As a person with bipolar disorder I understand and appreciate the intent behind saying “mental illness doesn’t make you racist/sexist/etc.” And in the sense that many people with mental illness are not reactionary, this is true. But I think we need to acknowledge it *can*.

It is weird, to me, to hold someone totally responsible for saying reprehensible things even when they’re experiencing it psychosis. I’ve talked before about how a friend tried to murder me (and did stab me) while psychotic. I didn’t hold him responsible for that.

It seems weird to say psychosis can make you want to murder your friend and roommate, and we can acknowledge that’s not something the person experiencing psychosis is morally responsible for, but if he said something racist he would be?

Mental illness doesn’t make most people violent but it absolutely *can*. I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it first hand. And most people on the left can quite easily grasp how it doesn’t make sense to blame a person experiencing psychosis for violence they commit in that state.

And if we can forgive something as severe as attempted murder, I’m not sure why we should refuse to give reactionary statements. Seems not nearly as bad, to me.

Forgive*

Delusions and psychosis make people believe things that aren’t true. That’s the core of what those terms mean. What they come to believe about the world that is untrue may well be something reactionary. After all, we’re all bombarded with reactionary politics constantly

Someone in a vulnerable state with distorted and diminished judgment, disordered cognition, and delusions, I don’t think can be held responsible for absorbing and believing untrue things simply because they’re politically reprehensible.

My friend when he was psychotic, in addition to believing I was giving him cancer with my mind, and that I had left him alone in the “womb of time” also came to believe in weird racial essentialisms, like that Black people could communicate telepathically

He started saying things about “sun people” (Black) and “ice people” (white). He absorbed right wing Black conspiracy thinking, including in the prodromal stage although it only became severe when he fully broke with reality

Before he attacked me his last google search was “Eye of Horus.” He basically became a hotep temporarily. But it seems weird to me to say he truly *was* a hotep in some essential sense. His thinking was totally disordered