Theodore Kaczynski
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Theodore "Ted" John Kaczynski (kə-ZIN-skee; May 22, 1942 – June 10, 2023), known before his capture as the Unabomber (YOO-nə-bom-ər), was an American mathematician and primitivist who carried out targeted mail bombings which killed 3 people and injured 23 between 1978 and 1995. Kaczynski hoped to bring about his vision of a primitivist society through violence against people he saw as representative of industrial capitalism. He is best known today for his anti-technological sociopolitical manifesto, Industrial Society and its Future, which he forced The Washington Post to publish in 1995 in exchange for an end to his bombing campaign. However, his own brother recognized Kaczynski's writing style in the work and turned him in, leading directly to his arrest and conviction.
Although Kaczynski's views partially aligned with anarchism and anarcho-primitivism, he was highly critical of both, along with other strains of leftism, including Marxism and socialism. Anarchists and leftists online sometimes refer to him (often ironically) as "Uncle Ted".
When Kaczynski was a teenaged mathematical prodigy at Harvard University, he spent at least 200 hours[1] as part of a psychological study in which subjects were asked to write an essay detailing their personal beliefs, and the essays were subsequently used as "ammunition" to personally belittle and abuse the subject and their views. Subjects were monitored with electrodes and filmed, and the subjects' own expressions of anger and rage were later played back to them repeatedly. The experiment was most likely connected to the CIA's MKUltra program. When he was later tried in the 1990s for his terrorist acts, Kaczynski maintained that the experiment had no effect on his actions, even when his own lawyers attempted to argue the opposite as part of their defense.
Kaczynski committed suicide in prison in June 2023.
References
- ↑ "A Dangerous Mind". Washington Post. 2 Mar 2003. Retrieved 12 Dec 2023.
External links
- Kaczynski's manifesto in full at the New York Times archive