally require use of the word for grant funding and service targets. As much as Nondisabled people may think “differently abled” helps, it can materially keep people
Read 4 tweets
Dec 22, 2023
Ableism is wild because it is quite literally the accelerator for almost all oppression.

Racism: look up the logic behind “bodies made for labor.

Sexism: see “hysteria”

Homophobia: the same architects of conversion therapy designed autism therapies.

Fatphobia: “why are you
Eating your way to a disability?”

Xenophobia: the western gaze presents nonwhite cultures as unintelligent at points implying they’re intellectually disabled.

Classism: poor people are presented as too lazy and not fit for society

Imperialism: mass disabling events that
Prohibit freedom of movement, filter people through inadequate medical systems and present any violence and disease that happens to victims as “just something that happens!”

So when Gavin Newsom and democrats reinvent the systems of institutionalization that has historically
Read 5 tweets
Dec 9, 2023
There’s not a single person on the left that thinks Trump would be a better president, but most know that Democrats would be better people, organizers and advocates under Trump.

Most on the left have come to the conclusion Dems would rather perform opposition and “resistance”
Than actually invest in the progressive policies people want and Dems have the capacity to move forward when in office but don’t because they only adopt progressive platforms—appropriate them is the better term because they actually come from grassroot movements and marginalized
Communities— to collect marginalized people who see hope in those policies.

Which means dashing people’s hope over and over again for votes and rarely, if ever, delivering.

Then when people speak out against that tactic, Dems fear monger about things getting worse and/or
Read 5 tweets

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