Are we the bad guys in life, as well as in film?

I commend, and salute you, for the considered methodology and timing of this "charged" interjection.

Beyond that commendation.....I will need time to read, and reflect upon, both your OP and the comments from our esteemed compadres below.

I will be back to this.....it is a very important moot that you have raised.  I have missed you being around Mr Isperg.

The real villains of history have most definitely been allistic. This is because they all (Hitler, Stalin, Attila, Genghis Khan etc.) have shown highly developed skills in understanding, inspiring and manipulating people as individuals and in masses, skills that autistics typically lack any vestiges of.

The system wanted our Adult lives to reflect our Schooldays; cliques, pigeonholed by interests.

TV exacerbated this compartmentalisation. Especially whenever it came to conflict between a Husband and his Wife. Commercials played that, to a tee. Think of Oxo, and Nescafé Gold Blend. They were prototype Goggleboxes.

Now, we're seeing the fruits born of this division. Nations divided on differences, which strike at the core of society. Meanwhile, our enemies work together. Exploiting our lack of cohesion.

My concern is that some sociopathic people may get misdiagnosed as autistic, as both conditions can exhibit: non typical responses to verbal cues, a lack of empathy, rigid thinking, and impulsive /risk taking behaviour. 

However, as I understand it autistic people do feel empathy, but it's more often emotional empathy or compassionate empathy, rather than cognitive, so "looks" different or is not seen. Autistic impulsive behaviour usually stems from difficulties with inhibitory control or understanding the potential outcomes of actions, whereas in sociopathic individuals it's a lack of regard for consequences.

Sociopathy also includes manipulative behaviour, disregard for ethics/morals/the rights of others, and lack of remorse or guilt. As far as I'm aware, these are not traits usually seen in autistic people.

Of course, autistic people can behave badly, but we're not "the bad guys" in life, we usually suffer with regret and remorse when we act in a way we think is bad. And I believe that we self censor more than NTs and are harder on ourselves.

no we’re not the bad guys just appears that way it’s an illusion. 

I think the way neurotypicals react to us is because communication for them isn't only about exchanging information, they have this elaborate, complex, nuanced dance - a series of shibboleths both spoken and unspoken and patterns of behaviour to put each other at ease. They can tell in a few milliseconds subconsciously that something is "off" about autistic people.

Ironically, this method of detecting bad people is really easy for psychopaths to exploit. They know all the tricks and are able to exploit them to appear superficially charming and get neurotypicals worshipping the ground they walk on. Such techniques tend to not work on autistic people as well because we miss all those social cues to begin with, yet NTs think of us as weird or dangerous when we're not trying to harm them at all, we're just skipping the small talk, not using body language or making good eye contact, and speaking bluntly about what we really think without trying to mislead anyone. Yet that sets alarm bells ringing in the NT mind.

The fact that some autistic people have done bad things which appear in the news, I don't think this makes the public think autistic people are inherently bad. Mostly I think these are individuals doing things in spite of having autism, not because of it. Although I suppose in a few cases of diminished responsibility, someone with autism who has a low IQ may commit manslaughter due to not understanding it. It also may be easy for autistic people to be radicalised due to black and white thinking and a strong sense of justice.

I Sperg said:

Now to be honest, there are some people here, who lack my ineffably sunny disposition ( Oh that's funny! One of my best..) and may actually be bad guys, but would they know it? Certainly my experience is some of the worst things I've done, I was quite convinced were righteous at the time...

I think most "villains" and people who do bad things believe they are doing the right thing. In fact moral righteousness can make people be very sure of themselves and commit bad acts if they believe it's necessary to produce a desirable outcome or "fix" some aspect or injustice of society (plenty of examples in 20th century history).

You see this in both autistic people and neurotypical people and from the far left to the far right and everywhere in-between. Everyone thinks they are doing the right thing, they just have different motivations, such as correcting an injustice, helping their own people, or even harming their own people (virtue signalling to make themselves feel good and broadcast it to those around them with similar views to get the "I'm a good person" feeling), or just harming someone or some group who is perceived as bad for some reason - it's justified and "good" because the target is "bad".

That's how you can get people blowing things up, or harming others (who they perceive as evil), or blocking roads, or setting fire to a building, or throwing things at the police, or destroying works of art, or whatever it is.

We define our own side as good and the other as bad. That allows us to commit bad acts, and condemn the bad acts of others. But it's not usually an act of malice, we genuinely believe that we are right.

Do I believe that there is true evil - people who do bad things that they know are bad on purpose for some reason? Cartoon villains in other words. Well, I would exclude schizophrenics from the question because their actions are not rational. There are those such as serial killers who derive pleasure from harming others. People such as that tend to gravitate toward groups that allow them to do those things, so in a beheading video, there's a good chance it is just a horrible person who has found a group that allows him to do that, but in some cases it could be someone who genuinely think they are doing the right and good thing.

Some have sexual perversions that are very motivating and make them do things that they then regret (often killing to avoid being caught) and they feel guilt for what they do but keep doing it because they can't get away from this strong sexual desire. They are sick people at the mercy of their perversions which means they'll always become bad people whether they want to or not. And they typically also tend to be missing some aspect of empathy which would stop other people from being able to do these things.

I would say that many psychopaths have the capacity to be genuinely bad people, because they understand what others are feeling and the harm they cause, but they don't care or they even enjoy it. They act in their own interest for the pursuit of wealth, power, pleasure etc. Most politicians, billionaires and CEOs fall into this category and it's difficult to describe them as good people. They tend to act in their own interests but pretend they are doing good.

There are not many autistic billionaires or politicians or CEOs, because autistic people tend to be too trusting and avoid lying, cheating etc. But there are some, e.g. Musk or Zuckerberg who for the most part appear to have lucked into it by being involved in a profitable piece of tech at an early stage.

I hope you (and the mods!) don't mind, but I'm going to re-post a reply of mine from another recent thread (Defence Lawyers using defence of ASD for offenders that commit serious crime). They're closely related and I think it serves equally well in reflecting my thoughts on your thread, too:

I'm not sure how to feel about it. I think it's human nature for reporters and their readers / viewers to immediately look for - and latch onto - anything in the way of known differences that could potentially help to explain instances of shocking and abhorrent behaviour. So perhaps it's inevitable, because we'll never know the reason behind any given individual's motivation or behaviour until the case has been fully investigated (and sometimes not even then).

I'm not sure that the media are necessarily aiming for autism to be seen as an "excuse" or sole reason - perhaps it's more a case of them flagging one potential contributory or related factor.

That being said, many of us on the spectrum have comorbid mental health issues, and research has shown that we can be at greater risk of suicidal thoughts or actions. Is it so far fetched to think that certain conditions, such autism (including its traits like rigidity, black and white thinking, and the potential for losing control of our behaviour during meltdowns, for example) in combination with mental health issues, could also lead to extreme actions at the other end of the behavioural spectrum?

We can also be more naive than neurotypicals, which can make us more susceptible to being groomed and manipulated into doing things that we shouldn't.

This article is interesting. Whilst it suggests that some research points to autistic people being more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of crimes, it also says this:

"On the other hand, some studies indicate that individuals with autism may have a higher propensity for certain types of offenses, such as arson (Hare, Gould, Mills et al., 1999; Mouridsen, Rich, Isager et al., 2008), sex offenses (Cheely et al., 2012; Kumagami & Matsuura, 2009), and assault and robbery (Cheely et al., 2012)."

From: https://i-am-autism.org.uk/autism-and-crime-is-there-a-dangerous-connection/

So, overall, I don't really know what to think or feel about it - including how to answer anyone if they were to challenge me on the subject.

I'm not sure that I totally follow what you are asking. But I'll give it a whirl...

Often in films/TV the psycho murderer has a past of bullying - is that what you mean? Not the mega villain criminal genius, but the psycho murderer.

I can only speak for myself - I try to find the best in people. I don't know if it is because I was lucky that despite any bullying, I had a good home/family life which gave me self-esteem.

People who want to take out as many other people as possible before they go down are the worst type of person to me. Especially as they seem to choose schools a lot in the USA. I think this unforgivable and unjustifiable.

When it comes to neurosis or whatever - I don't think any of this is due to autism directly, but how we've been treated.

Everyone has these urges, most have difficult circumstances. 

I make zero mistakes now after enough research. What makes the NT is that they fully repress and intentionally misrepresent expressions as a mode of being. By the MBTi standards, it's the ENTJ that makes the super-villain and the ENFP that is the fragile, reckless, impassioned baddie. 

Can you convince a mob to burn half a village of women? No. The Autist might have a type of intensity of a lone villain, but it's the sociopaths one needs to be careful of, and by definition, and those can read the masses.