Unabomber
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The Unabomber was a media-popularized term for Theodore J. Kaczynski Ph.D., a former mathematics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who quit his teaching position in 1969 to live in a cabin in Montana. Starting in 1978, he engaged[1][2] in a mail-bombing campaign which killed 3 people and wounded 23, ending in 1995 when the New York Times and Washington Post agreed to publish his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future.
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[edit] Ideology
The premise of Kaczynski's ideology was fundamentally primitivist, stating that modern technology and industry were responsible for the cultural decadence, loss of freedom, and social ills that he felt plagued Western civilization, and that they were subjugating humanity to an unnatural ideal that went against thousands of years of evolution. He was vehemently anti-leftist, arguing that leftism in general was inherently totalitarian, but he also felt that mainstream conservatives were deluding themselves by opposing leftism yet continuing to support technological and industrial development instead of recognizing the role that he felt they played in leftism's advance. In his mind, cultural relativism, political correctness, class warfare, identity politics, and other aspects of modern leftism were all merely symptoms of the problems created by industrial civilization.
He argued that humanity should overturn industrial civilization — sooner rather than later, so as to reduce the pain caused by its collapse — and return to a primitive hunter-gatherer society. While he did dismiss some of the more romanticized views held towards hunter-gatherer societies[3], he did still idealize the idea of the noble savage, though in a markedly different manner from many anarcho-primitivists. He viewed the primitive world not as a place free of work and want, but rather, as a place where people were free from "non-productive" work, which he defined as anything that doesn't directly support subsistence living (such as shopping, filing tax forms, taking the car in for repairs, and wage labor in general). Back in the old days, in his view, people had to pull their weight in procuring food, water, and shelter in order to survive, and since that was their first and foremost preoccupation, they had no need for the decadent leisure activities and stressful, non-productive labors of modern society. Likewise, he argued, without the technology and infrastructure of modern society, there was no need to engage in coercion and forced dependence to maintain it, allowing relationships to emerge on the basis of mutual need, friendship, and desire. In short, while Kaczynski criticized the idealized view of primitive hunter-gatherer societies as being communal utopias of equality, cooperation, and pacifism, he simultaneously indulged in the equally fallacious view that they were libertarian utopias where freedom and rugged individualism reigned.
There's probably more to it than that, but like most hare-brained political treatises, Industrial Society and Its Future is really fucking long, and most of it is just banging on the same points over and over. So forgive us if we kind of just skimmed through it. There's a reason why Kaczynski forms the defining stereotypical image of the "crazy mountain man who writes a 300-page manifesto about all his problems with society before going on a rampage."[4]
Despite often being called an ecoterrorist in the media and elsewhere, in his manifesto he mainly based his arguments in psychology and self-esteem. While he did give mention to ecological concerns as well, he otherwise had little time for the mainstream environmental movement, viewing it as having sold out to the leftism that he hated. For him, a cleaner natural world was just a pleasant side-effect of freedom from industrial "slavery". Otherwise, he had more in common with the militant anti-modernism of radical traditionalists than anything, framing the advance of technology as driving the forces behind the destruction of freedom and traditional values. The content of the manifesto is drawn from several mainstream critiques of technology, especially the writings of Jacques Ellul, and writings on self-esteem and sociology, especially those of Eric Hoffer.
[edit] Activities
The name Unabomber comes from UNABOM, the FBI name for the case which stands for universities and airlines bomber, because his earliest bombs were directed at airlines and university science professors. He later also targeted a computer store, a timber industry lobbyist, and the head of a public relations firm. The common theme of his mail bomb attacks was they were all directed at people associated in one way or the other with science, technology, or industry, and at people whose positions and activities would most likely be known to somebody who is or was an insider in academia or the hard sciences. Hence, FBI behavioral scientists initially (and correctly) profiled him as a former university professor who had turned anti-technology, but they later abandoned that profile based on analysis of the contents of his homemade bombs (and, perhaps, on the then-fashionable "angry white male" meme and militia hysteria) in favor of profiling him as a blue-collar airline mechanic.
He also used the initials F.C. during his bombing campaign, initially thought to stand for "Fuck Computers" until he wrote an anonymous letter clarifying that it stood for "Freedom Club." His manifesto was published as F.C. before he had been identified by his real name. His brother recognized Kaczynski's writing style and notified the authorities in order to prevent him from striking again.
[edit] Fate
Coincidentally, F.C. would also be the initials of his final place of residence. He is currently imprisoned for life in a super-maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado.
[edit] Followers
Like any high-profile, politically motivated criminal, Kaczynski has his share of defenders, on both the far-right and, ironically, the far-left. The anarchist collective CrimethInc., for example, has an extended hagiography declaring Kaczynski "a hero for our time", claiming that the actions of his targets against people and the environment made his bombing campaign justified.[5] On the other side of the spectrum, Keith Ablow has defended Kaczynski's ideology; while he took great pains to state that he thought Kaczynski's actions were wrong, he went on to state that his ideas "are increasingly important" and "cannot be dismissed", saying that Industrial Society and Its Future deserved a place alongside Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World.[6][7] According to Ablow's logic, since the NSA is spying on us and Barack Obama heavily employed the internet as a key campaign and outreach tool, that means that the internet is totally rotten to the core and that Kaczynski was right about technology.
Anders Behring Breivik, another aficionado of rambling manifestos, was found to have plagiarized parts of Industrial Society and Its Future for his own "treatise", 2083: A European Declaration of Independence.[8]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Industrial Society and Its Future (aka "the Unabomber Manifesto"; reproduced by The Washington Post)
- US Federal Bureau of Prisons
[edit] References
- ↑ Unabomber Timeline
- ↑ The Unabomber Case: Chronology of a Terrorist
- ↑ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-truth-about-primitive-life-a-critique-of-anarchoprimitivism
- ↑ Compare the rant of the ex-LAPD cop Christopher Dorner for an example from the other side of the political spectrum.
- ↑ "The Unabomber: A Hero For Our Time." CrimethInc.
- ↑ Bishop, Thomas. "Fox News' Keith Ablow: Unabomber Was Right That Liberals Are 'Psychologically Disordered'." Media Matters for America, 26 June 2013.
- ↑ "Dr. Keith Ablow's Political Hero, the Unabomber." Respect the Blankie, 28 June 2013.
- ↑ Hough, Andrew. "Norway shooting: Anders Behring Breivik plagiarized 'Unabomber'." Daily Telegraph, 24 July 2011.