"Kids These Days Just Want to Be Disabled"
Reactionaries Will Use Disability Statistics to Justify Technofascist Control
When poverty rises, they blame laziness, not economic policy. When climate disasters accelerate, they blame individual consumption, not fossil capital. And now, as disability rates surge, these reactionaries claim the real crisis is not public health failure, exploitative labor conditions, or mass infection but a population growing weaker, softer, and less productive.
This narrative does not emerge in a vacuum. It is a tactical reframing, one that positions disabled people not as citizens to be accommodated but as liabilities to be managed, optimized, or eliminated.
The state does not need to directly harm disabled individuals. It need only create conditions in which they cannot survive—through economic exclusion, algorithmic gatekeeping, and medical neglect. The coming war on disabled people will not be framed as cruelty. It will be framed as efficiency, as sustainability, as progress.
And it has already begun.
Further reading: Misreading Capitalist Realism – how capitalism absorbs critique and reconfigures power to maintain dominance.
The Reality: Why Disability Rates Are Rising
Disability among working-age adults is surging, and the reasons are neither mysterious nor “unnatural.”
Cognitive Disabilities: Since 2019, the number of individuals reporting only a cognitive disability has increased by approximately 1 million, marking a 43% rise.
Long COVID: As of March 2023, an estimated 1.9 million people in the UK reported experiencing long COVID symptoms, representing 2.9% of the population. Of these, 1.3 million had symptoms lasting more than a year, and 762,000 had symptoms persisting for over two years.
Employment Impact: In 2024, the employment-population ratio for disabled people aged 16 to 64 was 37.4%, compared to 65.5% for those without disabilities.
Disability Benefits Surge: In the UK, claims for long-term sickness benefits reached 3.8 million adults in December 2024 and are projected to surpass 4 million, with an annual cost of £63 billion.
A rational society would respond by expanding healthcare, restructuring labor, and investing in accessible infrastructure.
Instead, elites interpret these numbers as evidence of civilizational decline—and an excuse for biopolitical control.
Further reading: The Architecture of Harm in Healthcare – how profit-driven healthcare prioritizes efficiency over care.
How Reactionaries Will Reframe Disability as a Civilizational Threat
The shift from viewing disability as a condition to be accommodated to a problem to be solved will manifest in three primary narratives:
1. The Productivity Frame: “The Economy Can’t Sustain This”
Under capitalism, the value of a person is determined by their productivity. As disability rates climb, reactionaries will argue that the economy cannot afford this many “non-contributors.” Expect:
Tighter Restrictions on Disability Benefits: Bureaucratic obstacles will be raised under the guise of “fraud prevention,” effectively removing more disabled people from welfare systems.
AI-Driven Productivity Policing: Companies like Amazon already use AI-powered surveillance to track worker efficiency, and automated terminations based on “performance metrics” are accelerating.
Automation Justifying Mass Layoffs: Industries are rapidly adopting AI and robotics, using disabled workers as a justification for replacing human labor entirely.
The endgame is clear: if disability cannot be erased, it will be excluded from the labor force entirely.
Further reading: Algorithmic Austerity: How AI Facilitates Economic Exclusion – AI as a tool for enforcing economic precarity.
2. The Cultural Contagion Frame: “Kids These Days Just Want to Be Disabled”
As diagnoses of ADHD, autism, and chronic illnesses rise, reactionaries will claim that disability is a trend rather than a reality. This will justify:
Institutional Skepticism Toward New Diagnoses: Expect harsher medical gatekeeping, forcing individuals to “prove” they are disabled enough to deserve accommodations.
Stricter Definitions of Disability: Governments may begin excluding conditions deemed “subjective” (e.g., chronic pain, cognitive fatigue, sensory processing disorders) from disability protections.
Moral Panic Over Accommodations: Conservatives will argue that accessibility measures “weaken” society, fostering an "entitlement culture."
This will not just be rhetoric. It will be the justification for legal rollbacks, mass disenfranchisement, and institutional abandonment.
Further reading: ABA Is a Capitalist’s Wet Dream – how disability “treatment” industries enforce compliance and exclusion.
3. The Biopolitical Purity Frame: “Why Are We Becoming More Disabled?”
Reactionaries will claim that rising disability rates indicate biological degeneration, enabling:
Right-Wing “Eco-Fascist” Narratives: Blaming processed food, vaccines, or air pollution for “weakening” the population, rather than corporate malfeasance.
Silicon Valley Bio-Optimization: Promoting embryo selection, gene editing, and cognitive enhancement as necessary “preventative” measures.
Accelerationist Survivalist Rhetoric: Arguing that disability is proof of inevitable collapse—and that only the “fittest” will endure.
This shifts disability from something to accommodate to something to prevent—functionally eliminating disabled people from future generations.
The Technofascist Future: Algorithmic Eugenics and the End of Disability Rights
The coming war on the disabled will be packaged as progress.
Algorithmic Benefits Denial: AI will automate the rejection of disability claims, making appeals nearly impossible.
Mandatory Neuro-Optimization: Brain-computer interfaces and pharmaceutical interventions will begin as accessibility tools—but will soon become requirements for education and employment.
Pre-Birth Screening & Selective Abortion: Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is already eliminating entire disability populations, and this will only accelerate.
Genetic & Environmental Interventions: Microbiome and gene therapies will be framed as “ending suffering” while functionally eliminating disabled births.
By the time society recognizes what has happened, the infrastructure will already be in place.
Refuse this Premise Entirely.
The most dangerous trap is to argue within their frame—to debate whether disability rates are “really” rising, whether ADHD is “overdiagnosed,” or whether some disabled people are “faking.”
These are dead-end conversations.
The only response that matters is this:
If more people are disabled, the response is expanded access, not stricter eligibility.
If capitalism cannot sustain disabled workers, then capitalism must change—not the workers.
If surveillance is being proposed as a solution, it is not a solution at all—it is a mechanism of control.
Disabled people are not a crisis to be managed. They are a reality of human existence.
And if we fail to fight back, we will find ourselves in a world where participation in society is conditional on compliance, optimization, and control.
Thinking about this line "If more people are disabled, the response is expanded access, not stricter eligibility" and I think it makes sense, however I wonder would you pick, via prenatal screening, an intentionally "disabled" embryo to further the act?