1) I am right.
2) Any rational and informed person must agree with me.
3) Anyone who disagrees is ignorant, corrupt or immoral.
4) Compromise is betrayal.
5) If persuasion fails, pressure, punishment or exclusion becomes justified.
6) The greater the confrontation or sacrifice, the greater my commitment must be.
Together, these beliefs form what I will call the fanaticism trap: an all-or-nothing, black-and-white approach in which certainty becomes identity, disagreement becomes a moral offence and only one solution remains acceptable. I am describing a thinking pattern, not a diagnosis or a synonym for violent extremism.
This is not an argument against strong convictions, unpopular views, peaceful protest or resistance to injustice. Some institutions will not change without pressure. The trap begins when we stop asking what will work and start proving that we belong to the righteous side.
Why this matters to autistic people
Research has not established a direct causal link between neurodivergence and violent extremism in the general population. The CREST systematic review instead examines how individual characteristics and circumstances may contribute to vulnerability, resilience or disengagement. A diagnosis is not a substitute for understanding the person. The thinking pattern discussed here is not confined to autistic people, and distress about injustice is not itself evidence of dangerousness.
However, a 2024 meta-analysis found small-to-moderate average differences in cognitive flexibility, with substantial variation between people and studies. Research also links intolerance of uncertainty with anxiety in autistic people. Clear categories, consistent rules and definite answers can feel especially reassuring when the world is confusing or threatening.
These characteristics can support integrity, persistence, detailed research and resistance to groupthink. They become liabilities when we treat our explanation as the only rational one, refuse to update it and demand that a complicated world immediately conform to it.
The answer is not less conviction. It is a wider field of view.
A real grievance can still produce a bad solution
Environmental damage, financial inequality, discrimination, religious persecution and abuse of power are real. The fanaticism trap compresses such problems into a simple morality play:
There is one cause, one enemy and one correct solution. Anyone who slows us down is helping the enemy.
Concern about inequality becomes “rich people are the problem”. Religious conviction becomes “dissent proves corruption”. Opposition to religion becomes “believers are irrational and harmful”. Autism advocacy becomes “anyone who questions our preferred policy is ableist”.
The original grievance may be legitimate. The explanation can still be incomplete, and the remedy can still create more harm than it removes.
Mature changemaking therefore considers four levels: the immediate result, how other people and institutions will react, what new incentives and feedback loops those reactions will create, and what pursuing the strategy will do to us.
Consider aviation. “Flying causes emissions, therefore nobody responsible should fly” is clear and morally satisfying. It ignores family needs, medical care, education, work, geography and the absence of practical alternatives for many journeys.
A broader response might reduce avoidable flights, use rail or video where practical, combine journeys, support cleaner technology, and fund credible restoration or carbon-removal work for residual emissions. Tree planting may contribute, but it is not a precise or permanent cancellation of a flight. The IPCC places carbon removal alongside deep emissions reductions, using it to counterbalance residual emissions rather than excuse avoidable ones.
Not every conflict has a perfect win-win solution. Where interests genuinely conflict, look for fair trade-offs, compensation, gradual implementation or workable partial progress. An imperfect reform that can survive may achieve more than a perfect proposal that nobody can implement.
Purity measures the distance between reality and our ideal. Strategy asks whether reality is moving in the right direction.
Publicity is only one part of change
Public advocacy can make a neglected issue visible and raise the cost of inaction. That is a legitimate contribution, but it is not the whole process.
Durable change usually requires recognition, investigation, design, negotiation, implementation, evaluation and revision. A communicator may create attention. Researchers determine what is happening. Practitioners understand operational constraints. Specialists design a remedy. Negotiators build support. Institutions implement it. Evaluators find out whether it worked.
Social media shows speeches, demonstrations, confrontation and arrest. It rarely makes years of study, drafting, coalition-building and administration look exciting.
Attention is an input. The test is what can be designed, negotiated, implemented and sustained after attention has been won.
A person can be excellent at mobilisation and still be a poor model for technical problem-solving, diplomacy or career planning. Respect the contribution without copying the whole lifestyle.
When belonging comes with a price
Imagine finding people who finally take your distress seriously. They name an injustice others dismissed and offer a place where your concern matters. The relief can be genuine. It does not establish that every explanation they offer is accurate or every action they propose is justified.
Consider what their belonging asks of you. Can you question a claim, refuse a task, retain outside relationships and leave without intimidation? Or must you prove commitment by accepting threats, harassment or the treatment of another group as disposable?
Strong criticism, unpopular convictions and peaceful opposition are not the same as those practices. The boundary concerns what we are being asked to believe without examination and do to actual people. A cause’s good name does not settle either question.
The same scrutiny belongs in political, spiritual and advocacy communities, including autistic-led ones. Shared identity and a history of helping us do not confer unlimited authority over our judgement.
If I oppose treating living beings as disposable, I should question a remedy that begins by declaring another category of living beings disposable. The objection does not depend only on whether I might be caught or punished. It concerns the harm itself.
When a cause becomes identity
Once our friendships, status, audience and purpose all come from a movement, criticism of the movement feels like criticism of us. Evidence threatens our identity, moderates look disloyal and leaving can mean losing our community. A dangerous feedback loop can follow:
- Increasing confrontation brings attention and possible disciplinary, legal or reputational consequences.
- Education, employment and relationships become harder.
- The movement becomes one of the few places where we still feel understood and valued.
- Dependence makes it harder to question or leave.
- Further escalation closes more outside opportunities, and the resulting exclusion is treated as proof that the movement was right.
What began as one concern can become a life organised around permanent conflict. Groups can also radicalise themselves when compromise is treated as betrayal: moderates leave, internal correction weakens and members compete to demonstrate commitment through stronger demands.
Anger can alert us to injustice, but anger is information rather than a command. A useful test is whether we would welcome the problem being solved by people we dislike, even if we received no credit. If not, the cause may have become a vehicle for identity, resentment or status rather than service.
Do not copy another person’s risk profile
Visible activists may possess savings, family support, legal assistance, professional connections, an established career or a public audience that creates future opportunities. Followers rarely see the complete safety net.
The same arrest, dismissal, expulsion or public controversy can be survivable for one person and permanently damaging for another. This matters because many autistic people already have little career margin for error. The UK Buckland Review reported that only around three in ten working-age autistic people were in employment in 2022/23 and documented persistent employer stigma. This is not a Singapore estimate, but the practical warning travels.
A 2026 Swedish field experiment involving 11,461 applications found that merely listing political affiliation reduced positive employer responses by about 2 percentage points overall, although effects varied. If even lawful political identity can close doors, a public history of threats, harassment, criminal conduct or genuinely extremist activity can create much greater consequences.
Such penalties may be unfair. Pretending they do not exist does not protect autistic young people. Never copy another person’s sacrifice before asking whether you can survive their consequences.
Confrontation should be a tool, not an identity
Confrontation is sometimes necessary. An institution may ignore requests, protect those who benefit from an arrangement, or make challenging it costly. Doing one’s duty can bring conflict without any wish to seek it. But the strength of our conviction is not the strength of our position.
The cost can enter ordinary life. The United States sanctioned four International Criminal Court judges on 5 June 2025 and designated the Court itself on 9 October 2026. Behind these institutional announcements are people whose ability to conduct ordinary affairs has been restricted. Their judicial work included cases concerning US personnel in Afghanistan and Israeli leaders.
In her account to European parliamentarians, judge Beti Hohler described cancelled credit cards, blocked online services, rejected payments and the closure of a European bank account she had held for decades. Travel restrictions extended to her family. She described the continuing uncertainty of not knowing which service might stop working next. A confrontation over international justice had reached into banking, travel and the ordinary arrangements of home.
Judge Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza told the Associated Press that her daughters could no longer attend work conferences in the United States. The consequences did not remain confined to the official whose decisions were being challenged.
Public recognition does not remove exposure. Greta Thunberg has spoken publicly about being autistic and receiving death threats. In May 2024, she was fined 6,000 Swedish kronor after disobeying police orders during protests blocking entrances to Sweden’s parliament. Police had forcibly removed her on two days in March. In June 2025, she was detained after Israeli forces intercepted a Gaza-bound aid boat, then deported on 10 June. Threats, fines, removal, detention and enforced changes of plan are concrete costs behind the public image of an activist.
These visible cases are only the tip of a much larger problem. Global Witness documented at least 146 land and environmental defenders killed or disappeared in 2024. Even this concerns only one field of struggle. Some people encounter such risks because protecting their home or community leaves no comfortable way to remain uninvolved.
Not every sacrifice receives an audience. We cannot plan on demonstrations in every major city, a public campaign paying our bills, or influential people intervening when we are threatened. A statement of solidarity is not a lawyer, replacement income or a safe place to live. Attention can move elsewhere while the consequences remain with the person and family.
The bill is not only financial. We should consider interrupted work or education, lost opportunities, time spent on proceedings, uncertainty, strained relationships, exposure of family members and the psychological burden of continuing conflict. These costs may accumulate slowly. They may remain after a case ends or a campaign disappears.
Confrontation can feel like a one-person army advancing against overwhelming forces. Yet we are not superheroes. Determination does not give us unlimited stamina, replace lost income or compel reinforcements to arrive. A strategy that depends on a miracle has not accounted for the imbalance of power.
Prepare for the whole consequence. Before choosing confrontation, establish the intended result, how the action could produce it and what the opposing side can do in response. Identify actual legal, financial and practical backing rather than assumed goodwill. Consider who else may bear the cost, how long the commitment could last and what would require a change of method. The consequences of inaction belong in the same assessment.
Those who encourage a stand should be willing to discuss what support they will actually provide. It is easy to recommend courage while leaving another person to finance it and their family to absorb the disruption.
Sometimes a costly stand remains worth taking. Sometimes the wiser contribution is to build an alliance, protect someone directly, develop an alternative or preserve the capacity to act at a better point. Where urgent danger requires action, preparation may be brief; where negotiation is unsafe or futile, it need not become a ritual. The purpose remains protection or change, not a demonstration of how much suffering we can endure.
Tact is not dishonesty. Diplomacy, restraint and withdrawal can be deliberate uses of judgement. We need not abandon what matters merely because we decline to confront every force that threatens it.
Leaving without abandoning what matters
You can stop supporting a tactic, leave a group or revise a belief without denying the injustice that first concerned you. Something may have helped you once and become harmful now. Gratitude does not require continued participation.
Start by separating the concern from the organisation claiming to own it. Identify a trusted person outside the group, reconsider commitments you have not yet made and look for another way to meet the need for belonging or contribution. You do not owe anyone another sacrifice to justify those already made.
Where there is intimidation, coercion or danger, obtain appropriate independent help rather than trying to manage a confrontation alone. If you have harmed someone, leaving does not erase responsibility; appropriate advice can help you address it without further harm. If anyone is in immediate danger, seek emergency help.
A supporter can listen without endorsing either the group’s claims or harmful conduct. Helping someone regain ordinary relationships and choices is more useful than humiliating them for having belonged.
Role models for peaceful, durable change
Healthy role models are not saints, and none changed the world alone. Their methods were peaceful but not passive: research, professional skill, regulation, negotiation, institution-building and practical alternatives. Their value lies in the capabilities they demonstrate.
Frances Perkins: learn the system and change its rules
Frances Perkins worked as a social worker, investigated industrial conditions and accumulated years of labour-administration experience before becoming US Secretary of Labor. She used evidence, relationships and institutional authority to help establish Social Security, minimum-wage and maximum-hour protections and stronger labour enforcement. The US Department of Labor describes her as the principal architect of the Social Security Act.
Rachel Carson: research before sounding the alarm
Rachel Carson combined scientific training, government experience and clear writing. She spent years investigating pesticide use before publishing Silent Spring. She did not demand the abandonment of every pesticide; she argued against particularly persistent chemicals, sought tighter regulation and called for safer alternatives. The US Environmental Protection Agency records both the depth and precision of her case.
Frances Oldham Kelsey: let expertise strengthen courage
Frances Oldham Kelsey was trained in pharmacology and medicine. As an FDA reviewer, she resisted pressure to approve thalidomide because the safety evidence was inadequate. The drug was not marketed in the United States, and the episode helped drive major reform of drug regulation. The FDA’s account shows how expertise made her resistance effective.
Wangari Maathai: build an institution, not only a campaign
Wangari Maathai trained in biological sciences and founded Kenya’s Green Belt Movement. She connected environmental restoration with livelihoods, community knowledge and civic participation. The movement continues to run community-driven restoration and climate-resilience programmes. Its account of Maathai’s life and current programmes show a contribution that survived its founder and the original publicity.
These examples follow different routes, but the pattern is similar: study the issue, understand the institution, develop a workable intervention, cooperate where possible and leave behind rules, evidence, capacity or organisations that continue to function.
My insurance advocacy: understand the system you challenge
I applied the same principle on a smaller scale when challenging what I regarded as autism discrimination in insurance underwriting.
I could have stopped at saying that the insurer’s decision was unfair. Instead, I studied insurance and financial planning and obtained a Diploma in Financial Planning from the Singapore College of Insurance. This did not make me an actuary, underwriter or infallible expert. It helped me understand why underwriting, risk pooling and exclusions exist, and to separate legitimate risk assessment from assumptions attached to an autism diagnosis.
The stronger question was not “Why are insurers evil?” It was: “What actual risk are you assessing, and what evidence connects this individual applicant to that risk?”
I also obtained detailed psychological evidence about my condition and functioning. After I submitted it, the insurer removed the exclusions. Although I cannot know exactly how each part of the evidence was weighed, it does illustrate a better method: lived experience identifies the failure; study sharpens the argument; evidence challenges the decision; and a narrower proposal protects the legitimate function while removing an unjustified assumption.
Choose a portfolio of capabilities, not one hero
No single person should become our complete model of changemaking. Autistic people do not need exclusively autistic role models. Learn courage from one person, research discipline from another, diplomacy from another and implementation from someone else.
A healthy role model should make us more capable rather than merely more angry. Look for people who understand the system they challenge, work with people who disagree, distinguish publicity from outcomes, accept useful partial progress, protect followers from unnecessary risk, revise failed tactics and leave behind knowledge, institutions or practices that continue without them.
Do not imitate only the most dramatic part of another person’s work. Copy the preparation that made the work effective.
A practical test before acting
- What exactly is the problem? Separate facts from interpretations, predictions and moral judgements.
- How does the system work? Learn its purpose, constraints, incentives and failure points.
- What knowledge am I missing? Study it or collaborate with people who possess it.
- What do other stakeholders need? Search for overlapping interests before assuming somebody must be defeated.
- What are the second- and third-order consequences? Include reactions, feedback loops and personal costs.
- Would a pilot, compromise or partial reform produce useful progress?
- What would change my mind, and would I accept my opponent using the same tactic against me?
- What could action and inaction each cost me and others, including dependants? What support is actually available, and is there a less harmful way to serve the same purpose?
- What durable result should remain after the attention disappears?
The objective is mature changemaking
If we remain in the fanaticism trap, we may lose allies, career options, freedom and access to decision-makers while the underlying problem remains unsolved.
I do not want autistic people to become passive or less principled. Some of us notice inconsistencies that others tolerate, care deeply about fairness and persist with problems long after other people lose interest. These can be formidable strengths.
But conviction without flexibility becomes rigidity. Persistence without correction becomes obsession. Justice without perspective becomes vengeance. Courage without attention to consequences can become needless self-sacrifice. Publicity without knowledge and implementation becomes performance.
Mature changemaking asks us to study the issue, see the whole system, understand trade-offs, work with imperfect people and institutions, search for win-win arrangements before escalating conflict, accept useful progress when perfection is unavailable and protect the independence that allows us to contribute over decades.
The important question is not, “How uncompromising can I prove myself to be?” It is, “What can I learn, build and change that will still make the world better after the excitement, conflict and publicity have passed?”