Thread by @WeAreDisabled

If anyone can make threadreader unroll after this, I appreciate it.

TW Eugenics. I have said it a lot on my personal page but I will say it here as well. A lot of people keep claiming that the society during Covid is showing the worst in people but honestly that is just not the

case. The society during Covid is a direct result from the society before Covid. And ableism.
So we are going to talk about one of those elements I have seen a lot from in the Netherlands and eventually ended up being the reason the hashtag GeenDorHout and the action group was

started. The disability is a burden trope. Since most of you following are disabled yourselves, you will probably know what it is but for the eyes of the ableds: Disability is a burden is the idea that being disabled or someone who is disabled is a burden on society and the

people around them.
Most of the time people who believe this cannot see past the idea that we are more than a burden and our lives are just as important as those of ablebodied people.

We see a lot of it now during Covid but it happened before that. You see part of that happens

for instance in the Netherlands in the language around social security. There are a lot of rules of getting disability and when you do get in you get less than minimum wage. If you get unemployment instead there are a lot of rules and narrative to keep that as low as possible.

For disability the narrative is that they have rule out people faking it, for both there is the narrative that people are in it simply because they don’t want to work. So lazy faker liars is there always.
We are constantly talking about healthcare being too expensive which

includes narratives that people let themselves tested for stuff too easily as if they are pleasure testing. All those narratives around expensive healthcare turns into the narrative that what disabled people do is cost too much, and that we, instead of the big divide between rich

and poor, are too blame for any lack of financial growth in the country. The divide between rich and poor is growing in this country, with disabled people leading in those numbers but the narrative of blame is not going to the rich but in part, to us for the reason the divide

grows.
It is too complicated to go into detail about on a Twitter thread but there is a lot of that and like Covid, since nobody talks with us and everyone talks about us because debating us is an important thing to do apparently, the biases keep existing.

We have seen a lot

of that in the Netherlands. There is an othering happening I see in other countries as well which starts in language where we are not seen as high risk groups but as the vulnerable. The difference in the language means there is an element of othering. High risk groups are people

who happen to have that risk, the language of vulnerable creates a way of not looking at it beyond people’s vulnerability. It creates a difference of someone who is part of society vs people who are… not. We are not seen as important parts of a capitalist system.
The effect

of that is that because people talk about us, not with us, that people are blaming us for any measures that are taken.

From the beginning of the covid pandemic, in the country of the tolerant and accepting…….. People have been debating whether or not we should just let the

vulnerable people die. Consistently. Pretty much daily, sometimes more than once a day. I am not exaggerating, and I really wish I was. Ofcourse economics was a part of that, but we were also one of the countries that was going Herd immunity!!! In the beginning. (herd immunity is

something related to vaccines that got separated especially for this pandemic which people knew nothing about sigh…..)
A lot of that was based on the idea that high risk groups just means old people, which does not make any of it better to be honest because old people deserve

lives as well and it just means a whole population of people were not the radar, but most of it was based on us not seen as having a purpose and being anything other than vulnerable. (This is the language they use like I said earlier which is why I use it here). Part of it was

also then about just letting the virus go and segregating us from the rest of society, like we do not have connections to the rest of society. Like we do not work, are parents and so much more. Like most of us were not in isolation as much as possible anyway. Between posting this

and when I written this there has been properly so many more eugenics articles that I can not count them on one hand or two.

The way we are dealing with Covid has also been reflecting this. Although politicians will hardly ever admit that they want people die over here, a lack

of action shows the lack of importance on their part to actually do stuff that protects us. Their policy is also not aimed on protecting people but not putting too much pressure on the care system, which means they want the virus go through society but do so controlled. They

claim they don’t want us to live segregated but do nothing to make it so we don’t have to live in isolation, they are not protecting us.
And there has been failure to protect us from start to now. Which includes wrong information about masks, the failure to deliver protective

gear into carehomes and homecare, false information about the need for those in those care situations and honestly if I am going to continue I will cry. The lack of proper policy has been killing people consistently.

Because that risk has been seen as worth it. The disability

is a burden trope makes people see our death as worth it and a betterment of society.
I am pretty sure that this trope has been a leading trope in most countries policy although I can only speak from my own experience.Have you seen it in your country as well?What happened there?