The R Slur Must Never be Normalized

Last week Trump called Walz the 'R slur', and now his base is using it regularly. We must all speak out against this. It's a term that pushes a eugenicist agenda and feeds directly into fascism.

Last week Trump called Governor Walz the ‘r slur’, a word that the disability community has been fighting against for decades.

Then he doubled down on its use aboard Air Force One by telling a journalist he absolutely stands by it because there’s ‘something wrong’ with Walz.

It didn’t take long for his followers to start using it, especially on social media. There’s also been a significant increase in bot activity using that word or displaying memes with that word on them.

Donald Trump Jr has posted a Franklin the Turtle meme that says ‘Franklin Drives by the Walz’s House and Calls Him the R Slur”. It’s become so bad that Walz’s daughter Hope has taken to TikTok to call out the behaviour.

She says that she’s receiving horrible messages from Trump supporters. That there’s been a noticeable increase in people using this word to describe her and members of her family.

Her brother Gus is disabled. He’s had to deal with being called this slur his whole life. Now MAGA cultists are driving past his house screaming it at them, all because Trump lacks the basic human decency to avoid ableist slurs.

It must be called out. They’re tormenting this family and attacking the entire disability community.

It’s taken decades of effort on our part to get people to remove that word from their regular vernacular. To get people to understand how hurtful and discriminatory it is.

When someone like the President uses it, it ends up being normalized. People end up starting to think that it’s ‘ok’ to say that. It’s ok to call someone that. It’s ok to discriminate against us.

It’s not ok.

It’s also not the first time that Trump has targeted disabled people. During his 2015 run for President he publicly mocked Serge Kovaleski, using gestures and facial expressions which were meant to demean and humiliate.

It should have ended his campaign. The fact that it didn’t demonstrates just how acceptable ableism is.

He also told his nephew, Fred Trump III, that his disabled son should just be ‘left to die’. He added, ‘those people. Those costs. Why don’t they just die.’

If that’s not enough to convince you of his eugenicist goals, consider who he’s put in charge of public health and what message they’ve been sending for the last few months.

RFK Jr is a notorious anti-vaccine grifter who has been systemically dismantling the CDC and the vaccine advisory committee. Measles and pertussis are back and just last week he removed the recommendation for babies to be vaccinated against Hepatitis B. Many doctors say this will lead to liver cancer, cirrhosis and chronic illness.

Dr Oz is in charge of CMS and has repeatedly stated that people must ‘prove they matter’ in order to receive healthcare. He pushes the false narrative that everyone on Medicaid or SNAP is sitting at home watching TV all day. That they could ‘try harder’ to be well. That disability can be overcome.

Dr Makary is the head of the FDA and says similar things about how disabled people can ‘try harder’ to get better. He has said that the government should treat diabetes with cooking classes. He pushes the idea that disability is a personal and moral failing.

Experts say that for the first time this century they expect to see preventable child deaths rise after decades of steady decline.

Preventable deaths. Preventable disability. This is what the regime is creating. They’re gutting healthcare, food assistance and social supports while making their population sick.

It’s eugenics disguised as ‘fiscal responsibility’, and it’s going to kill people.

This is Ableism

In many ways it’s still socially acceptable to discriminate against disabled people. Most of us experience forms of discrimination every single day. Sometimes it’s small and other times it’s being called the R slur.

Either way, the general public sees us as second class citizens. Drains on resources. Expendable. And because of that, they tend to discriminate against us and they don’t push back when someone like Trump uses that word.

As a society we’ve been working for decades to improve inclusion and acceptance of all marginalized individuals. We’re nowhere near where we should be, but some progress has been made.

There’s more awareness of the various types of slurs and why they shouldn’t be used. There’s more people willing to call out bad behaviour and stand up for marginalized individuals. There’s more tolerance of those who are ‘different’.

The Trump regime seeks to destroy all of that. They’re pushing a white Christian nationalist agenda which will ultimately leave everyone else behind. They may have started with immigrants, but they won’t stop there.

They’re aggressively targeting disabled people and it’s a bad sign of what’s to come.

How do I know?

We’ve seen this movie before.

It feels as though we’re in mid 1930’s Germany right now. Hitler is in power but has not yet begun the full range of horrors that he has planned.

Discrimination is ramping up. People are being dragged from their homes. Families are being ripped apart. Immigrants are being blamed for the economic crisis. Disabled people are being labeled ‘useless eaters’. Romani, gay people and anyone ‘different’ is being targeted.

Most people who aren’t targets are staying silent. They aren’t speaking out. They’re going along to get along. They know that atrocities are occurring, but they think if they don’t belong to one of the ‘expendable’ groups they will be safe.

So they sit back and do nothing. Or worse, they report on their friends, families and neighbours to try and earn points with the Nazi regime.

We can’t sit back and do nothing. Time is running out to change course. The regime is escalating incredibly quickly.

They’re blowing up boats in the Caribbean. They’re canceling citizenship ceremonies for immigrants who’ve completed the entire process the ‘right way’. They’re detaining US citizens. They’re talking about compiling lists of Americans who are ‘extremists’ (ie anyone who’s anti Trump, anti ICE or anti capitalism). They’re gerrymandering states to prevent free and fair elections.

We’ve seen this movie before.

I know I keep saying it, but too many people seem unwilling to accept reality. The America we knew is gone. It’s been transformed into something very dangerous, but we still have time to stop it.

We can’t stop it without accepting how we got here. We allowed these atrocities to happen. We allowed the hateful rhetoric to go unchallenged for too long. We looked the other way.

To be clear, by ‘we’ I mean society as a collective whole. I know many of my readers have been doing everything they can to fight back against fascism. I know they’ve never and would never look the other way, but we need more people to join the fight.

You Can Start With Refusing to Let the R Slur Be Normalized

It may not seem like much, but fighting back against the resurgence of the R slur is not nothing. It’s actually a very big deal. Eugenics and fascism go hand in hand. There can be no social justice without disability justice.

The disabled were one of the first groups targeted by the Nazis because they knew that people wouldn’t fight for us. They knew that deep down most people have fear and disdain for disabled people, so it’s easy to commit atrocities against us.

Trump using the R slur is not a mistake. It’s not a slip up. It’s not him just being a cranky old man. He’s testing the waters. He’s trying to see what he can get away with. He’s furthering their eugenicist agenda.

I first wrote about this in November after he won the election. I explained that ‘you do you’ Covid policies and the push to leave the vulnerable by the wayside had contributed to Trump’s victory.

People were so eager to go ‘back to normal’ that they left people behind. They stopped caring about those who were disabled and high risk. They stopped caring if someone died of Covid. They made themselves the arbiters of another person’s worth, and decided that people like me were less important than their ability to go to brunch and cosplay 2019 ‘normal’.

When you decide that some people have ‘less worth' than others, you’re paving the way for fascism. Whether you realize it or not, you’re making it easy for someone like Trump to seize control.

His regime preyed on the understandable fears and frustrations that come out of a global pandemic.

People are sicker than they were before Covid. They’re experiencing more financial hardship. Many have lost their livelihoods. Over half of Americans can’t afford a basic standard of living.

When people are suffering they look for two things. Someone to blame, and someone to ‘fix it’.

Trump promised to deliver both.

He blamed the immigrants, the disabled and marginalized communities, and he promised to fix it for the ‘good Americans’ on Day One.

It was all a lie, but it worked. We witnessed something similar after the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. It helped give rise to Hitler and the Nazi party.

We’ve seen this movie before.

We Can Still Change Course

I believe we can still change course, and it’s incumbent on every one of us to do whatever we can to resist what’s coming.

It can be hard when you’re disabled because many of us lack the physical ability to go protest. We lack the financial resources or flexibility to participate in boycotts. We are busy fighting for our literal survival and so joining a political movement is often the last thing on our minds.

But there are always ways you can help.

Resist the use of the R slur. Call out bad behaviour whenever you see it. Don’t be afraid to make your disability visible! Make sure people know that disabled people are just like them.

We are your friends and neighbours. We are not something to fear. We are not expendable and we refuse to be left behind.

I can understand the urge to hide right now. Every day I wake up and think about quitting my advocacy and going back to hiding my disabilities.

It’s scary to be vocal during a fascist uprising. It’s scary to be a visible minority. It’s scary to join the resistance. It’s scary to do the right thing.

It’s also necessary.

There are more of us than there are of them, and it’s important we remember that.

It’s important we lift each other up, encourage one another and draw strength from those who are fighting the good fight every day.

If you need to take a break, take one. It’s ok. Trust that your community has your back and will keep up the fight while you rest and recover. Never forget that survival is also a form of resistance.

Whatever you’re doing to fight back, thank you.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for supporting me. This community keeps me going. It keeps me from giving up and going back into the shadows. You make me strong so I can hopefully be strong for others.

This will end eventually. We will win. We just have to keep up the pressure, keep speaking up and keep the faith.

Have you noticed more people using the R slur lately? Is it something you’ve had to deal with in your personal life?

How do you feel about being visibly or publicly disabled right now? Is it something you’re comfortable with or do you prefer to keep that information private?

If you have any suggestions on other ways our community can work together to resist the rising tides of eugenics, please leave them in the comments!