A research text dump on stochastic terrorism

A Critical Introduction

In the last meeting of the most active Earth Liberation Front (ELF) cell in the US, some members argued they should next attempt to assassinate captains of industry. It’s possible that them bringing the idea up to people who disagreed was the only reason it didn’t happen, as they might have feared that other members of the group would sabotage their life rather than let them go ahead with it.

Quoting Daniel McGowan, a former ELF member:

The last circle meeting basically cleaved between people who seemingly wanted to talk about it, not even plan it, but just talk about it, and the people that were repulsed by it.[1]

Quoting Bron Taylor:

Court records in the case of those accused of participating with Rogers in arson indicate that an activist-turned-informant claimed that Rogers had discussed the possibility of drive-by assassinations.[2]

In July 1998 Earth First! held its national Earth First! Rendezvous in southcentral Oregon. Green anarchists among them distributed the seventh issue of Live Wild or Die. It included a striking amount of violent and revolutionary images, including a reproduction of a previous ‘Ecofucker Hit List’. It was the same list that had previously been published and that included on it a Timber Association official and that some believe the Unabomber may have used to target one of his victims. The Association official and address was crossed out and the words ‘Who’s next?’ were scrawled nearby. On the opposite page was printed a statement made by Theodore Kaczynski protesting his defense team’s efforts to portray him as insane and promising that ‘more will be heard from me in the future’.[3]

Later it emerged that 2 of the ELF members had become Neo-Nazis:

[A] former ELF member told me that two comrades, Nathan “Exile” Block and Joyanna “Sadie” Zacher, shared an unusual love of Scandinavian black metal, made disturbing references to Charles Manson, and promoted an elitist, anti-left mentality. While their obscure references evoked Abraxas, Feral House, and Bouchet’s distribution networks, their politics could not be recognized within the milieu of fascism at the time. However, their general ideas became clearer, the former ELF member told me, when anti-fascist researchers later discovered that a Tumblr account run by Block contained numerous occult fascist references, including national anarchist symbology, swastikas, and quotes from Evola and Jünger. These were only two members of a larger group, but their presence serves as food for thought regarding important radical cross-over points and how to approach them.[4]

Onan On Guns and Stuff...

Author: Onan the (Reconstructed) Barbarian

Date: Winter 1995

Source: Wild Rockies Review, Vol. 8 No. 1, Pages 16–17.
<www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/key_docs/wild_rockies-ef_vol8-no1.pdf>

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War, Guns blazing, corpses lying in blasted streets surrounded by pools of congealing blood, the scream of heavy artillery raining constant, faceless death from afar, the innocents hiding in burned out buildings waiting for a break in the action to go scrounge food or water before it starts all over again. This is the story most of us know of domestic wars raging in Chechnya, the former Yugoslavia, and Somalia.

It is with these various examples of world conflict that I consider the intention of some regional “eco-,warriors,” the E-Rangers (dun-da-da-DUM!), to wage their own war against the forces of ecological destruction. Take on the Freddies, put the logging, mining, drilling and road building companies on notice, show that the land, the animals, Gaia herself, is worth the shedding of blood and the taking of life. The idea, I suppose, is to take the notion of “No Compromise in the Defense of Mother Earth” to its logical extreme, although I question the logic in reaching that extreme.

One dictionary definition of compromise is “a settlement in which both sides make concessions,” not a terrible premise from which to pursue an objective, indeed, it is the very nearly the premise that underlies our beloved consensus circle. But the politics of compromise-the current political paradigm-is the referent for the “No Compromise” slogan, not Webster’s. In the politics of compromise, those with power make very small concessions and those without power give up everything but a hollow shell of their principles. In this arena, the reality of compromising means we lose. So compromise has become a dirty word, a slur when used in reference to one’s character, and rightly so. In contrast, “No Compromise” has taken on the connotations of strength, but unfortunately, for some, its connotations are rife with sexist imagery of what is strength, and what is compromise. “No compromise,” for some, is the new code phrase for “let’s get drunk and kick some ass!” But no matter how these types of attitudes are couched, they are still bullshit. “No Compromise” is not about tactics, it’s about heart and steadfastness, and how wilderness can and will be saved.

With a No Compromise approach, we’re trying to affect change by standing up for what is right, by refusing to accept powerlessness and its concomitant loss of biological diversity. The big question is how do we transcend our inherent powerlessness and gain the ability to save ecosystems? One way is to change the arena we have to work in (“Subvert the Dominant Paradigm”) and foster a worldview that holds wilderness as fundamentally important. In lieu of this, the goal is to affect the current political system in order to achieve our objectives. If this is not, or does not seem possible, at least make a personal stand for one’s beliefs, and for the wildness at stake. The benefits and rewards of making such a stance are often surprising and greater than anticipated (although usually not without some associated judicial ramifications) because even the most rabid of foes can appreciate the courage needed to stand in opposition armed only with the righteousness of one’s ethics, and strength of conviction.

This courage, the act of taking a non-violent stance, is power. And this non-violence is the heart and soul of EF! and one of the main reasons for its the success. Without it, we would be nothing more than a bunch of armed goons destined for failure. Why? Because we can’t compete in their game of violence, intimidation and ‘might is right’ for very long, for they, the government/corporate alliance of eco-fuckers, have 99.99999% of the chips, and all the aces. More importantly, we cannot win because the taking up of arms negates the intellectual, moral and spiritual power that we possess. Non-violence confers far more power than we can ever achieve using force. And finally, we can be have all the facts in the world on our side, but the truth of ecosystem collapse and environmental calamity are quite hard to convey as one’s skull is exploding from the force of lead entering at high speed.

I am no hippie geek who thinks we just have to think pretty thoughts and eat tofu and then the earth will be saved; just the opposite, I think everything is fucked and we are probably doomed. It comes down to this: if we take up arms we have no chance, but if we avoid ego-maniacal, macho, martyr gun trips there is still some chance that maybe everything isn’t doomed. Maybe. As for those testosterone poisoned E-Ranger boys with the lead shootin’ pecker poles, I suggest they consider the option of self-immolation, now that is suicide with Style!

An Experimental List of Anarchist Principles

Author: Theo Slade

Date: May 1, 2022

Source:
<www.activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2022/05/01/an-experimental-list-of-anarchist-principles>

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Some groups and projects try to put together an aims and principles list to explain what campaign news and philosophy they will focus on, and I think this can positively influence what actions people take and think are justified. Some examples I know of include:

• By Any Means Necessary

• Anarchist Radio Network

• Green Anti-Capitalist Front

You also have people using slogans like ‘by any means necessary’ going all the way back to Malcolm X & Franz Fanon in the 60s, which I guess is an attempt to say we’ll go as far as we’re pushed, so be careful what state terror tactics you use on us.

My aims are reflected in the CrimethInc exercise in what an anarchist program might look like. And I’ve already written about my ethics broadly, but I’ll try to be more specific here, in experimenting with drawing up a list of principles that I think would be useful to the calculation of what tactics I think are useful and justifiable in the UK today which is obviously not on the verge of revolution, which to me just means a period in time when social tensions are not at their height:

1) Never act with reckless indifference to human and non-human animal life.

2) Never physically hurt people for the purpose of achieving political goals as it runs counter to our philosophy on the left that material conditions create the person and so we should make every peaceful effort to rehabilitate people.

Some tricky to explain examples that are justified, but only just outside this principle are:

(A) Community self-defense and self-defense by proxy, where you might desire to fight fascists in the street in order to block them from marching through immigrant communities or where you might desire to push your way through huntsmen in order to save a fox from getting mauled to death by dogs.

(B) Survivor-led vigilantism, where to the extent that some current institutions fail to rehabilitate people and the process of seeking justice through the institutions available can sometimes cause more trauma than its worth, then personal violence in order to resolve feelings of helplessness in the face of evil acts can sometimes be reasonably viewed as justified to regain feelings of agency.

3) Never take actions on the basis of anti-science beliefs or with the intent to propagate anti-science beliefs e.g. disproven conspiracy theories.

4) Take care to respect the difference between property which is personally and privately owned.

So, it could be seen as ethical to choose material targets of evil actors in order to cause economic damage and make a statement, so long as in the case of personal property, the item has no intrinsic sentimental value and can be replaced because the person is wealthy and that the item was paid for through the exploitation of others labor. Or is private property, meaning the means of production which should be owned collectively anyway.

The action would be an outlet for legitimate anger against that which causes us suffering and a means of developing people’s thinking and creating a wider base of people joined in sympathy for those ideals.

For example, if taking the risk to slash slaughterhouse trucks’ tyres in the dead of night both draws attention to animal suffering and also helps you to develop stronger bonds with a group of people and learn from other liberation struggles, then the action is both productive and leads to personal growth.

5) Never take actions in the hopes of helping in part instigate a revolutionary war sooner than it’s reasonable to believe you would have the capability to win. Similarly don’t use rhetoric about how tensions in society have escalated to the state of civil war or a third world war. For example, even if the revolutionary left got really good at assassinating captains of industry and getting away with it, there would be reasonable fears around the psychology of people who would take such an act against people who they could have grown up and been socially conditioned to be themselves, which would inexorably lead to a more authoritarian society and worse foundations on which to work towards a better society.

I do think we can hypothesize the unrealistic case of 99% of society desiring a referendum on a shift from parliamentary representative system to a federated spokes council system and the MP’s dragging their feet, the same way both parties gerrymander the boundaries to make it easier to win despite it being the one issue most everyone agrees is bad, and people needing to storm the halls of power to force a vote to happen.

More likely though, an opportunity for revolution might arise from such a confluence of events as climate refugees and worker gains forcing the state and corporations into trying to crack down on freedoms in order to preserve their power and enough people resisting that move, who are then able take power and usher in radical policy change, with either the army deciding to stand down or splitting into factions.

Most can sympathize with quick revolutions against dictatorships where the result is a freer society, like the Kurdish uprising in Northern Syria which took power from a regime who had rolled tanks on demonstrators and outlawed teaching of their native language.

But, even there, there are key foundations you need to work from, like the probability you won’t just give an excuse for the oppressor committing even worse horrors as was the case with the Rohingya militants who ambushed a police checkpoint, resulting in army & citizen campaign to burn down many villages, plus murder and rape those that couldn’t get away.

Also, there would be a responsibility to put down arms after winning political freedoms and a majority are in favor of diplomacy through electoral politics, like in Northern Ireland today.

Under representative democracies, the sentiment of most is that, even if it could be argued that a war of terror (not a revolutionary war) against the ruling class was the easiest route to produce a better society, that it would still be ethically wrong to be the person who takes another’s life just because it’s the easiest way. Since regardless of manufactured consent or anything else you still could have worked to build a coalition to overcome those obstacles.

And I agree, it would be an act of self-harm to treat life with such disregard when we could have been that same deluded person shrouded in the justificatory trappings of society which normalizes that behavior. I don’t think the way we win today is by treating a cold bureaucratic system with equally cold disregard, by justifying our resort to threat and violence because we have fewer resources, and a belief in the importance of our message. Time on earth is a foundational value worth fighting for, and everybody deserves some amount of breathing room to make mistakes and learn from them.

Primary Source Reading

How Far Should We Go? (1988)

Author: Anonymous

Date: 21 December, 1988

Source: Earth First! 9, no. 2 (1988).
<environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/key_docs/rcc00098005-9-2_1.pdf>

Notes: The article in the Earth First! Journal was attributed to “Tom Stoddard,” with a closing note stating, “Tom Stoddard is a former bank vice president living in California.” This was obviously intended to troll the authorities, who may have been obligated to pursue the lead simply to satisfy bureaucratic requirements. In the volume ‘Beware! Sabotage!’ the authors were listed as the “Lightning Sprite Brigade”.

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Some environmentalists say Earth First!ers are saboteurs, destroyers and even terrorists. They say we go too far and alienate potential friends. These anemic environmentalists are as flabby as Kobe beef, boozed and massaged by the system into near apathy. They want to save the Earth provided it is no more difficult and dangerous than walking to the corner for their newspaper. Their commitment to rescue this ailing sphere is about as ridiculous as Jimmy Swaggert’s morals.

The humans trying to destroy Earth have passionate determination. They are motivated by that magic elixir, greed, and its first cousin, power. Using the destroyers’ gauge, Earth First!ers look as pastoral as a mountain meadow. How far would EF!ers and other serious conservationists go to save this battered orb?

Maybe as far as water hungry promoters wanting to drain Mono Lake for profligate Los Angeles humans. Perhaps as far as auto makers and oil drillers bent on concreting the countryside and depleting natural resources. Hopefully as far as the R.J. Reynolds, Ligget & Meyer and Skoal go in providing air pollution, carcinogens, and litter. Certainly as far as Maxxam, Georgia Pacific and Boise Cascade in destroying our old growth forests. But probably not as far as the Catholic and fundamentalist crazies bombing Planned Parenthood Centers.

Possibly as far as Consolidated Coal and Kennecott Copper carving vast open pit wounds in the earth. Surely as far as hazardous waste disposers, leaking underground tank owners and government deep mine radioactive burial experts polluting the aquifers. But perhaps not as far as Union Carbide and Dow Chemical creating Bhophallic witch’s brews of PCBs, DDT, aldrin and dieldrin.

Assuredly as far as dedicated litterers desecrating every stream and seaside with Bud bottles, Big Mac cartons, and plastic wine dispensers. Certainly as far as the humanistic and religious fanatics wanting to waste Earth’s resources keeping every misbegotten human alive at any cost. Undoubtedly as far as the Vicar of Christ and other religious ostriches who encourage every human to breed us into SRO population crises causing deforestation, drought, and desertification. But maybe not as far as poachers, hunters, furriers and smugglers who kill and deal in Black Rhinos, Snow Leopards, Cougars, Grizzlies, and Harp Seals for every shade of human superstition and vanity.

Maybe as far as every hamburger chomping ORV SOB who wants to leave the Earth a wasteland covered with 4 X 4 tracks of Bridgestone Desert Duelers. Reasonably as far as the gill net fishermen using and losing plastic nets which “incidentally” kill millions of sea mammals, sea birds, and non-commercial fish every year. Perhaps as far as farmers draining their deadly fertilizers and pesticides into Kesterson and other National Wildlife Refuges. Assuredly as far as the corrupt governments trying to liquidate the Inuit, Penan, Maasai and other native peoples who have lived for millennia in harmony with Earth.

Maybe not as far as the sheep ranchers who poison wolves, Coyotes, eagles, California Condors and other “varmits.”

Potentially as far as the timber firms, slash and burn farmers, and hamburger ranchers who are destroying 75,000 acres of Earth’s tropical rainforests every day.

Monkeywrenchers, Stumps Suck and Ecoavengers are not going far enough fast enough to outdo Mother Nature’s enemies. Defenders have too long been too tepid and too slow. Maybe that is why we are losing the race to save our planet. If we resolve to go as far as the destroyers, it would leave damn little we can’t do. If we want to save Earth we had better quit taking our marching orders from our friends and start taking them from our enemies. That is how far we should go!

Bombthrowing: A Brief Treatise (1993)

Author: Pajama

Source: Wild Rockies Review, Vol. 6, no. 1.
<www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/key_docs/wild_rockies-ef_vol6-no1.pdf>

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I have a theory. My theory is that if, every time the Forest Service or some other entity commits an act of destruction of the wild, if every time they plow under another roadless area, or murder a wolf, or mangle and plunder and sack a wild place, if every time they do this I take my anger and I place it in a certain compartment inside my brain, then when it becomes time to throw bombs I will be able to access those pieces of anger that I have stored and be a very good bombthrower, perhaps better than the other bombthrowers.

So, I spend my days patiently contriving means to stop the madness which drives the Forest Service and other renegades, and each day I read the mail, perhaps I file another appeal, and then at the end of the day I open up this special compartment inside my brain and I put the anger of some new atrocity in it, in anticipation of the day when I shall need this anger in order to throw bombs.

But a new fear has overcome me. I perceive my anger calling me from inside its compartment, I hear the door unlatching from inside, and this new terrible question approaches me:

How shall I know when it is time to throw bombs?

If the Forest Service decides to cut occupied owl habitat in Oregon, is it time to throw bombs?

Or if the Fish and Wildlife Service decides to trap and kill wolves, or to shoot them from the sky, is it then time to throw bombs?

What if the Park Service decides to imprison Grizzly bears in a zoo for the benefit of tourists, if the Forest Service ignores the appeal process, or if the largest intact grove of Redwoods is only 500 acres in size, if the Endangered Species Act is abolished or sidestepped by people with enough money, if corporations continue to wreak havoc upon the ozone layer, if reason is blindly cast aside in favor of profit, if the last remaining herd of wild Bison is slaughtered for following their migratory instincts, if my generation watches the very last Chinook salmon perish in a home choked with silt, if certain nameable parties proceed in a manner which is clearly imperilling the lives of the multitude of glorious and beautiful critters and plants on our fine planet, our only planet, what then? Is it then time to throw bombs?

Think: when the very last wolves on this continent are trapped and caged for captive breeding (as the remaining Condors were, not so long ago), will it finally be time to throw bombs?

Or will it be too late?

Storm Clouds of a Long Battle (1994)

Author: Anonymous

Source: Live Wild or Die! #5. <www.environmentandsociety.org/node/7124>

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Sometimes there are no answers. Conflicts can not always be resolved peacefully; someone “wins” and someone loses. So it may be with humanity (the industrial experiment) and its unwilling opponent, biodiversity. In our present numbers and with the dominance of the consumption system, there is little hope for a healthy natural environment or the millions of species which will be forced into extinction before most of us die. For we inhabit a world in which the growth of industrial culture and its technologies and mechanisms of control is accelerating at an evil pace. With every passing day, the cancer of industrial “civilization” extends and reinforces itself — so that yesterday’s most frightening corporate dreams become today’s development projects, leading to tomorrow’s toxic nightmares. We know that the pace at which the cancer grows in the rate at which paradise disappears. Sacred wild lands; fantastic and wonderful variations of plants and animals; entire cultures and their knowledge of how to live in balance as well as our potentially wild and free selves, are sacrificed for the “progress” of an insane society. We are witnesses to and participants in (to varying degrees) global biological meltdown and the consolidation of powerful technologies of destruction in the hands of fascist powers. The inevitable result of the human activity that passes for everyday life seems obvious: the death of nature.

There is no hope for the Endangered Species Act, for any law that interferes with the corporate menace will be repealed or circumvented. No hope for earth summits, Green Party reforms, or a sudden collapse of the industrial death system. No; society will continue to pursue armaments and scientific research (space exploration, robotics, computers, genetic manipulation, biospheres, mass transit/electric cars) and high tech medical intervention as “solutions” rather than acknowledge them as part of the problem. People will continue to pollute, overpopulate, to live individualist automobile culture, to destroy the forests and then attempt to move someplace less spoiled, and to deny their doom. “Activists” will continue the futile effort of education and reform. What reform or reason is there with a system that cares only about its growth and treats every “discovery” as a new frontier to be exploited and subsumed? Or with a culture that swallows and absorbs anything alternative to be spit back out as the latest “hip” fashion to be bought? Yes; the downfall will be a long and ugly process and will take a huge toll — the machine will fight to the to the end to keep itself going, no matter the cost in life, human or otherwise. By the time the system collapses (and collapse it will, for it is not sustainable) there will be few if any viable ecosystems left, and we may created atmospheric and climatic changes that end most of the life on earth.

Our path can seem daunting — if we fail to act or are not successful in our efforts, it will be exponentially more difficult for future generations to stop the devastation, let alone turn society in a new direction. Dead ends abound. Hope often seems like just another word in the dictionary, rather than an emotion we experience. It seems that for every corporate project stopped there are a hundred more pushed to deadly completion. Anyone attempting to point out the inanities of the prevailing paradigm is looked upon as a modern day chicken little. Doubts can begin to creep in. Maybe we’re overestimating how bad things really are. In the absence of any kind of real movement, we compromise what we know in our hearts, and funnel our energy into the system. We wonder if we weren’t so aware of the evils, if life would be easier.

Yet we must not despair nor become paralyzed by our legitimate cynicism. What is the value of humanity and what self-worth can we find if we can not effectively resist ecocide? Yes, it is a difficult path; we are trying to be feral in a managed world. We must travel our lives as free, joyful human beings and we must strive to seek our place in the natural balance of things. Do anything less, and we will not have the material with which to build a new society upon the ashes of the old. This means that those of us who really care about the future must find creative ways to circumvent these dead ends. Never underestimate your own inner power! Look how far you’ve come from the school kid who loved TV to the being who understands what freedom means, and fights for it in everyday life.

So where do we start? There are so many issues, causes, projects. Sure, we can concern ourselves with the destruction of tropical rainforests and support faraway resistance struggles, but we can not cop out. You stand on stolen, occupied and devastated land. Global destruction starts in our backyard and is forcibly exported throughout the world, as our consumer society is shoved down people’s throats through a variety of military, political and economic methods. We in the industrialized world have a special task (or joy) — to impair the dominate culture’s ability to expand, and ultimately to function. There are many creative ways we can achieve this (some of which you will find within these pages), and we start by removing the dominant paradigm from our minds and by learning to see in new ways. It’s kind of like cleaning your room — it’s a constant process, and you have to sweep away the dust often. This project calls for rejecting the whole of modern civilization and building a life-centered culture, where all life and future generations have equal rights and claims to a healthy natural environment. A return to a simple, joyful life of self-sufficiency. This necessitates acquiring and passing on those skills and attitudes that allow us to inhabit a place in a sacred sustainable manner. There is much we can learn from the indigenous and aboriginal cultures which remain, if we are willing to listen. Introduce yourself and your friends to the wildness of the earth and of that within. Move away from materialism, apathy and easy reform. Band together with fellow resisters and practice living together as a tribe. Begin a wheatpasting/billboard alteration/sabotage conspiracy. Stay in one place for a while, for a long time, and get to really know and love it. Learn how to take care of each other, physically and emotionally. Learn your local plants, eat wild food! Buy little, share more, work less. Start a fire, dismantle or disable a machine of destruction. Pick a local eco-raper and hunt them: hinder their ability to continue their operations. Spread your subversive creativity and passion!

Remember. Learn from history and herstory. We are at war with a systems and functions of industrialized society; the economy, the accumulation of resources, the exploitation, the technology, the values and arrogant assumptions. We do not aim to seize control of, but rather to destroy entirely, the means of production. We do not seek a program or leader to follow. We seek an end to governments, the act of governing, and the power over other living beings. A caution: we must be careful not to aim for some nihilistic glorification of the eco-warrior role. There is a screaming need to re-learn where and who we are on this planet, to understand the meaning of harmony, to transcend our domestication. Haste, bold ones, the wolf howls and the owl hoots; let not their crying ghosts haunt our pitiful monuments.

Environmental Rangers (1995)

Subtitle: Biodiversity Defense

Author: Avalon

Date: Winter 1995

Source: Wild Rockies Review, Vol. 8 No. 1, Pages 16–17.
<www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/key_docs/wild_rockies-ef_vol8-no1.pdf>

“If a stranger batters down your door with an ax, threatens your family and yourself with deadly weapons, and proceeds to loot your home of whatever he wants, he is committing what is universally recognized—by law and morality—as a crime. In such a situation the householder has both the right and the obligation to defend himself, his family, and his property by whatever means are necessary. This right and this obligation is universally recognized, justified and even praised by all civilized human communities. Self defense against attack is one of the basic laws not only of human society but of life itself. The American wilderness, what little remains, is now undergoing exactly such an assault”—Edward Abbey

World War III is happening right now. It is humanity’s war against the planet and the casualties are ever increasing. Fewer and fewer species each year have stable, genetically viable populations, and new threats to population health spring up in today’s techno-industrial world as fast as MTV videos. Whole ecosystems seem to be balanced on the edge of what Christopher Manes has called “ecological meltdown.”

As the core continues to heat almost unchecked, a growing number of activists are becoming disillusioned with the ‘too little, too late’ reform efforts of mainstream environmental groups. In response, the radical environmental movement, popularized by Earth First! and the Animal Liberation Front, grows and expands each year. The Environmental Rangers are the latest embodiment of no-compromise activism.

The Environmental Rangers (E Rangers) are an avant-garde group that will redefine the parameters of the radical movement. The E Rangers, a paramilitary organization founded by Ric Valois, are extensively trained, fit, and possess strict standing orders and state-of-the-art firearms.

I met with Ric at an activist strategy conference for the Cove-Mallard campaign. I was at first intimidated by the uniform, his perfect posture and several high-caliber stories I’d heard last summer which made the E rangers a favorite topic of conversation. Ric turned out to be a friendly, almost endearing individual. He is an articulate spokesperson for a doctrine of activism born out of the disparity of ecological meltdown. The E Rangers go a step beyond the nonviolence codes held almost religiously by all other groups engaged in direct action or civil disobedience: E Rangers will not be coerced by the heavy-handed methods of armed Forest Service officers.

The paramilitary operations of Forest Service law enforcement have made it possible for timber barons to raze systematically old growth forests in spite of nonviolent activists’ diligence and creative protests. The paramilitary operations of the E Rangers, on the other hand, are intended to balance the playing field in this critical game of planetary survival. In addition, E Rangers have provided physical support for campaigns seeking to protect biodiversity. I have heard eyewitness testimony that a single E Ranger is more helpful around base camp than a half-dozen tie-dyed hipsters.

The formation of the E Rangers comes at a time of increasing death threats against environmental activists from coast to coast. Activists have had their wells salted, their barns and houses burned and their families harassed. I don’t have to tell you about Judi Bari and the car bomb that has maimed her for life. Diné activist Leroy Jackson is dead under suspicious circumstances, probably murdered. Ric Valois hopes that the presence of his group will act as a deterrent to the violence that has been inflicted upon activists.

Mainstream groups, such as Audubon and the Sierra Club, admit that the no-compromise stance of Earth First! makes their groups appear more moderate and helps them gain more political clout. It has long been the hope of many Earth First!ers that other groups will push the fringes of the environmental debate further, so that Earth First! will look moderate by comparison. After all, hanging banners, performing guerrilla theater and incapacitating big, yellow machines is hardly an extreme reaction to worldwide ecological melt-down. In contrast, the mere presence of armed Environmental Rangers calls attention to both the seriousness of the environmental crisis and the seriousness of their resolve to halt the today’s blatant attack on biodiversity.

“[The Environmental Rangers] practice and espouse non-violence but with one minor variation. We will go fully armed on all of our missions. Weapons will be carried as a symbol of our commitment and willingness to put our lives on the line and of course will be used if necessary. Observation of nature teaches that violence (change) is omnipresent but never malicious. So while it is true that any fool can pull a trigger, many find the courage within themselves to refrain from doing so until all else fails.

“The Environmental Rangers are an equal opportunity organization. Anyone with the heart and the soul for it is welcome. You must be self supporting and in good mental, physical and spiritual condition and capable of sustained hardship and risk in the outdoors. A sense of humor will come in real handy too.”

Politics and the Ethical Void (1996)

Subtitle: A summary of Steve Booth’s ground-breaking expose of politics as technique

Author: Steve Booth

Date: September 1996

Source: Green Anarchist Journal, Issue #43–44, Autumn 1996, Pages 22–24.
<thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/public_archive/9175.pdf>

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We cannot apply the ethical to the political. To try to do so is to be like a small boy with his finger in the dyke, while a hundred yards away, the sea rushes through a gap as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.

This is a far bolder and more emphatic thesis than saying we must value the political in a negative ethical sense (as bad or evil), although people do insist on trying to evaluate it as such. No. The case is stronger than this. The political is completely divorced from the ethical. The political is not quantitatively at odds with the ethical like a naughty child who sometimes does good, sometimes bad but qualitatively severed from it.

A HUNDRED INTERLOCKING QUESTIONS

It is meaningless to try to employ an ethical critique of politics. People nevertheless often do so. Sometimes this takes the form of an ought. “John Major ought to do something about Europe...” Perhaps one of the best ways into my thesis that it is meaningless to try to apply the ethical to the political is to make the attempt by asking specific questions:

• The Unemployment Statistics Question: Unemployment statistics are systematically falsified. Politicians frequently use these lies in arguments to show how the economy is getting better. Why do politicians believe they are entitled to lie in this way?

• The Genocide Jets Question: As a matter of government policy, jets are being manufactured in Britain and supplied to Indonesia for purposes of committing genocide in East Timor. Many people believe this is wrong. Why do the politicians refuse to acknowledge this and stop supplying those jets?

• The Register of Sleaze Question: The Nolan Committee said that MP’s should register their earnings in public so that voters could find out who pays these so-called ‘representatives’. Some MP’s declined to register their interests. If the MP’s think themselves immune and refuse to follow their own laws, why should anyone else?

• The Ambulance Roulette Question: The government has cut funding to the NHS to pay for tax cuts to the well-off. At the same time the lack of funding causes hospital wards to close and reduces the number of intensive care beds. A man dies after being driven around Lancashire and Yorkshire from hospital to hospital in an ambulance. Do we consider the Tory health minister responsible for this death?

• The Windscale Leukaemia Question: After several decades, radioactive material from Sellafield has contaminated Cumbria, causing people to die of leukaemia. The government ordered a full cover-up as usual, and then issued a report (a) denying there are any cases of leukaemia, and (b) blaming them on sewage from camps used to house construction workers back in 1947. Given this ‘clean bill of health’, the plasm goes on operating. Can we give the politicians operating this system a similar clean bill of ethical health?

If you don’t like these particular examples, try to think of your own. These questions are simple attempts to apply the ethical to the political. Il is very easy to generate these sorts of questions just by looking at the newspapers. We could build up hundreds of them, thousands of them, millions of them. Eventually there comes a point where we have to stop asking and acknowledge the futility of trying to apply the ethical to the political.

POLITICIANS OUGHT TO BE ETHICAL...

The liberal at this point will seek refuge in an ought Politicians may be liars, bullshitters, crooks, embezzlers, murderers, mass murderers, mass poisoners etc, but they ought not to be like that. Instead they should behave in the best interests of their constituents...

Before we laugh contemptuously at the naïve believer in ‘liberal democracy’ we ought to notice the disjunction. The only kind of politician the reformist acknowledges is one based on a theoretical projection, a picture of what ought to be. Wherever has such a politics ever been practiced on earth? The liberal reformist makes the ‘No True Scotsman’ move of declaring that proper politicians are honest Etc. The reprobate examples we are saddled with in the real worlds of Westminster or Brussels are not ‘real’ politicians at all but imposters, wolves in sheep’s clothing. By defining politicians in this way and excluding the reality, the shysters, our apologist begs the question. Let us return to the real world.

THE WELFARE STATE OBJECTION

Have we not skewed our analysis too, by refusing to acknowledge that politicians can, sometimes, do good? Take the Welfare State, for example. (For those who have forgotten, this was a system of free benefits, paid for out of taxation, providing education, health care etc which applied in Britain between 1948 and 1984 or so.) The Welfare Slate is put forwards as an example of a good policy. How do we determine that such a policy was indeed ethical? Through reference to ethical criteria.

I readily concede that some of the politicians putting forwards the NHS, Butler Education Act and so on did so for ethical treasons. Others will have done it for reasons of political expediency. Some politicians will have been indifferent to it, and some will have opposed it. The government, however was not forced to introduce the Welfare State. It could have followed other policies; intensified the Cold War or adopted other policies with regard to the Commonwealth. The choice of policy was politically guided. Later, much of the Welfare State was abolished. Were we to try to apply the same ethical criteria to the abolition as well as the setting up, we might say that the start was right (ethically correct), and the ending of it was wrong (ethically flawed). One thing this shows is that the political is not guided by the ethical, and so we are trying to examine the political with the wrong sort of tools.

An example like the Welfare Slate shows the political still cancels the ethical. At one point there is an apparent link between them, and at other times this docs not exist To apply the ethical to the political is to try to measure the process using the wrong equipment (like measuring a straight line with a protractor). The correspondence between the ethical and the political is arbitrary, the ‘link’ selected or disregarded according to expediency or whim or other (non-ethical) criterion. The overriding factor is not ethical but dictated by expediency and the imperative to get, retain and to cling to power. The political, if it uses the ethical at all, uses it as a fig leaf — something to camouflage its proper motives.

One more point with regard to the Welfare State objection. Above, I asked “Wherever have we seen such a politics practiced on earth?” Think about the example of Aneurin Bevin, the Minister of Health, who resigned in 1950 when the basic principle of free health care was watered down by the introduction of dental charges. Now, at last, we see an example of the ethical politician — but it is noteworthy that the only way he could exercise his state of being moral was to resign his office and so cease being that official. A parable of the void between politics and the ethical.

THE REMOVAL OF CHOICE

In the hundred interlocking questions, why do we have to give up asking ethical questions of the political? Partly because of the sheer futility of asking them. We realize that the political has never acknowledged the ethical, not for one second. Politics assets something else — its own power to deny choice. It is true that politicians sometimes use the rhetoric of the ethical as an electioneering ploy or as an argument to encourage obedience; “If you don’t pay your poll tax, how will the hospitals keep going and the bins keep being emptied?” One of the reasons why politics docs not acknowledge the ethical is that it cannot do so, because if it did the political would be abolished as a category.

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THE BUSINESS OF POLITICS

The business of politics is to govern — to make more mechanisms of control, to systematically block the paths to freedom, to stop them up. With politics the capacity for choice is already taken away and so we cannot value what happens. It is not appropriate to offer praise or blame where there is no choice.

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Politics is about the way we organise and administer society as a collective entity. The business of politics is to govern, that is to say to make more and more mechanisms of control, to systematically block the paths to freedom, to syop them up. The ethical is about how we value actions and choices as individuals. With politics, the choice is already taken away and so we cannot value what happens. We cannot offer praise or blame where there is no choice, it is just not appropriate to do so.

To accept the political is to subordinate yourself to the process, to acknowledge the Divine Right of Parliament to rule. The political arrogates that power to itself and the power of the individual to choose is annihilated. Suppose, for just one second, that we declared the ethical to be superior (or to have power over) that divine right. The distinctive character of the political would thereby be abolished. Something other than the political would be given the power to decide. What is ethical is equally clear, or equally obscure, to all. The privileged position of the politicians, judges and bureaucrats to arbitrate what is correct would vanish. The ethical is public property in a way the political is not. You do not need a voting card or the membership of a political party or elite to determine what is cancer.

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POLITICS ASSUMES A MODE OF AUTHORITY WHICH CANCELS THE ETHICAL

Were we to declare the political as subordinate to the ethical, politics would be abolished as a separate entity. The divine right of the political to govern would be abolished. The call to obedience overturned, politics would be subsumed as a sub-branch of applied ethics.

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Were we to declare the political subordinate to the ethical, the distinctive nature of the political would be swept away. To make this declaration is to classify the political as a sub-branch of applied ethics, the part of it relating to collective decisions and choices, a kind of ‘ethics in aggregate’. This leads to another objection.

THE WHOLESOME APPLE THESIS

Not all politicians are bad, the apologist asserts just as not all apples in the barrel have gone bad. Some apples arc wholesome, just as some politicians arc capable of good (ethically valued) actions and choices. If the aggregate of politicians behaved ethically then politics would be moral. In effect, this is an attempt to subsume the political underneath the ethical, as in the preceding paragraph. The difference between the open declaration of ethical priority over the political, and the wholesome apple thesis is that this time the declaration is mute, it works by sleight of hand.

In this hypothetical example, politics is never openly declared subservient to ethics, it is just that in some way the politicians subordinate their actions and choices to the ethical. The only way we could know they arc doing this is by observing their deeds. They still retain the myth of political infallibility, and still make the decisions for other people, but they secretly allow the ethical to determine their choices.

Under its own terms the wholesome apple objection only works so long as the controlling majority of politicians go along with the subterfuge. They walk a thin line between; on the one hand openly declaring the ethical superior to the political and thereby doing themselves out of a job; and on the other hand losing that moral majority and seeing the political once again regain the upper hand, thereby demonstrating the ethical void.

In so far as me politicians allow something outside the political (namely the ethical) to govern their choices, they cease to be politicians. To accept the ethical is superior to the political is to cancel the political.

Does the wholesome apple objection apply in the real world? Suppose we were to secretly persuade a controlling majority of politicians to make ethical choices, we would still have the political as something apart from the ethical, demanding our unconditional obedience. Once we start asserting the ethical over the political, whether as a stated ethical principle or in our deeds, the whole corrupt political web begins to unravel.

INTERCONNECTEDNESS

Part of the reason why we had to give up asking the specific ethical questions of the political was that they connected up. The ethical politician (if indeed it makes sense to talk of such a being) is apt to challenge all their corruption. Start to ask the ethical questions and it all goes. Ask enough of them and you end up asking just one, the ‘Who are these bastards?’ question which leads to open doubt about the divine right of Parliament to rule; or just a few specific questions. The answer comes back just the same from the politician: “I do these things because 1 want to do them, and you do not have the power to stop me”. This is the core of politics. The politicians sneering at the questioner is not an ethical position al all but something else — it is the declaration of disinterested independence from morality. You can try to go on applying the ethical to the political, but t is futile. The politicians refuse to acknowledge the power of the ethical. It has no leverage. Hence my description of the political as an ethical void.

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ETHICS IS WITHOUT LEVERAGE

Are works of art to be valued ethically?
Are machines? Inanimate objects? Where are the people, the actors? If they are not materially part of the process, how can the process be valued?
How can the people be blamed?

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The hundred questions interconnect. What is there to value, ethically speaking, with the political? They lead to the “Who are these bastards?” question, but to ask that is to step outside the political, to move towards retaking authority and responsibility over your own life and so to become ethical once more. What is there to value, ethically speaking, with the political?

The political is not about individuals, the individual is only seen as steamroller fodder, cannon fodder, a cross on a lottery ticket, as a taxpayer, customer, a unit on a balance sheet. The individual is precisely nothing. The wholesome apple thesis asserts that if the aggregate of politicians chose differently, the politics would become ethical. It would cease to be what it is. A what if...? argument By contrast, my concern is to describe politics as 1 find it, and not uncritically repeat the myth. With politics as we find it, even individual politicians count for nothing. The party machines rumble on, with or without them. This insignificance can be demonstrated by turning the questions asked at the start of this article:

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• The Torture Batons to Iraq Question: A (hypothetical) junior I minister discovered the government I was supplying torture batons to Saddam Hussain. He raised the mailer at a cabinet meeting. The I other ministers just laughed at him I and so he resigned in disgust.

  “There’s plenty more yes men I where you came from” the Prime I Minister told him, pressing the bell I under the table for the cabinet minister’s replacement to be sent up. If he believed in the ethical, why was he sitting there in the first place?

• The Ambulance Roulette Question: Due to the crisis in NHS funding, an Orpington man was helicoptered 187 miles to Leeds (7^th March 1995) and died in the intensive are unit 12,935 of his fellow Orpingtonians voted Tory in 1992. How much are this man’s neighbours to blame for his death?

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If the gap is as wide as the Atlantic, it doesn’t matter how many boys slick their fingers in the dyke, the water still pours through the gap.

Attempts to value the political are hopeless because we either end up blaming the individuals (who arc only components) or we end up blaming everybody, and therefore nobody. So long as The Machine has enough components in place, it will continue to function and resignations by cabinet ministers or angry letters in the Orpington Advertiser will not change that. When they all resign at the same time, the political will no longer exist and the question will change. As it is. The Machine goes on “There are plenty more yes men where you came from”... We cannot value this system, we cannot value a network of abstractions. Such attempts at value become so diluted they are meaningless. It doesn’t make sense to try to apply collective value judgements in this way.

THE POLITICAL AS MACHINE

The political is like a machine which has been built up over the centuries by people with different objectives. We cannot claim that they had a single, coherent overview of the political. If today the political has any practical, observed coherence this is a consequence of what it is and not a product of the will of the system-builders. What is this coherence? — Mere survival of the Machine, the exercising and enhancement of its power. The fact these zombies can march in the same direction, and march in step says nothing about whether their corporate destination is any good. The destination is incidental, their marching the important fact. The system is likened to a colony of bacteria but we cannot apply ethical judgements to this, either. Here we must note that mee survival is not an ethical attribute.

A colony of bacteria, a virus, a corpse of marching men — these are analogies of the system, but the best analogy of all is the idea of the system as something like a vast Artificial Intelligence computer programme designed to simulate the mind. People insist on applying what I call the Organic Metaphor’ to the political. These think that politics is alive, that it has a mind, or that it is a moral entity to which we can pin moral judgements. They speak about The Body Politic’ but all of this is delusional thinking. It doesn’t work like that. The political is not a moral entity but a mechanism of control, it works through power — the annihilation of value.

THE MYTH OF OFFICE

The myth of office asserts that the politician or bureaucrat etc is not responsible. The Machine is the actor, the official merely the component They use uniforms, funny clothes, insignias, ritual and titles to distance themselves as individuals. There is a distinction being drawn between the person as official and person as private individual. Yet people insist on trying to apply the ethical to the political, and blame the person of the official for the part they have played in the running of The Machine.

When the apologists try to blame an official or component, they claim that the individual is responsible and should not have surrendered his / her will to that political regime. The apologist draws a distinction between a particular regime, and political systems in general, thereby avoiding the denial of the divine right of authority (properly constituted) to govern. In so far as people ever get round to punishing these miscreants, we hang them as individuals (something apart from the political system). The officials are stripped of their offices and ranks, their uniforms. The Nazi Slate beat the rap al Nuremberg. Only individuals were hung. The state itself goes on marching, still asserting its divine right to rule. Indeed, the idea of political trials itself reinforces that dominance and subservience mindset. Outside, the vast mass of people remain spectators, abdicating their responsibilities.

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GOVERNMENT IS NOT A PERSON

When we make ethical judgements about government, there is no one there to praise or blame. When we try to judge individuals for the actions of states, we ignore the political and it escapes our grasp. The political is impervious to ethical criticism.

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How can we apply an ethical judgement to the political? The individuals are blamed for thou- actions in supporting it but that is something apart from the system itself. Yet, I find something intuitively unsatisfactory in my view that the political and ethical are completely separate. One is left with the distinct feeling that the political ought to be ethical, and people do persist in trying to apply the ethical to it.

Ethical judgements about politics might lake the following form: ‘This political system is evil’ or That political party is ethically flawed’ or This policy decision is morally wrong’. Yet it is meaningless to try to apply an ethical judgement to an entire system. We end up scapegoating a few individuals while ignoring the mass of passive ‘wrongdoers’. They escape unpunished. The concentration camp commandant would be nothing without the industrial and technological systems of mass murder behind him. What are the workers in the English armaments factory doing about those electric torture batons they are making for Saddam?

THE ETHICAL VOID MERELY RECORDING A DETERMINATION TO USE WORDS IN A CERTAIN WAY

Perhaps one of the strongest objections to my argument is that all of this is simply a problem of terminology and classification. In declaring the ethical to be divorced from the political I am simply recording my determination to use these words in different ways. Other people may choose to use these words in different ways. Other people may choose to apply them differently and so to make ethical judgements about the political: e.g. “Sexual or racial discrimination is morally wrong”.

Against this objection that to describe politics as an ethical; void merely records a definitional wish to use words in a certain way, I say that for the people who choose otherwise, we still have this problem of applying he ethical to the political, and this is a real problem, not just one of words. The activist who wishes to reduce discrimination almost certainly will be ethically motivated, but so far as that person remains inside the ethical s/he will be unable to engage with the political. In stepping into the public arena and trying to act against prejudice, the activist will run into political problems, legal problems, problems of local authority funding, getting their case across to the media, the balance of parties in the local council chamber etc. All of these not only refuse to recognise the ethical but annihilate it. “This is not a court of justice, but of law”. I return to a restatement of my thesis: The political assumes a mode of authority which cancels the ethical.

ETHICS BY THE BACK DOOR -ALL THIS IS REALLY ONLY A DISGUISED ETHICAL CRITIQUE OF POLITICS

The last objection I wish to deal with here is the view that all of this — my position that the political and the ethical are fundamentally divorced — is simply a disguised ethical critique of politics. Politicians ought to submit themselves to the ethical and the fact they do not is a powerful ethical criticism of politics. “Dear Mr Portillo, please be moral...” Political parties and countries ought to enshrine moral principles in their constitutions. Against this I say the objection fails to take account of what politics is. We need to avoid this type of wishful thinking. The ethics by the back door objection depends on politics as it ought be and not politics as it is.

If I am correct here, my view has consequences. No individual with any claim to participate in the ethical can have any part in the political. We need something different, something self-determined but which recognises the importance of the ethical. What then? you say. Are you an anarchist — But of course...

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AN ASSERTION OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

To understand that politics is an ethical void is a call for us to take back control over our own lives. We cannot value The Machine but we can and must find value in our own lives.

He means it — do you? (1997)

Author: John Zerzan

Source: Running On Emptiness (Book).
<archive.org/details/JohnZerzan-RunningOnEmptiness>

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Today opposition is anarchist or it is non-existent. This is the barest minimum coherence in the struggle against an engulfing totality.

And while ten years ago the milieu generally called anti-authoritarian was largely syndicalist, those leftist residues are fading out altogether. Very few now find a vista of work and production at all liberatory.

As the smell of this false and rotting order rises to the heavens, registering an unprecedented toll on all living beings, faith in the whole modern world evaporates. Industrialism and its ensemble looks like it has been a very bad idea, sort of a wrong turn begun still earlier. Civilization itself, with its logic of domestication and destruction, seems untenable.

After all, is there anyone who is happy in this desolation?

Lovely new indicators of how it is panning out include increasing selfmutilation among the young and murder of children by their own parents. Somehow a society that is steadily more impersonal, cynical, deskilled, boring, artificial, depressing, suicide-prompting, used up, drug- ridden, ugly, anxiety-causing and futureless brings a questioning as to why it has come to this/what’s it all about.

Leftism with its superficial program is nearly extinct. Its adherents have folded their tents of manipulation and, in some cases, moved on to far more interesting adventures.

Anarchism, if not yet anarchy, is the only scene going, even if the blackout on the subject is still in effect. As if to match the accelerating decomposition of society and displacement of life at large, determined resistance is also metamorphosing with some rapidity. The rout of the left, following the swiftly declining prestige of History, Progress, and techno-salvation, is only one development. The old militants, with their ethic of sacrifice and order, their commitment to economy and exchange, are already fixed on the museum shelves of partial revolt. Enter the Unabomber and a new line is being drawn. This time the bohemian schiz-fluxers, Green yuppies, hobbyist anarcho-journalists, condescending organizers of the poor, hip nihilo-aesthetes and all the other “anarchists” who thought their pretentious pastimes would go on unchallenged indefinitely—well, it’s time to pick which side you’re on. It may be that here also is a Rubicon from which there will be no turning back.

Some, no doubt, would prefer to wait for a perfect victim. Many would like to unlearn what they know of the invasive and unchallenged violence generated everywhere by the prevailing order—in order to condemn the Unabomber’s counter-terror.

But here is the person and the challenge before us.

Anarchists! One more effort if you would be enemies of this long nightmare!

Ted Kaczynski is no Madman (1998)

Author: Richard Tate

Source:
Wildcat. <www.wildcat.international/ted.html>

Date: Jan 23, 1998.

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“The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.... We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.” — Ted Kaczynski, Industrial Society And Its Future. This is not the statement of a lunatic.

“Now we’ll have plenty of time to watch the Superbowl”. This comment by Ted Kaczynski’s lawyer, Quin Denvir, following Kaczynski’s plea of guilty to the Unabomber charges in return for life imprisonment without parole, summarizes the quality of his defense team.

Denvir, and his other representative Judy Clarke, complained that they had problems controlling their client. They deliberately prevented sympathetic people from meeting Ted by losing letters addressed to him. They refused to take his instructions. Of course, they could say that they were only trying to save his life, by pursuing a mental illness defense, the only strategy which could have avoided the death penalty given the evidence for the prosecution. But Ted Kaczynski is not insane. He is perfectly capable of weighing up the risks in a political defense.

The whining of the media, the judge, the defense and the prosecution all pointed to Ted’s success in terrifying them with the prospect of a political trial.

“The system is playing right into his hand... Except for the necessity to accord him a fair trial, the best solution would be to bundle him off to the federal prison equivalent of his Montana cabin and keep him there, incommunicado, until he dies a natural death. No speeches. No parading around the courtroom. No Internet sites. No book contracts. Nothing.” — San Francisco Examiner, January 14.

He was not allowed to use the services of Tony Serra, a brilliant lawyer who would have defended him for nothing. He was not even allowed to defend himself.

This article by Michael Mello, a prominent public defender, explains why Ted should have been entitled to the defense of his choosing, comparing him with abolitionist John Brown.

After he was diagnosed as schizophrenic, the government would have found it difficult to execute him. Ted was not some mentally retarded defendant like the one Clinton had executed in Arkansas to boost his election chances in 1992. Here was a man who could put the system on trial.

There was virtually no chance of the jury letting him off. But he would have made the prosecution squirm, perhaps forcing them to give a better plea bargain than the one he ended up with. He should have retained the right to appeal the legality of the original search of his cabin.

“Clearly, the government recognized the risk that a jury wouldn’t have sentenced Kaczynski to death, even if he had been convicted, because of sympathy or pity for him or his family. The Feds also probably understood that any conviction and/or death sentence for Kaczynski would have been terribly suspect and subject to reversal because of doubts about his competency to stand trial and the judge’s refusal to allow him to represent himself.” — Andrew Cohen on Fox News.

But in any case, Ted has achieved an outstanding victory. Industrial Society And Its Future is now one of the most famous documents of our time. There is no question that his strategy — conducting a campaign of sporadic bombings against active promoters of industrial development — has worked. Civilization is being questioned. This is not to deny or minimize the ethical problems involved in sending devices through the post, whereby innocent people could obviously get hurt. We do not entirely agree with the Unabomber manifesto, but we are part of the same general trend — the struggle for the future, against industrial society.

Eco-Fucker Hit List! (1998)

Source: Live Wild or Die #7. <www.archive.org/details/live_wild_or_die_7>

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Why the Future Needs Ted Kaczynski (2008)

Author: Patrick Barriot

Source: Road to Revolution

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“As for us, we must take care that this spectacle of suffering for which no one answers does not reproduce itself” ERNST JÜNGER[5].

Theodore John Kaczynski, named the “Unabomber” by the FBI, has been imprisoned in the ‘(Alcatraz of the Rockies” (a Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado) since 1996, and remains the N° 1 enemy of the industrial world. For Ted Kaczynski, resorting to violent action had a precise goal: to alert the public to the industrial world’s increasingly harmful global activities with his publication Industrial Society and its Future[6][7]. The techno-industrial world is the result of a process which began in the Neolithic era, ten thousand years ago, when the nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers became more sedentary, concentrating on the development of agriculture and livestockbreeding. It was the beginning of the domestication of nature and of deforestation. The accumulation of material goods and wealth permitted by this more stationary life was accompanied by the appearance of hierarchical systems, making it possible for an elite few to exert an illegitimate power over the rest of the population. This process quickly accelerated in the 19^th century with the Industrial Revolution, and then again in the 20^th century with the Technological Revolution. At the same time, the progressive values of the Enlightenment and the work of Charles Darwin provided an ideology and “values” to the capitalist and technical system, ideology and values which are actually vectors of propagation, “Trojan horses”. Sociobiology and social Darwinism, which are based on the theories of evolution, reaffirm today that social behaviors have a biological basis and a genetic origin. The power of the elites would be thus founded in nature, and society should be careful not to distort the free play of competition by penalising the best to help the worst. The “natural right” of the elite groups (industrial, military and governmental) to lead the masses was indisputable. Competition, rivalry and profit must not be held back by co-operation, mutual aid and sharing. All these “Promethean” revolutions have led to the creation of the capitalist market order or expert system whose devastating power threatens human society, the natural environment and humanity itself. For the revolutionaries, this brutal and violent system must be fought, if need be, with weapons in hand.

The Violent Action of the Militant Left

Ted Kaczynski is one of these revolutionaries, convinced that industrial society cannot be improved by reforms. It is not a question of reforming the industrial system of production but of supporting its collapse. Ted Kaczynski poses the problem of violent action from the first page of this book by quoting the Gospel according to St. Luke (22:36): “And he who does not have a sword, must sell his cloak to buy one”. The violence of Ted Kaczynski is a reaction of self-defence towards a threatening techno-industrialist system. The activists in favour of direct and violent action (here and now) against the system, are generally claimed to be from the extreme militant left or the radical ecologists (deep ecology, anarchoprimitivism, neoluddism). In the wake of student protests in the western world at the end of the 1960/s, militant communist groups carried out urban guerrilla warfare against the state: The Red Brigade (BR) in Italy, The Red Army Faction (RAF) in Germany, and Direct Action (AD) in France. These movements claimed to have a Marxist-Leninist ideology, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist[8][9][10]. The toughest confrontations between the militant left and the state occurred in countries where Fascism had played an important role: Germany, Italy, Spain.

“The politico-military offensive” of the German Red Army Faction against capitalism began in 1970. The “Baader-Meinhof Group”, firmly anchored in the heart of the student extreme left, violently expressed its hatred for the old Nazi elite, which they saw as so perfectly integrated into the new state. The group also expressed their condemnation of the Vietnam War and the occupation of Palestinian territories. Between 1970 and 1998, the dates of the creation and the official dissolution of the movement, the RAF numbered between 60 and 80 members and had killed 34 people. With others’ help, on 7 April1977 the group executed the Federal Prosecutor, Siegfried Buback, and on 19 October 1977, the President of the Employers’ Federation, Hanns Martin Schleyer. To the German extreme left, Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former member of the Nazi party and the SS, symbolised a despised capitalism.

The Italian Red Brigade, firmly entrenched in the midst of the working classes and the trade unionist movement, carried out their engagements during the I’lead years’l (1970 and 1980) which resulted in more than 400 deaths. The Red Brigade was founded in 1973 by Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini as the extreme Italian left wing radicalised and advocated recourse to arms as a political and social solution. In March 1978, the Red Brigade removed Aldo Moro, president of the Christian Democracy, from power, who was subsequently executed after 55 days of imprisonment.

A “politico-military coordination” was set up in France in 1977, linked with the German and Italian urban guerrilla militant movements. AD launched its first armed propaganda campaign in 1979. The emergence ofAD is closely related to the anti-Franco resistance in Spain: the Iberian Liberation Movement (MIL), International Revolutionary Action Groups (GARI), the militancy of Puig Antich (brother-in-arms of Jean-Marc Rouillan). AD also supported Palestinian resistance against the Zionist occupation as well as the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Fractions (FARL), created in 1980 by George Ibrahim Abdallah. On January 15, 1985, the German RAF and AD signed a joint declaration, and a few months later launched an attack against the American air base in Frankfurt. During a period of eight years (1979–1986), the extreme left militant group AD carried out, in total, almost 80 attacks plus two assassinations. From 1979 to 1985, the fighting caused no fatalities. It was comprised mainly of attacks aimed at French-owned businesses, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Industry and banks. On January 25, 1985, the General Engineer of Armaments, René Audran, was killed by the commando Elisabeth Van Dyck. On November 17, 1986, the chairman of Renault, Georges Besse, former owner of Péchiney (whose structural reorganisation of the company resulted in 34,000 lay-offs), was carried out by the commando Pierre Overney. The four founding members of AD, Jean-Marc Rouillan, Nathalie Ménigon, Joelle Aubron and George Cipriani, were arrested on February 21, 1987 in an isolated farm in Vitry-aux-Loges (Loiret). These extreme left militant groups were almost completely dismantled at the end of the 1980’s. The non-violent left and extreme left groups kept their distance with respect to these militant groups, which did not have popular support ( except for the Italian BR). The progressive and liberal left quickly united with the system and the capitalist market order. The militant communist groups were classified as “terrorist” groups, with the reasoning that political violence is illegitimate when it is directed against a democratic regime where the citizens have the means of peaceful resistance. However, this argument does not hold up. On the one hand, the violence of democratic regimes is a quite real violence, masked by “organisational screens” (a wolf in sheep’s clothing) or justified by state propaganda. In addition, peaceful resistance is completely ineffective against this type of systemic violence and it is even equivalent to a form of suicide. Who is responsible ultimately for the “restructuring plans” which condemn thousands of workers to unemployment and destroy as many homes? And who can guarantee that these workers have the chance to defend themselves with their ballots? Just like despotism, democratic totalitarianism criminalises any form of revolt, according to a method denounced by Ernst Jünger: “Now, the despots naturally endeavour to give to the legal resistance, or even to the refusal of their requirements, the appearance of a crime, and [... ] in their hierarchy, they place the common rights of a criminal higher than he who thwarts their intentions”[11]. It is important to stress that the violence of these groups was not aimed at innocent civilians but the responsible state, the guilty state. And their revolutionary violence could not be compared with the violence of state control. It is high time to address the difference between the targeted and assumed action of the revolutionary who kills one industrialist and the greedy and irresponsible attitude of the industrialist who knowingly exposes thousands of workers to an atrocious death by lung cancer; or the large seed-farmer who drives hundreds of thousands of small farmers to the brink of suicide; or the arms engineer who develops weapons of mass destruction. Why is this first always responsible and guilty whereas the others are often deemed nonresponsible and are never to blame? Is the targeted violence of an AD militant more inhumane than the state controlled violence which kills innocent civilians with its ferocious repressions (Genoa), preventive wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) or economic sanctions (economic embargoes against Serbia and Iraq)? On one side is a targeted violence over-exposed by the media and the propaganda of the system, and on the other side a carefully concealed or justified mass violence.

The revolutionaries have paid dearly for their insurrection. Between 1970 and 1998, the dates of the creation and subsequent official dissolution of the RAF, 27 militants (of a total thought to range from 60 to 80) died, the majority shot by the police force. Holger Meins died in prison at the end of a hunger strike in 1974. Ulrike Meinhof was found hanged in his prison cell on 8 May 1976. The founders of the RAF (Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe) were assassinated in the high security area of Stammheim Prison on 18 October 1977. Brigitte Mohnhaupt, leader of the “second generation” of the RAF between 1977 and 1982, was freed on 25 March 2007, after 24 years of detention. She spent more time in prison than Albert Speer, former architect of Hitler’s Arms Ministry. Eva Haule, representing the “third generation” of the RAF, was released on 17 August 2007. Two militants of the RAF remain in prison to date: Birgit Hogefeld, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996, and Christian Klar (aged 54), condemned in 1985 to life in prison. Christian Klar recently saw his request for a pardon refused. His sentence will end in January 2009. A survey published at the beginning of 2007 by the magazine Der Spiegel showed that 71% of Germans were opposed to a pardon if Christian Klar did not express public remorse. He has now been languishing in prison “longer than any Nazi criminal”. No other prisoner has been asked to express remorse before being released after 25 years in prison. At the age of 57, Brigitte Mohnhaupt never publicly apologised for her acts. Barbara Balzerani, aged 58, ex-leader of the Red Brigade, sentenced to life for her participation in the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro in 1978, was freed on 24 April 2007 after 21 years of detention, without publicly apologising. These revolutionaries gave up the armed struggle but they never gave up their ideals. It is the same for the AD militants. Suffering from cancer, Joelle Aubron benefited from a penal suspension for medical reasons on 17 June 2004, after 17 years of imprisonment. She died on 1 March 2006 at the age of 46. Nathalie Ménigon has been in an open prison since August 2,2007 .Jean-Marc Rouillan has benefited from this same form of “semi-freedom” since 29 November 2007. The last member of AD condemned for the same assassinations, George Cipriani, submitted a new request for a review of his sentence in November 2007. They all refused to apologize for their crimes to obtain a release on parole; once in place their sentences were non-reducible. As Joelle Aubron said, “the reasons to revolt remain intact, twenty years afterwards”. The violence of the left continues in Italy-the sole case in Europe-more than twenty years after the “years of lead” and the dismantling of the BR. Young militants, who had not known the years of lead, have joined the armed struggle via the “No Global” movement of the social centres. They are generally blue-collar workers and union representatives confronted with instability. Their violence is aimed especially towards advisers in social affairs, economists or specialists in labour law: “BR hates those who plan reforms and allow a better operation of the labour market and labour relations”.

In 1999 and 2001, a commando group led by Desdemona Lioce, “Red Brigades-For the construction of a militant Communist Party” (BR-PCC or Lioce Group) assassinated two advisers in social affairs, experts in labour law, from the governments of Alema, and then Berlusconi. This group proclaimed to be of the

“First Position” (“Prima Posizione”) or the militant wing of BR. In 2005, Nadia Desdemona Lioce, aged 47, as well as about fifteen accomplices, were sentenced to life in prison. On 12 February 2007, about fifteen successors of the Red Brigades, proclaiming itself anew as the “Communist Politicomilitary Party” (PCP-M) were arrested on the run in Milan, Turin and Padua. The ideologicalline of the PCP-M is drawn from the “Second Position” (“Seconda Posizione”) or wing movements of BR, in agreement with the social struggles of the radical left but against the strategy to be adopted by the militant wing. The majority of persons arrested carne from the working community and were registered with a trade union. In possession of military weapons, the group had identified several targets that it was on the point of striking (newspapers, television transmitters, economists and experts in labour law). These militant workmen and young union representatives declared themselves “political prisoners”.

An anarchist Italian cell, proclaiming themselves to be part of the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), declares being “in the process of promoting an acceleration of the ecological war”. The objective of this insurrectionist movement is “direct action” against the structures of the state and capital. The favoured means of expression of these “anarco-insurrectionists” is the placing of explosives against electric pylons, telephone relays and administrative or commercial buildings. These nebulous anarchists, volatile and unpredictable, seem to be the most aggressive subversive group.

The Violent Action of the Radical Ecology Movements

Radical ecology movements appeared in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Northern Europe in the 1970’s. “Deep Ecology” was developed in the 1970’s by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess [12]. These movements deviated from the pacifist line and civil disobedience, towards direct action and violence. In the Foreword of the famous work by Rachel Carson, “Silent Spring”, Roger Heim, President of the Academy of Science, had already voiced ecologists’ anger regarding inaction: “We arrest gangsters, we shoot hold-up artists, we guillotine assassins, we shoot despots-or allegedly so-but who will imprison these public poisoners, who daily diffuse the products of their synthetic chemistry that add to their profits and their carelessness?”[13]. The activists of the ecologist cause are organised in “eco-warrior” groups who reject anthropocentrism, preach a return to nature and oppose new technologies.

The “Earth Liberation Front” or ELF was founded by members of the radical ecologist movement “Earth First!”, created by Dave Foreman. ELF is an organisation which has recourse to direct action in the form of economic sabotage in order to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment. The direct actions of this group (sabotage, fires, etc.) in the United States have caused more than 200 million dollars worth of damage. Captain Paul Watson, an ecological and animal rights militant, is an “eco-warrior” who fights for the safeguarding and protection of marine animal life by using his fleet of ships to pursue whalers who violate international law. He has reinforced the prows of his ships in order to sink or seriously damage the whalers. Paul Watson left the Greenpeace association, of which he was an influential member, to found the “Sea Shepherd Conservation Society”. According to him, the peaceful protests of Greenpeace are futile and non-violence can only be seen as a form of suicide.

Only direct action can oppose the will of the states. The activists of the “Animal Liberation Front” or ALF are vegetarians and vegans who defend the antispecist cause. The latter does not tolerate any differentiation between animals and humans. These eco-warriors preach violence against laboratories which practise vivisection, industrial breeding or the fur industry. They favour sabotage, vandalism, the release of animals or the contamination of products for human consumption [14][15][16]. The British organisation “SHAC” (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) and the anti-vivisection group “Animal Rights Militia” are mainly targeting the British animal experimentation centre “Huntingdon Life Sciences” (HLS) and the Novartis company. The direct action of ELF or the radical action of ALF attacks financial interests; these liberation fronts strike where it hurts. Facing the violence of the system, they refuse to accept its fanciful, weak and non-violent-in other words, completely uselessecology. As a form of self-defence, they unleash the sword of radical ecology against the sword of the industrial system. In the United States, radical ecologists are regarded as “domestic terrorists” and are opposed by the USA Patriot Act. The FBI estimates that the “eco-terrorism” of the ELF and the ALF constitutes the second most dangerous threat after Islamic terrorism. Several members of ELF are being tried in Oregon and California for vandalism, arson and attacks on public and private property. Heavy prison sentences have been demanded for certain activists, accused of “conspiracy”. The ALF is also classified as an “eco-terrorist organisation” in England and in the United States. The intelligence services judge that “the time has now come to closely watch this influential militant entity that is in the process of forming”. Greg Avery, a historical figure of “SHAC”, is imprisoned and awaiting trial for “conspiracy and blackrnail”. The Pentagon has created a database of these peaceful protests, of animal defence associations and vegetarian communities, including investigations that the FBI has planned with regard to the fight against terrorism.

Neoluddism is, according to the Pentagon, a movement opposed to technologies and industrial capitalism, which appeared in the United States in the 1990’s [17]. Hostile to the technological invasion, the neoluddite militants see themselves as successors to the English textile workers who, at the beginning of the 19^th century (between 1811 and 1813), destroyed thousands of machines they perceived to be a threat to their way of life. In 1813, a law was declared with the penalty of capital punishment for breaking machinery, in spite of the protests of Lord Byron, and some luddites were hanged[18][19]. For the neoluddites, technologies created by Western societies are uncontrollable and threatening. Groups of “Refuzniks” (“tech-refuzniks”), hostile to technology, have not hesitated to use violence to halt its progress: the ploughing up of GMO fields, destruction of computer equipment, violent demonstrations against the development of RFID microchips, biometric scanners or nanotechnologies. These activists are not demanding the supervision of new technologies; they demand a moratorium, an unconditional prohibition. They do not want a half-way house for new technologies, they want a cemetery. In France, the criticism of modern technology and its devastating effects has been well documented by Jacques Ellul.

Ted Kaczynski’s Place

Where is Ted Kaczynski’s place in this domain of direct action against the system? Is it that of revolutionary, anarchoprimitivist, eco-warrior or neoluddite? It is impossible to label him under one category: Ted Kaczynski is indefinable, in all senses of the term. A solitary fighter, he is, above all, the subverter and perhaps the grave-digger of the expert system, this noxious system, alienating, dehumanising and violent. The revolution preached by Ted Kaczynski is not a political revolution. It is not a question of overturning a government, or attacking a political system. The left as well as the right favour “progress”. But in addition to being favourable to progress, the reformist left have perverted the spirit of rebellion. Ted Kaczynski harshly criticizes the leftist reformists, these men of compromise who pass for rebels while they support the system and prevent true revolution. He attacks those who divert the instinct of revolt, who channel it, who debilitate it: these false rebels who divert the attention from the only true problem (the problem of technology) by focusing it on xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, discriminations of all kinds and animal suffering. He denounces the breaking of windows to pay the glaziers. From now on the left plays the part of the “Brotherhood” of Goldstein, in George Orwell’s 1984: a fictitious opposition set up and governed by the powers-that-be, an alienated opposition that reinforces the system that it claims to fight. Imprisoned in the high security section of Florence Prison (Colorado), Ted Kaczynski is urgently trying to use his written work to weaken the foundations of a dehumanising society. He equally inspires the international anarchistic movements as he does the alternate-world movements. In his radical criticism of industrial society, one finds the continuity of the thoughts of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Jacques Ellul. A renowned scientist, Bill Joy, demonstrated the relevance of his arguments in a famous article in “Wired” entitled “Why the future doesn’t need US”[20]. Ted Kaczynski vigorously continues his work on the deconstruction of the myth of technological progress, by preaching a strategy of severance-because there is no possible compromise with a technological power which unrelentingly destroys humanity. All the written works of Ted Kaczynski underline the contempt of this expert society for human freedom and dignity. Never, since the dawn of humanity, has man been so subjugated, deprived of initiative, incapable of changing the course of his history, excluded from his destiny. He no longer has any control over the events which determine his physical and spiritual life: he does not have any other choice but submission. The system has made alienation desirable and has domesticated man because it needs round pegs in round holes, square tenons in square mortises, smooth-turning wheels in well oiled machinery. The system has transformed freedom into a watched and monitored liberty, and every citizen is now unknowingly shackled with electronic handcuffs, like a criminal on parole. Ernst Jünger wrote in Waldgangf[21]: “It does not matter that the game-bird runs here or there, as long as it remains between the nets of the beaters”. Today, that which we call democracy is nothing more than the freedom granted to human game to run between the nets of the beaters. As for our private lives and our personal privacy, each day they become a little more transparent and undermined. A universal neutralising of consciousness is in the process of development: the journalist self-censors, the French doctor becomes a spin doctor in the pay of the militaryindustrialist complex, the humanitarian becomes the harbinger of new colonial wars, the social worker transforms himself into informer and the citizen becomes denouncer. What remains of rebellious conscience is now isolated in a besieged fortress, waiting for the final attack. A fortress besieged by technology For Ted Kaczynski, the goal of the revolution is to destroy the expert system and not to create an ideal society. This book comprises several essays which are striking by the intensity of Ted KaczynSki’s beliefs regarding the evolution of society, the recourse to violence and the revolution to come. Ted Kaczynski also answers objections and criticisms concerning his analyses. This is therefore not, as some would be tempted to believe, a terrorist manifesto but a work which touches upon anthropology, philosophy and sociology. Its reading is essential for whoever thinks about the evolution of human societies in general and on the evolution of industrial society in particular.

The Overthrow of the Technological System

From his prison cell, Ted Kaczynski no longer sends bombs, but his written work has the potential to be much more devastating. The American government understands only too well and are trying, using the new anti-terrorists laws, to silence this prisoner who still believes that the future can be inhabited by free men. Here is the only authentic version of his Manifesto, followed by several essays whose attentive reading should help to slow down, if not stop, this formidable “progressive stampede” that is carrying humanity to the brink of a precipice. Historians and poets tell us that civilisations are mortal, but not one past civilisation has dragged humanity to its grave, as industrial civilisation is likely to do. From now on, we must accept that humanity is mortal. These words of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra are perfectly appropriate for Ted Kaczynski: “1 am a guard-rail at the edge of a rushing river: whoever can seize me, seize me! But I am not your crutch”[22]. It is for you, reader, to seize-here and now!

A Revolutionary for Our Times (2008)

Author: David Skrbina

Source: Road To Revolution.
<https://archive.org/details/theodore-j-kaczynski-road-to-revolution-xenia-2008>

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We are steeped in a technological milieu. Technology surrounds us on all sides, envelops us, and, perhaps, suffocates us. It determines or shapes every course of action that we take in our daily lives—how we live, eat, sleep, get to work, where and how we work, how we entertain ourselves, how we run our government, how we conduct our wars. Technological considerations dictate what we can and cannot do, how we do it, and frequently even why we do it. Technology and its direct effects are in our air, our water, across our landscape, and in our bodies. In the developed nations of the 21^st century, for all practical purposes, there is no escape from its pervasive effects.

Needless to say, this was not always the case. For the vast majority of our existence, humanity has lived without advanced technology. Ever since the genus Homo emerged from the African savannahs some 2 million years ago, humans have survived and thrived with only the crudest of tools. We lived as wanderers, typically in groups of 50 people or less, and only occasionally stopping to establish temporary encampments. Of the 2 million years of our existence we had controlled use of fire for perhaps only half that time. Durable, stone-tipped spears appeared only 100,000 years ago, and arrowheads, needles, and harpoons some 25,000 years ago—scarcely 1% of humanity’s lifetime. We faced all the challenges and threats of nature with only the spear and the hand axe, wearing only crude furs and simple woven clothing, and, for some, with a campfire to keep warm and cook food. I will not idealize the primitive life; it was hard, brutal, sometimes violent, sometimes cruel. But it was the life humanity came to live.

Like it or not, our bodies and our minds are adapted by 2 million years of evolution to a primitive, low-tech existence. Yet today we are surrounded by ubiquitous, advanced, inscrutable technology. And therein lies our predicament.

How can we, creatures of nature, who have spent 99% of our existence using only the simplest of tools, thrive and live well in a high-tech world? Rationally, it seems impossible—and it is impossible. There is no good reason to expect that human beings, whose physiology is virtually unchanged since the Stone Age, could adapt well to such a radically altered lifestyle.

By way of illumination, compare the two-million-year lifetime of humanity with a 50-year-old man. Humans have been non-hunter-gatherers—that is, farm-, village- or city-dwellers—for only the past 10,000 years; this so-called civilized portion of history represents a mere 0.5% of our species’ lifetime. On a scale of 50 years, then, this “modern” existence corresponds to just three months.

Let’s say, hypothetically, we find a man born and raised as a nomadic hunter-gatherer in the wilds of sub-Saharan Africa, utterly unaffected by civilization and high technology. We wish to “help” him by introducing him, progressively over three months, to all the benefits of modern life. So we take him, first, to a small farm, and show him how we grow domesticated crops and raise domesticated animals—organisms he has never seen in the wild. We introduce him to sowing, weeding, harvesting, animal husbandry. We allow him one month to adapt.

Then we take him to a small rural village. We show him writing, and teach him the basics of metals and ceramics. He interacts with a relatively large number of people every day, in relatively close quarters. He is subject to the rules of the village. We allow him a second month to adapt to this.

For the third month we take him on a tour of human cities: smaller first, then mid-sized, finally to a large modern metropolis. Over the course of his final 30 days he sees, in turn: complex wood and metal tools, guns, mechanical clocks, large buildings, ocean-going ships, railroads, cameras, refrigerators, bicycles, gasoline engines, telephones, light bulbs, cars, radios. On the final day, we show him, for the first time ever: jet airplanes, television, computers, nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, integrated circuits, the space shuttle.

Then we turn him loose. We give him a few dollars, a small home in the suburbs, dress him up in a suit and a tie, and say, “Have a good life.” “Be a good citizen,” we say; “and don’t do anything wrong. But don’t worry, you’ll adapt—we did!”

What shall we expect for our African friend? What are his prospects for the future? We humans, as a whole, are no better off than this 50-year-old hunter-gatherer. As individuals we are, of course, born and raised in a technological world, and so we think we can adapt. But our physical and mental selves are really locked in the past. We try to hide this past with fancy clothes and sophisticated language, and we arm ourselves with all varieties of clever technological aids. But our ancient hunter-gatherer selves are still there, deep inside, struggling to make sense of the world.

Empirically, the evidence points to one likely outcome: namely, that we humans are in fact unable to handle advanced technologies without causing massive disruption to our bodies, our psyche, and our environment.

Consider first our physical health. We suffer from a range of modern ills that have traditionally been very rare: obesity, cancers, accidental death and injury, deliberate death through high-tech weapons (including handguns) and warfare, global plagues like AIDS. Automobile accidents kill over 40,000 Americans every year, and about 1.3 million people globally—that’s roughly 3,300 people killed every day. Nearly 44% of the American population is medicated.[23] A recent study suggests that 28% of all teenagers suffer chronic headaches, with 40% of these occurring daily.[24] Even the mundane daily computer use that many of us experience imposes its own risks: carpal-tunnel syndrome, eyestrain, back and joint pain, headache, toxic chemicals on keyboards and monitors, and the general ill health that results from sedentary behavior.

Modern foods are killing us: pesticides, chemical fertilizers, growth hormones, radically new genetically-modified crops, too much sugar, too much fat, too much meat. Primitive humans rarely ate meat, but when they did it was typically freshly-killed, always wild game, and usually after putting in several exhausting hours of chase, on foot, with sticks or handmade spears.[25] We moderns eat something like 3.5 pounds per week—a halfpound per day, every day—of domesticated, fat-laden, hormone-injected, antibiotic-laced, high-tech factory-farmed animal flesh. Little surprise that cancer and other ailments result.[26]

There is also the potential for direct, violent physical harm. Terrorists achieve their ends through the use of high technology—especially those residing in the halls of government. Virtually all major terrorist threats, including biochemical agents, bio-toxins, nuclear weapons, and other WMDs, are the direct result of advanced industrial technology. The claim that the 9/11 attacks were “low-tech” is a lie; the hijackers made good use of one of the most advanced products of modern technology, the jet airliner.

Psychologically, we suffer widely from illnesses that, to the best of our knowledge, were rarely seen in ancient times: clinical depression, insomnia, suicide, bipolar disorders, dementia, anxiety, and numerous byproducts of extreme mental stress. Nearly 15% of the US population has a personality disorder[27] Some 26% can be classified as mentally ill.[28] The use of anti-psychotic drugs among children is soaring, both in the US and the UK; British rates increased from 3.9 to 7.7 per 10,000 children over 13 years, whereas American rates ran significantly higher yet: from 23 to 45 per 10,000, over just five years.[29]

Attention deficit disorder and autism have been linked to television and video games, and studies have argued that they are quite literally addictive.[30] So too the Internet. A 2006 Stanford University study found that “more than one out of eight Americans exhibited at least one possible sign of problematic Internet use,” including finding it “hard to stay away,” concealing nonessential use, using it as an escape mechanism, and harming relationships—all classic signs of addiction.[31] More broadly, researchers now find that a whole range of psychological ailments correlates closely with daily computer usage.[32]And social psychologists have long suspected that many of our modern era’s senseless and brutal crimes stem from an assortment of social stresses, exacerbated by industrial technology.[33]

Even the putative benefits of technology often turn out to be nonexistent, or to have some nasty strings attached. The Internet, which brings a flood of information into every household and allows for instantaneous, mass communication, comes with severe side effects. Evidence is building that it is literally rewiring our brains’ cognitive circuits, resulting in a diminished ability to focus and concentrate on longer and more demanding tasks, such as reading substantive articles or books. Journalist Nicholas Carr recently observed[34] that “over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain…I’m not thinking the way I used to think…Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread…” He lays the blame on Internet “power browsing,” which places highest priority on efficiency and immediacy, causing everything else to take a back seat—in particular, deep reflection and sustained concentration.

Cell phones, which offer continuous and immediate contact with nearly everyone, continue to raise red flags. They are suspected of damaging our cellular DNA,[35] correlate with an increase in anxiety among teens,[36] pose risks to pregnant women and unborn fetuses,[37] and increase the risk of brain cancer and malignant tumors.[38] Other studies attempt to dispute these findings, but it is clear that cell phone radiation is producing at least some detrimental effects on our bodies.

Technology in schools provides yet another classic example. Computers and other high-tech learning aids were, for many years, hyped as the Holy Grail of improved academic performance. They have even been promoted for use by young children and infants. Now we find, instead, that computers and iPods are increasingly used for cheating and plagiarism.[39] High-speed, ultra-short messaging, as with Twitter, threatens emotional and moral development.[40] Text messaging in general now appears to damage language skills.[41] Educational technology for infants, such as “Baby Einstein” and related video tools, is now found to not only not help children, but is actually detrimental.[42] The death blow to the pro-tech lobby came in 2007, with the publication of a major study by the US government. A review of 16 leading ed-tech products, covering more than 9,400 students in 132 schools, showed no increase in achievement scores.[43] As a consequence, schools are now bailing out. A New York Times article[44]quotes a local school board president: “After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement—none.” Given the costs and health risks, it’s no wonder schools are now seriously reconsidering their technology plans.

Finally, when we look outside the human sphere, to nature, we find disastrous problems: unprecedented species extinction, destruction of forests, resource depletion, global climate change. The toxic byproducts of industrial society are found in the bodies of arctic seals. Costa Rican tree frogs suffer from acid rain produced in New York. Global warming alters age-old weather patterns and threatens to disrupt every ecosystem on the planet. Nuclear reactor wastes will remain deadly for millennia. And the exploding global population is a direct result of highly advanced agricultural and health-care technologies.

Of these concerns, climate change is perhaps the most troubling. A 2009 report by a UN-affiliated think tank projects that, without drastic mitigation actions, climate change will cause “much of civilization to collapse,” for large portions of the world.[45] Here we have the ultimate irony: a technological civilization created and powered by fossil fuels, which ends up being so disruptive to the global climate that it destroys itself. Along the way we will have eliminated thousands of other species, and put our own existence at risk. Perhaps a kind of cosmic justice is at work after all.

From an objective standpoint, then, the situation seems clear: In advanced technology we are dealing with something—a set of tools, a structure, a mindset, a force, a power—which is damaging all aspects of our lives, and seriously undermining the health of the planet. And, for all practical purposes, it is beyond our rational control.

Modern technology, then, even though it is the product of natural beings and developed from the materials of nature, is a profoundly unnatural phenomenon. Nothing in humanity’s evolutionary past, or in the Earth’s evolutionary past, has equipped us to deal with the consequences of this phenomenon. And yet we, and all the world, are confronted with its effects every minute of the day.

There is no doubt that modern technology poses a profound dilemma for humanity. A recent textbook stated the following: “That technology represents a problem of major importance, requiring analysis and interpretation, needs no argument…It is the controlling power of our age, affecting and shaping virtually all aspects of human existence in this century.” And I think many people—most people—have an intuitive sense that this is true: that the “problem of technology” is very real, and very serious.

A recent poll of 69,000 people in North America revealed that a majority, 51%, can be classified as “technological pessimists,” meaning that they are at best indifferent to modern technology, and at worst outright hostile toward it.[46] This is a huge number—something in excess of 100 million adults in North America alone. We know from experience that Europeans tend to be even more skeptical about such things, and thus they are likely to have an even higher number of pessimists. So there seems to be a widespread and deep-seated feeling that something is wrong with om technological age.

So what shall we do? We are faced with a whole range of threats to our well-being, and all of them—literally, all major problems confronting humanity—are created or enabled by advanced technology. Shall we just sit here and take it, stoically? Shall we wring our hands, bemoaning the fact that the system is too large, too impenetrable, too unmovable to change? Shall we ask our leaders for help? Shall we pray to God? Shall we wait for the scientists and technologists to save us? What irony—to look to technology to save us from itself!

These are a few of the issues that we will raise in this book. They are complex, far-reaching, and vitally important for our collective future. As difficult as it may be, it is a discussion that we cannot avoid.

The occasion for the discussion at hand is, of course, the work of Theodore Kaczynski. Convicted of the Unabomber crimes in 1996, Kaczynski is now spending the remainder of his life in a high-security supermax prison in Colorado. The Unabomber case received worldwide attention, due in part to the inability of the FBI to track him down after 17 years of trying, and in part to the unique motivation of the person or group known as “FC.” FC’s primary demand, to which the FBI eventually agreed, was to allow publication in a major newspaper or journal of a lengthy antitechnology manifesto entitled “Industrial Society and its Future” (ISAIF). The Washington Post published a nearly complete version of ISAIF on September 19, 1995, roughly 1.2 million copies were sold that day. Soon thereafter, Theodore’s brother, David Kaczynski, recognized the style and content of the manifesto and contacted the FBI. Theodore, then age 53, was arrested at his small wooden home in rural Montana on April 3, 1996. On April 15 he was on the cover of Time magazine, and the whole world saw the man that had eluded capture for so long.

This book was never intended to be a biography, but it is worth recalling a few basic facts of Kaczynski’s life story. He was born in Chicago on May 22, 1942. From his early childhood it was clear that he was an academic standout, and he excelled at school. Skipping two grades, he left high school for Harvard at age 16. By 1962, at age 20, Kaczynski had completed his Bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He headed to graduate school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where, over the next five years, he earned Master’s and PhD degrees in math. In 1967 he acquired a teaching job at the prestigious University of California at Berkeley; it was a position he held for just two years. By 1971 he had decided to buy some land near Lincoln, Montana and make a homestead there. He worked odd jobs and was periodically seen in nearby towns, but by and large kept to himself.

Under different circumstances, we might never have heard from Kaczynski again. But this was not to be. In one of his letters to me, he recounts how both recreationists and the Forest Service continually pressed in on him—to the point where a peaceful life was no longer possible. This invasion constituted a kind of war, and Kaczynski began to defend himself.

It was not until a few years later, in mid-1978, that the first so-called Unabomber attack occurred. Between 1978 and 1985 there were eight mail- or package-bombings, including one on an airplane, which resulted in a total of 20 injuries. All were connected with universities or airlines, hence the name given by the FBI: “un-a-bomber.”

The first fatality occurred in December 1985, when computer storeowner Hugh Scrutton was killed by a package bomb left in his parking lot. Between 1987 and 1995 there were five more attacks, killing two (advertising executive Thomas Mosser and California Forestry Association president Gilbert Murray) and injuring three. The ISAIF manifesto was published five months after the final attack, and Kaczynski was arrested seven months after that.

In the 14 years since his imprisonment, the public has heard and read many things about Kaczynski, but nothing from Kaczynski himself until now. This book is the first comprehensive and unedited collection of his writings.

This book will not address the many sensational issues surrounding Kaczynski: the details of the Unabomber case, Kaczynski’s personal history, his so-called “troubled past,” the “psychology of a murderer,” or the ineptitudes of the American criminal justice system.[multiblock footnote omitted] This book does not advocate violence, bomb-making, murder, or any other heinous acts that one might fear finding here. It does not even discuss violence except very indirectly, as one potential but undefined aspect of the “revolution against technology.”

The entire focus of this book is the problem of technology: where we stand today, what kind of imminent future we are facing, and what we ought to do about it.

The challenge to the reader is to make a firm separation between the Unabomber crimes and a rational, in-depth, no-holds-barred discussion of the threat posed by modern technology. Kaczynski has much to offer to this discussion even if we accept that he was guilty of certain reprehensible crimes. We do ourselves no favors by ignoring him. His ideas have no less force, his arguments are none the weaker, simply because they issue from a maximum-security cell.

Kaczynski’s writings revolve around a core argument against modern technology. To briefly recap that argument:

• Human beings evolved under primitive, low-tech conditions. This is our natural state of existence.

• Present technological society is radically different than our natural state, and imposes unprecedented stresses upon us, and on nature.

• Technologically-induced stress is bad now and will get much worse, leading to a condition where humans will be completely manipulated and molded to serve the needs of the system. Such a state of affairs is undignified, abhorrent, disastrous for nature, and profoundly dehumanizing.

• The technological system cannot be fixed or reformed so as to avoid this dehumanized future.

• Therefore, the system must be brought to an end.

The logic is sound. However, we are free to challenge any of the premises. Perhaps we did not evolve under low-tech conditions—maybe God created humans 6,000 years ago. Perhaps modern technology is, in some sense, not an aberrant condition but is really our “natural state.” Perhaps the stresses of modern life will not get worse. Perhaps reform is possible. Perhaps revolution, though justified, is futile. These are just some of the responses we might make to Kaczynski’s argument, and in defense of the status quo. All these points will be touched on in this book; I hope that some progress will be made.

As will become apparent, Kaczynski is a careful, insightful thinker who makes forceful arguments against technology—arguments that are not easily refuted. In spite of this, even at the peak of the Unabomber trial, one rarely heard anything of these arguments. Instead we were treated to an interesting spectacle: a near-universal assault on his character and actions, without a shred of meaningful discussion of his ideas. This shameful, deliberate act of mindlessness was typically “justified” in three ways—none of which are rational. These tactics need to be firmly buried, so that a real inquiry can proceed.

First: “He’s a murderer, and we must not dignify a murderer by discussing his ideas.” Based on his plea bargain, we indeed must accept that Kaczynski did deliver the fatal mail bombs. For that he is rightly punished with a life sentence in a federal penitentiary. His tactics were deplorable, and I for one do not endorse such actions.

And yet, in any civilized society even the most nefarious of prisoners has some rights. Freedom of speech is one of these. Every prisoner in any modern nation should have the right to communicate to outsiders, to express his or her ideas, and even to publish books or artwork, provided they hold to the same broad restrictions of any citizen. American prisoners cannot profit from their work—this is the famous “Son of Sam” law—but that is not at issue here. Kaczynski gets not one dime of profit from this book. But he cannot be denied the legal or moral right to express his views.

Furthermore, every document that Kaczynski receives or sends out is reviewed in detail by personnel from the US Federal Bureau of Prisons. We need have no apprehensions about him communicating secret plans to destroy the world, or to kill again.

But do we dignify Kaczynski unduly? I recall a similar concern in late 2005, when a documentary ran on American public television about Mark David Chapman, the killer of John Lennon. Similar complaints were raised: “We dignify this criminal too much by even mentioning his name”; “We should never hear his voice”; “We should never read a word of what he says,” and so on. Many opposed the documentary, and yet it was produced, and aired. And nothing was to be gained except sheer voyeurism. There was no deep message, no residual value in hearing Chapman speak. It was pure pop culture. And yet it aired, because he has a right to speak, and we have a right to know. How mueh more important to hear from Kaczynski—not just the mail-bomber who eluded the FBI for 17 years, but a man with ideas that challenge the core of our modern world view, and even offer a kind of salvation.

That said, we could clearly opt to close our eyes and ears to the man. But this solves nothing. We are still left facing the same issues, and having to answer the same difficult questions. In dealing with his writings perhaps we do dignify him. But more importantly, we dignify our children, the natural world, and ourselves—because it is these that will bear the consequences of our actions.

Second: “Sure, technology causes problems, but we’ve got no choice. What are we supposed to do, go live in a cave?” The point here, presumably, is that technological society is an irrevocable reality, and any discussion to the contrary is a complete waste of time. To this I can only say: (a) If you really think that you have no choice, then the debate is over. Kaczynski has won. If you have no choice, you have no freedom. You are little better than a slave to the system. You may be a comfortable slave—an Uncle Tom, if you will—but this is an utterly undignified existence. And (b), if by cave we mean a life without technology, then this is ludicrous, and impossible. For the 2 million years of our existence we have used tools—technology—to survive. It cannot be otherwise. The whole question is, what level of technology shall we use? We can choose simple, natural, manageable, biodegradable tools, or we can choose complex, enslaving, toxic tools.

If the cave imagery is intended as a shorthand notion for a simple, low-tech lifestyle, then I respond, yes, this is precisely what we need. We modern people think life unlivable without electricity, the Internet, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing. Obviously it was not always like this. The greatest accomplishments of humanity occurred without computers, without electricity, without plumbing. Think of it—life without computers! What barbarians those Renaissance men must have been! Those ancient Greeks—brute animals! And yet the Greeks, for example, though living with only the most basic of tools, were able to create one of the greatest societies in history. The whole point of technology, of society, is, after all, to have a good life; and a good life requires almost nothing at all.

The third common tactic was to raise a series of red herrings—to discuss everything about the man except his “crazy” ideas. His arguments no doubt pose a threat to the system, and thus many people, especially those in positions of power, are very anxious to repudiate Kaczynski and his ideas—preferably, in such a way as to avoid actually addressing them. The arguments are not easily defeated, especially by simple-minded politicians, jealous or jaded intellectuals, or apologists for big business, so they tend to mount superficial or trivial attacks. They will talk about his mental state, his upbringing, the legal circus—anything to distract the public from substantive inquiry. In this way, Kaczynski’s dangerous ideas are safely hidden out of sight. Virtually every mass media discussion of either Kaczynski or ISAIF is guilty of this ploy; even at the height of the media frenzy, the most one could hope for would be to hear or read a few snippets from the manifesto.[47] The cover story in Time the week after Kaczynski’s arrest is a perfect case in point: not a word on the substance of his thinking.[48]

One instance that was especially egregious, if only because one would have expected better, was the largely inane critique of the manifesto by Kirkpatrick Sale in Nation.[49] Given a rare opportunity to provide an in-depth assessment of the piece in a high-visibility venue, Sale fumbled badly. He spends an inordinate amount of time on trivial, incidental, or pointless issues, belaboring the Unabomber’s “wooden,” “plodding,” and “leaden” writing style, and his lack of pure originality (“thinks he’s the first person who ever worked out such ideas”)--as if such things have any bearing at all on the arguments at hand.

In fact Kaczynski’s writing style is perfectly suited to the task. He is clear, precise, and articulate. He writes in a commonsense manner, largely free of technical terms. When he does introduce precise terms, he is generally careful to define them. He is respectful of the reader. He writes to a broad audience. He is methodical and meticulous. Clarity and precision are of utmost importance, befitting the severity of the situation.

Kaczynski’s originality is not really in dispute. It is true that many of the themes he addresses have been discussed by others, but this fact takes nothing away from the force of his arguments. Quite the contrary—it only strengthens his position. He follows in a long line of important thinkers who had grave concerns about technology, and its potential to disrupt society. The earliest of these was Lao Tzu, the venerable Chinese philosopher of 2,500 years ago, who observed: “The more sharpened tools the people have / the more benighted the state.” Sharp tools cut through the social fabric, separating people from themselves and from the world. Such tools cast us all into a dark time, from which we are unable to see our way ahead. We build them at our own risk.

Shortly afterward, Plato was making the first connection between techne and logos, and warning us about even so benign a technology as writing:

This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory…[Writing is] an elixir not of memory, but of reminding…[It offers us] the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom… (Phaedrus, 275a)

-- Plato Phaedrus, 275a

Such early reflections led, in time, to Rousseau’s full-blown critique of technology in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750), and to Henry David Thoreau’s anti-technological musings in Walden(1850). Not long thereafter, British essayist Samuel Butler felt compelled to issue the first unequivocal attack against the technological system:

Day by day, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them…the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants…Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. (Darwin Among the Machines, 1863)[50]

-- Samuel Butler Darwin Among the Machines

Noted philosophers like Scheler, Whitehead, and Heidegger published stinging critiques. Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier (1937) concludes with a penetrating and insightful attack on mechanization and the “machine society.” Of special significance to Kaczynski, and the whole technology debate, is Jacques Ellul’s 1954 masterpiece The Technological Society; his portrayal of technology as a monistic, self-driving force in the world that is able to invade all aspects of human existence, deeply undermining our freedom in the process, was as ground-breaking as it was troubling. In the 1960s and 70s, radical thinkers like Marcuse and Illich called for virtual revolution against the system.[51] Through the present day, some elements of the so-called green anarchist movement attempt to do the same—see R. Scarce (2006).

Thus, even though Kaczynski addresses many issues which others before him have raised, he carries the analysis to a new level of intensity. His uniqueness is expressed in a number of ways. First is his relentless focus on technology itself as the root cause of our predicament; he is adamant that, directly or indirectly, modern technology is the sole basis for our most pressing contemporary problems. Second, he assigns highest value to the dignity and autonomy, or freedom, of the human being; it is these things that are chiefly threatened by technology. Third, he explicitly calls for revolution against the system, in a way that no prior critic has done. And revolution is not merely some whimsical afterthought—it is a core element of his overall critique. Fourth, he is very authoritative in his research, citing in a careful and scholarly manner the relevant ideas that support his claims. He does not make idle statements, or offer appeals to emotion, or engage in hyperbole. Finally, Kaczynski is very pragmatic. This is not just theory for him. The situation demands action, and he offers specific plans to assist the transition to a post-technological world.

With these pseudo-criticisms and diversionary tactics out of the way, a true inquiry can proceed. In order to move ahead and seriously tackle the problem of technology, there are three main issues that we should bear in mind:

1. What is the present state of affairs? (in terms of human stress and indignity, environmental damage, etc). How bad are things at the moment?

2. What is our likely future in the near term; say, in the next few decades? Will things get better? Stay the same? Get worse? Get much worse?

3. What can, or should, we do about it?

Most people, being more or less adapted to modern society, would likely rate present conditions as a mixed bag: some good, some bad, some problems we need to work on but nothing imminently pressing. The near-term future they would see as more of the same—a few improvements, a few new problems, overall slightly better, perhaps. This automatically implies a conservative course of action: Carry on with the status quo, don’t rock the boat, be a “cooperator,” work hard, follow the rules, vote, hoist the flag of nationalism when called to. No major catastrophes coming, and in any case we have the government, the scientists, and corporate self-interest to take care of any problems that may arise. This view, according to Kaczynski, is naively optimistic--dangerously optimistic. It fails to respond to the exponentially growing power of technology, and its rapidly increasing ability to assert control over life on this planet.

Faced with persistent technological crises, there is also the common attitude of “no pain, no gain”: “Yes, there are inevitable problems with technology, but they are a necessary part of the learning process. Without the pain of the mistakes we could not enjoy the gains that technology offers.” This line of thinking would be fine, if (a) the pains were predictable, limited, and manageable; (b) they were fairly and justly distributed; and (c) the “gains” were in fact true improvements on the human condition. Kaczynski argues, rightly I think, that all three of these assumptions are false. And not just “a little false,” but radically false—false in a deeply deceiving fashion.

Kaczynski’s answers to the central questions are quite clear. In my exchange of letters with him, I pressed him on these points in order to better understand his reasoning, and to examine any weaknesses. These questions are, in fact, core issues that we all should ask ourselves. Furthermore, they do not end. This is an inquiry that must be ongoing, and responsive to the changing nature of technology itself. An answer one day may well be exposed as inadequate or fallacious the next.

One hundred years ago, Henry Ford could not begin to anticipate the highway deaths, urban sprawl, wars over oil, and global warming that his automobiles would bring. The inventors of television could not anticipate that it would lead to obesity, ill health, lower academic performance, and attention deficit disorder. The inventors of aerosol propellants (chlorofluorocarbons) could not know that they would destroy the planetary ozone layer. Early coal miners could not know that their product would disrupt the climate of the entire planet. These were not simple mistakes, mere oversights; they are an unavoidable aspect of advanced technology. We can never know what the consequences will be, and the more powerful and more ubiquitous the technology, the greater the risk. If global warming destroys the Earth’s ability to sustain life as we know it, then all the wonderful gains of the industrial age will be utterly worthless.

Paraphrasing Lao Tzu: the sharper the tools, the darker the times. We live in an age of very sharp tools. Consequently, it is also a very dark time. But tools cut both ways. Can they even, perhaps, be turned against themselves? Does the technological system contain the seeds of its own destruction? This may be our only hope.

We are clearly in dire need of a substantive inquiry into the problem of technology. In recent years we have seen just the beginning of what may lie ahead—a potentially catastrophic future. If most people are not yet convinced that drastic action is warranted, it is only because the worst outcomes have yet to be realized. On the other hand, if we wait until the crisis is obvious to all, it will be far too late. What can we do, now, to regain human dignity, defend the planet, and give ourselves the best chance for long-term survival? This is the question that presses upon us with the greatest urgency. We ignore it at our peril.

Re-visiting Uncle Ted (2011)

Subtitle: A look at Technological Slavery: The collected writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski a.k.a. “The Unabomber”

Author: Panagiotis Evangelos Nasios Tsolkas

Date: 2011/05/15

Source:
<www.earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/review-a-look-at-technological-slavery-the-collected-writings-of-theodore-j-kaczynski>

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AUGUST 14, 1983: “The fifth of August I began a hike to the east. I got to my hidden camp that I have in a gulch beyond what I call “Diagonal Gulch.” I stayed there through the following day, August 6. I felt the peace of the forest there. But there are few huckleberries there, and though there are deer, there is very little small game. Furthermore, it had been a long time since I had seen the beautiful and isolated plateau where the various branches of Trout Creek originate. So I decided to take off for that area on the 7^th of August. A little after crossing the roads in the neighborhood of Crater Mountain I began to hear chain saws; the sound seemed to be coming from the upper reaches of Rooster Bill Creek. I assumed they were cutting trees; I didn’t like it but I thought I would be able to avoid such things when I got onto the plateau. Walking across the hillsides on my way there, I saw down below me a new road that had not been there previously, and that appeared to cross one of the ridges that close in Stemple Creek. This made me feel a little sick. Nevertheless, I went on to the plateau. What I found there broke my heart. The plateau was criss-crossed with new roads, broad and well-made for roads of that kind. The plateau is ruined forever. The only thing that could save it now would be the collapse of the technological society. I couldn’t bear it. That was the best and most beautiful and isolated place around here and I have wonderful memories of it.

One road passed within a couple of hundred feet of a lovely spot where I camped for a long time a few years ago and passed many happy hours. Full of grief and rage I went back and camped by South Fork Humbug Creek.

The next day I started for my home cabin. My route took me past a beautiful spot, a favorite place of mine where there was a spring of pure water that could safely be drunk without boiling. I stopped and said a kind of prayer to the spirit of the spring. It was a prayer in which I swore that I would take revenge for what was being done to the forest.

“[...] and then I returned home as quickly as I could because I have something to do!”

Many of us grew up with a wild-ass grandpa or grumpy uncle. Whether they were preaching conspiracy theories, needling us to invest in gold or embarrassing us in front of our friends by gleefully threatening to get revenge on the techno-industrial empire, they usually made quite an impression. Ted Kaczynski might just be that relative to those of us in the radical ecological movement. Over the past few decades, some have cringed at his sight and others have cheered, but we’ve all had to ask ourselves, is he really related to us?!

Did he subscribe to the Earth First! Journal? Didn’t I see him eating at the Food Not Bombs picnic once? Was he at the Rendezvous? (or did he get kicked out?!)

While the speculations could take on mythical proportions, the only evidence to surface suggested an obscure relation at best—despite some persistent attempts to connect him to an organized movement. For example, in April ’96, Tampa Tribune columnist Cal Thomas reported, “Kaczynski went to an Earth First! meeting at the University of Montana where a hit list of enemies of the environment was distributed.” Thomas, a former publicist for Jerry Falwell, conflated both allegations: the meeting was actually a Native Forest Network conference and the list came from Live Wild or Die, not the Earth First! Journal (although when FBI agents raided Kaczynski’s Montana cabin, they claimed to find copies of both).

According to the Center for Consumer Freedom’s famous Earth First!-bashing website, WWW.ACTIVISTCASH.COM, the FBI said Earth First! Journal was one of Kaczynski’s favorite periodicals. As annoying as these industry fronts tend to be, their sources are occassionally solid. In this case, a 1998 court transcript stated that a letter titled “Suggestion for Earth First!ers from FC” (said to be the Unabomber’s pseudonym) was found in Kaczynski’s cabin, which read in part: “As for the Mosser bombing, our attention was called to Burston-Marsteller [sic] by an article that appeared in the Earth First! Litha [sic].” The transcript also states “the cabin searchers also found a copy of a letter to a radical environmental group known as Earth First!, and that letter began: ‘This is a message from FC. The F.B.I. calls us Unabom. We are the people who recently assassinated the president of the California Forestry Association.’”

In the Beltane ’96 issue of the Journal, co-editor Leslie Hemstreet authored a thorough rebuttal to media accusations following Ted’s bust, primarily by distancing the movement from him to the greatest extent possible (including inaccuracies). The editorial collective went as far as filing the first stages of a lawsuit against the FBI, which was mostly fruitless. With the Journal bearing the brunt of the pressure, the angle taken by the Eugene collective at the time is understandable. The anxiety, fear and confusion show most clearly when Hemstreet asserts that “to even identify the Unabomber as environmentally motivated is stretching it. Of his 26 victims, only two had any environmental connection.” [see A Few FC Targets]

Little else ever appeared about Uncle Ted in the Journal— no analysis of targets, no critique of the manifesto—but plenty of whispers, rants and arguments could be heard around our campfires. In June ’99, a former Journal editor, Theresa Kintz, attempted to break the silence by conducting the first interview with Ted Kaczynski; however, at that year’s Round River Rendezvous in Colorado the movement rejected the idea of running it. Instead Anarchy: a Journal of Desire Armed and the UK edition of Green Anarchist published it jointly. Neither of which was, for better or worse, constrained by public process or movement accountability.

In response to Kintz’s question about his influences, Kaczynski responded: “I read Edward Abbey in mid-eighties and that was one of the things that gave me the idea that, ‘yeah, there are other people out there that have the same attitudes that I do.’ I read The Monkeywrench Gang, I think it was. But what first motivated me wasn’t anything I read. I just got mad seeing the machines ripping up the woods and so forth...”

To reflect on three decades of the ecological resistance movement while ignoring the dialogue about industrial civilization that Ted’s endeavors sparked would be negligent. For the most part, however, Earth First! has shied away from any open discussion about Kaczynski. At what point can we move on past that?

Feral House Publishers offered a guiding step in their opening note to the readers of Technological Slavery by reminding us that even technophiles like Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, have been able to express their regard for Ted’s writing:

“Like many of my colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber’s next target. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument… As difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in [Kaczysnki’s writing].”

About the book

Technological Slavery opens with an author’s note from Ted: “I expect it to be advertised and promoted in ways that I will find offensive. Moreover, I do not like the new title…” (Editions Xenia published a first edition in French in 2008 as The Road to Revolution, as well as a limited release of 400 copies in English). Ted again expresses his deep dissatisfaction with the book in the first line of his forward.

In case you don’t get the picture, Uncle Ted is bitter. Despite the author’s discouragement, I kept reading. And I’m glad I did. In fact, Technological Slavery took me back to age 17 and my telemarketing cubicle job, where I read his words for the first time. A dozen years later, it still evoked much of the same intellectual stimulation (only now I was staring at a computer in the EF! Journal office).

Speaking of EF!, only four pages into his book EF! makes its first appearance. According to Ted, “Whenever a movement of resistance begins to emerge, these leftists (or whatever you choose to call them) come swarming to it like flies to honey until they outnumber the original members, take it over, and turn it into just another leftist faction, thereby emasculating it. The history of Earth First! provides an elegant example of this process.” He reiterates this idea throughout the book in various letters to correspondents.

Uncle Ted obviously preferred the overly-masculine, right-wing patriarchal days of Earth First!. Even if the reality is that his preferred faction couldn’t hold its own in the Earth First! movement and much of it has since gone status quo, obsessing over pro-border policy and population, does that mean we should dismiss everything he has to say? I don’t think so. In my opinion, it’s far past time we take a deeper look for ourselves.

Industrial Society’s Future

In his famous treatise to the developed world, “Industrial Society and Its Future” (ISAIF), originally published in the New York Times and Washington Post in exchange for an end to the bombing, there were some thoughtful, basic tips on strategy:

“The line of conflict should be drawn between the mass of the people and the power holding elite of industrial society… For example, it would be bad strategy for the revolutionaries to condemn Americans for their habits of consumption. Instead the average American should be portrayed as a victim of the advertising and marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying a lot of junk that he doesn’t need and that is a very poor compensation for his lost freedom. Either approach is consistent with the facts… As a matter of strategy one should generally avoid blaming the public.”

“One should think twice before encouraging any other social conflict than that between the power holding elite (which wields technology) and the general public (over which technology exerts its power)… [which] may actually encourage technologization, because each side in such a conflict wants to use technological power to gain advantages over its adversary. This is clearly seen in rivalries between nations. It also appears in ethnic conflicts within nations,” (from paragraphs 190 and 191).

Uncle Ted must have had doubts about the efficacy of some of his strategies (like 204 and 205 where he encourages revolutionaries to have as many babies as possible!), because he then says in 206: “If experience indicates that some of the recommendations made in the foregoing paragraphs are not going to give good results, then those recommendations should be discarded.”

A Critique of Anarcho-Primitivism

The book’s next essay, “The Truth About Primitive Life”, is in agreement with what Ted sees as the philosophical position of the green anarchist tendency, but focuses on a deep challenge to what he sees as the tamed, mythical version of anthropology it bases itself on, concluding “you can’t build an effective revolutionary movement out of soft-headed dreamers, lazies, and charlatans. You have to have tough-minded, realistic, practical people, and people of that kind don’t need the anarcho-primitivists’ mushy utopian myth.” And he backs up his position with a whopping 313 footnotes to his anthropology research.

The System’s Neatest Trick and Hit Where It Hurts

In this short essay, Uncle Ted points out what “the System” is, and how it turns rebellion to its own advantage. He observes that “commentators like Rush Limbaugh help the process by ranting against activists: Seeing that they have made someone angry fosters the activists’ illusion that they are rebelling.”

He warns that university intellectuals also play an important role in carrying out the system’s trick: “Though they like to fancy themselves independent thinkers, the intellectuals are (allowing for individual exceptions) the most oversocialized. The most conformist, the tamest and most domesticated. The most pampered, dependent, and spineless group in America today.”

Kaczynski’s grudge with Universities might have something to do with throwing away his youth by going to Harvard at 16, not to mention the CIA-sponsored MKULTRA studies he endured there in which he was subjected to extremely stressful and prolonged psychological attack, strapped into a chair and connected to electrodes that monitored physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a two-way mirror… Just saying.

Uncle T also waxes briefly on the topic of veganism, vivsection and animal rights: “…opposition to mistreatment of animals may be useful to the System: Because a vegan diet is more efficient in terms of resource-utilization than a carnivorous one is, veganism, if widely adopted, will help to ease the burden placed on the Earth’s limited resources by the growth of the human population. But activists’ insistence on ending the use of animals in scientific experiments is squarely in conflict with the system’s needs, since for the foreseeable future there is not likely to be any workable substitute for living animals as research subjects.”

In “Hit Where it Hurts”(originally published in Green Anarchy, 2002), he continues on a similar theme, responding to a letter from an animal liberationist in Denmark: “I agree that keeping wild animals in cages is intolerable, and that putting an end to such practices is a noble cause. But there are many other noble causes, such as preventing traffic accidents, providing shelter for the homeless, recycling, or helping old people cross the street. Yet no one is foolish enough to mistake these for revolutionary activities, or to imagine that they do anything to weaken the system.”

Only half that original article made it into the Feral House book (at Ted’s request). The article in its entirety can be found in Green Anarchy or – gasp! online. It is interesting for his identification of the vital organs of the “System” for revolutionary targeting, “...but only [for] legal forms of protest and resistance,” of course.

Excerpts from letters

Although the book’s republished letters and essays are repetitive, some excerpts lend themselves to interesting dialogue and insight about Ted’s life and the choices he made.

From his letter to MK (a Turkish anarchist), October 2003: “Because I found modern life absolutely unacceptable, I grew increasingly hopeless until, at the age of 24, I arrived at a kind of crisis: I felt so miserable that I didn’t care whether I lived or died. But when I reached that point, a sudden change took place: I realized that if I didn’t care whether I lived or died, then I didn’t need to fear the consequences of anything I might do. Therefore I could do anything I wanted. I was free! That was the great turningpoint in my life because it was then that I acquired courage, which has remained with me ever since. It was at that time, too, that I became certain that I would soon go to live in the wild, no matter what the consequences. I spent two years teaching at the University of California in order to save some money, then I resigned my position and went to look for a place to live in the forest.”

“Whatever philosophical or moral rationalizations people may invent to explain their belief that violence is wrong, the real reason for that belief is that they have unconsciously absorbed the system’s propaganda.” … “Green anarchist, anarcho-primitivists, and so forth (the ‘GA Movement’) have fallen under such heavy influence from the left that their rebellion against civilization has to a great extent been neutralized. Instead of rebelling against the values of civilization, they have adopted many civilized values themselves and have constructed an imaginary picture of primitive societies that embodies these civilized values.” … “I don’ t mean that there is anything wrong with gender equality, kindness to animals, tolerance of homosexuality, or the like. But these values have no relevance to the effort to eliminate technological civilization. They are not revolutionary values. An effective revolutionary movement will have to adopt instead the hard values of primitive societies, such as skill, selfdiscipline, honesty, physical and mental stamina, intolerance of externally-imposed restraints, capacity to endure physical pain, and, above all, courage.”

In another excerpt, from FC to Scientific American, 1995, Ted had this to say: “The engineers who initiated the industrial revolution can be forgiven for not having anticipated its negative consequences. But the harm caused by technological progress is by this time sufficiently apparent so that to continue to promote it is grossly irresponsible.”

The (Coming) Road to Revolution

These two essays, “The Coming Revolution” and “The Road to Revolution”, have the same premise. The former was originally written in Spanish (no publication date or location is provided). It opens with a quote from Albert Einstein: “Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an ax in the hand of a pathological criminal.”

Kaczynski makes the case that a “great revolution is brewing”, likening it to revolutionary social changes in centuries past. “The values linked with so-called progress—that is, with immoderate economic and technological growth—were those that in challenging the values of the old regimes created the tensions that led to the French and Russian Revolutions. The values linked with ‘progress’ have now become the values of another domineering regime: the technoindustrial system that rules the world today.”

Disappointingly, the second version of the essay opens with a quote from Mao Tsetung. Yes, Ted, the revolution is not a dinner party. We know. Maybe not a vegan pot luck either. But where does that leave us—those who feel affinity with much of Ted’s convictions but who engage in the Earth First! movement because of its decentralization, non-hierarchal structure and rejection of a narrow strategy? I know what Ted would say, but by the end of the book, I was ready to know what the rest of y’all think.

Why now?

The final chapter explains the reason for the timing of the book’s publication. Ted runs through several pages of legalese explaining his efforts as a jailhouse attorney to defend his rights to maintain control of his writing under First Amendment protections and, essentially, losing. The rest of his property was sold with the money going towards restitution of injured recipients of his bombs. Now his papers may also go to auction.

In 2000, his enemies’ quest for profit took a strange path. The SF Weekly reported that Gellen, who lost his left arm as a result of one of Kaczynski’s mail bombs, took Kaczynski to court in an effort to repossess his property and offer it for sale to the highest bidder. “There were interested parties who were willing to pay more than $1 million dollars for the property,” claims Julian Hill, lawyer for timber industry executive and Unabomber victim, Dick Gellen, “and instead it was sold for only $7,500. That $1 million should have gone to the families of his victims.”

The property was sold to Joy Richards, with whom Ted maintained correspondence for ten years. She told the Sacramento Bee that she hoped to eventually live on the property, build a residence and to preserve it. “His ideas are what really matter, and I thought his ideas were brilliant.”

She passed away in 2006. His book is dedicated to her memory, with love.

When Kintz asked him in 1999 if he was afraid of losing his mind in prison, Kaczynski replied:

“No, what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore. And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods and that’s what really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are going to break my spirit.”

Ted is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Letters can be sent to: Ted Kaczynski #04475–046, US Pen-Admin Max Facility, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO 81226.

A Few FC Targets

In all, 16 bombs—which injured 23 people and killed three—were attributed to Kaczynski. All but the first few contained the initials “FC”, which Ted later asserted stood for “Freedom Club.”

Timber Industry

In April, 1995, a bomb killed Gilbert Murray, president of the timber industry lobbying group California Forestry Association. Murray was described as a “Wise Use Leader” by Ron Arnold’s Center for Defense of Free Enterprise.

Corporate Public Relations

In 1994, Burson-Marsteller (BM) executive Thomas J. Mosser was killed by a mail bomb sent to his North Caldwell, New Jersey home. In a letter to the New York Times FC stated that the company “helped Exxon clean up its public image after the Exxon Valdez incident” and, more importantly, because “its business is the development of techniques for manipulating people’s attitudes.”

BM is one of the largest public relations agencies in the world. It is now a unit of Young & Rubicam, owned by WPP Group. The firm has 58 whollyowned and 45 affiliated offices in 59 countries across six continents.

BM works with global producers and marketers of petroleum products in training their employees how to respond to crises and working on key communications of specific crisis situations such as oil spills and serious accidents. Among those served by BM are Shell, Exxon Mobil, Conoco, Chevron, BP and Gulf.

BM represented Union Carbide, jointly responsible for the Bhopal disaster in 1984 that killed some 2,000 people. After the Three Mile Island accident of 1979 became the most significant accident in the history of US commercial nuclear power generation, BM conducted public relations work for the plant’s manufacturers, Babcock & Wilcox.

The Indonesian government paid BM millions to help improve the country’s human rights and environmental image, following the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor. They campaigned against human rights organizations at the behest of the last Argentine military dictatorship and conducted a PR campaign in the Czech Republic on behalf of TVX Gold, which threatened the Sumava Mountains.

In 1991 BM began a PR campaign for Dow-Corning to handle the growing public health controversy over silicone breast implants.

Most recently, BM represented Blackwater USA following a 2007 incident in which Blackwater employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians.

Computers, Robotics

In May of 1982 Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee received an FC bomb, injuring university secretary Janet Smith. Vanderbuilt’s Institute for Space and Defense Electronics housed in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is the largest such academic facility in the world.

In 1985, a California computer store owner was killed by a bomb placed in the parking lot of his store. A similar attack against a computer store occurred in Salt Lake City, Utah 1987.

Electrical Engineering

Diogenes J. Angelakos who served for four decades as a professor at the Berkeley campus, had his labs attacked by bombs twice, in 1982 and 1985. Angelakos served as director of the Electronics Research Laboratory at Berkeley from 1964 to 1985 and was widely credited with building one of the university’s largest research laboratories. He was recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on scattering of electromagnetic waves, as well as on the design of wireless antennas. One injured him, the other, a Berkeley graduate student.

In 1993, David Hillel Gelernter, a neoconservative professor of computer science at Yale University, was critically injured. He helped found the company Mirror Worlds Technologies based on his book Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean, 1992. Among his other published books are Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion, 2007; Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology, 1998; The Muse in the Machine: Computerizing the Poetry of Human Thought, 1994.

Geneticists

June 1993, geneticist Charles Epstein from University of California, San Francisco was injured by a bomb. Gelernter’ brother, a behavioral geneticist, received a “You are next” call. Geneticist Phillip Sharp at Massachusetts Institute of Technology also received a threatening letter two years later. Kaczynski wrote a letter to the New York Times claiming that FC was responsible for the attacks and threats.

Behavioral Sciences

James V. McConnell was also a target of FC. In 1985, he was injured along with his research assistant Nicklaus Suino by a bomb, disguised as a manuscript, sent to his house in Ann Arbor, Michigan. McConnell was a biologist and animal psychologist known for his research on planarians. His paper “Memory transfer through cannibalism in planarians” , published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry, reported that when planarians conditioned to respond to a stimulus were ground up and fed to other planarians, the recipients learned to respond to the stimulus faster than a control group did. His findings were eventually completely discredited. He also believed that memory was chemically based and that in the future humanity would be programmed by drugs, commenting that he would rather be “a programmer than a programee.”

Ted Kaczynski and Why He Matters (2016)

Author: John Jacobi

Date: 6^th May, 2016

Source:
<www.dark-mountain.net/ted-kaczynski-and-why-he-matters>

The Unabomber Affair

Ted Kaczynski, also known as the ‘Unabomber’, is a US terrorist known for his 17-year bombing campaign as the terror group ‘FC’, which targeted individuals involved in technical fields like computing and genetics.

In early 1995, the New York Times received a communique from FC in the mail:

This is a message from FC…we are getting tired of making bombs. It’s no fun having to spend all your evenings and weekends preparing dangerous mixtures, filing trigger mechanisms out of scraps of metal or searching the sierras for a place isolated enough to test a bomb. So we offer a bargain.

The ‘bargain’ offered by the group was simple: publish its manifesto, and it will stop sending bombs.

The manifesto, entitled Industrial Society and Its Future, was a 35,000 word polemic detailing the threats that industrial society posed to freedom and wild Nature. At the crux of the document’s analysis was a concept called ‘the power process’, or an innate human need to engage in autonomous goal setting and achievement. Despite this psychological necessity, ‘in modern industrial society, only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one’s physical needs.’ As a result of the mismatch between human need and industrial conditions, modern life is rife with depression, helplessness, and despair, and although some people can offset these side-effects with ‘surrogate activities’, the manifesto says that these are often undignifying, menial tasks. Interestingly, these concepts have numerous parallels in contemporary psychology, the most notable similar idea being Martin Seligman’s concept of ‘learned helplessness’.

Ultimately, the manifesto extols the autonomy of individuals and small groups from the control of technology and large organisations, and it offers the hunter-gatherer way of life as a vision of what that kind of autonomy might look like. Still, the end of the manifesto only argues for the practical possibility of revolution against industry (rather than a complete return to hunter-gatherer life), and it outlines some steps to form a movement capable of carrying out that revolution.

Up until FC tried to force the publication of the manifesto, the FBI had referred to the group as the work of a single terrorist. But the proposal put the agency in a difficult situation: it had a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, but was in no position to reject this one’s offer. By that time, the FBI had been searching for the Unabomber for 17 years and had little to nothing to show for it. Much of what they did have to work with, such as the profile that pinned him as a blue collar airline worker, turned out to be complete nonsense. Even the famous FBI sketch looked nothing like the man they later captured.

Worse for the FBI, the Unabomber was determined to strike until they agreed to the offer. Shortly after sending their proposal, FC sent a bomb to a timber industry lobbyist, who became the third death in the bombing campaign. Later, two Nobel Prize winners received letters warning them that ‘it would be beneficial to [their] health to stop [their] research in genetics.’ Finally, to make the offer even more convincing, FC sent a hoax bomb threat that delayed two flights and shut down California’s airmail system for almost the entire day.

Hoping that it would allow someone to identify the perpetrator, the FBI encouraged the New York Times and Washington Post to publish FC’s manifesto. The two newspapers took the advice, and the manifesto was soon published as an eight-page insert to the Washington Post, with publication costs partly funded by the Times. From that point on, the agency officially classified the Unabomber as ‘serial killer rather than a terrorist with a political agenda, as was originally hypothesized.’

The FBI was right about the manifesto: it did help someone identify the author. Shortly after the work’s publication, David Kaczynski contacted a lawyer to share his suspicion that the Unabomber was his brother, Ted. After examining the submitted evidence, the FBI raided the man’s home, finding everything they needed to put him on trial for the crimes of the Unabomber.

When Kaczynski was apprehended, he looked dirty and dishevelled, with an unwashed body and torn clothing and hair that reached in every direction. It was a typical look for Montana men in the winter, but it nevertheless solidified the media image of the man as a lone wingnut. In reality, Kaczynski was very likely a genius. He was accepted into Harvard at the age of 16, later went to the University of Michigan for his Masters degree, and then taught at Berkeley as an assistant professor. His doctoral thesis solved several difficult problems relating to ‘boundary functions’, which even Kaczynski’s maths professor, George Piranian, could not figure out. ‘It’s not enough to say he was smart’, Piranian said.

But Kaczynski decided that university life was not for him, and he soon left Berkeley to build his own cabin in a remote area of Montana, where he lived without running water and electricity. One FBI investigator said to the man upon his arrest, ‘I really envy your way of life up here.’

After a circus of a trial, Kaczynski ended up pleading guilty to the Unabomber crimes, and in turn he was given a life sentence and sent off to the Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado. Today, he diligently responds to letters he receives, and he is working on publishing an upcoming book, Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How.

The Response to Kaczynski

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life expectancy of those of us who live in ‘advanced’ countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation.

— Industrial Society and Its Future, paragraph 1

Although it is easy to dismiss Kaczynski as crazy, a wingnut, beneath consideration, support for his ideas is not hard to come by. Critiques of technology similar to those outlined in the manifesto have long been available underneath the names of famous thinkers. In 1863, for example, British essayist Samuel Butler wrote in ‘Darwin Among Machines‘:

Day by day, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them…the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants…Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species.

Consider how eerily close Butler’s statement is to the recent warnings about artificial intelligence made by Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, and Elon Musk (all of whom nonetheless continue to advocate for technical progress).

The response to the manifesto, while certainly not without a fair share of criticism, included many positive comments from well-adapted and successful members of society. One of these people, Bill Joy, was the inventor of the Java programming language and the founder of Sun Microsystems. In other words, he could easily have received a bomb from FC. Yet in 2000 Joy wrote his now-famous essay ‘Why the future doesn’t need us‘, in which he describes his troubled surprise when he read an incisive passage on the threat new technologies pose — only to discover that the passage was pulled from the Unabomber Manifesto. ‘He is clearly a Luddite,’ Joy writes, ‘but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument; as difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in [his] reasoning…’

Other reactions have been similar. Journalist and science writer Robert Wright famously stated, ‘There’s a little bit of the Unabomber in most of us.’

And political scientist and UCLA professor James Q. Wilson, the man behind the famous ‘broken windows theory’, wrote in the New York Times that the manifesto was ‘a carefully reasoned, artfully written paper… If it is the work of a madman, then the writings of many political philosophers — Jean Jacques Rousseau, Tom Paine, Karl Marx — are scarcely more sane.’

Perhaps most striking, however, was how much the general public expressed adoration and fascination with the Unabomber. ‘I’ve never seen the likes of this,’ said one criminologist, ‘Millions of people … seem to identify in some way with him.’ Kaczynski was arrested and on trial during the early age of the internet, and fan websites quickly popped up all over, including the famous Usenet group, alt.fan.unabomber. Stickers appeared that said ‘Ted Kaczynski has a posse’; t-shirts appeared that had the famous Unabomber sketch and the word ‘dad’ printed on it; and many organisations contributed to a nationwide ‘Unabomber for President’ campaign. ‘Don’t blame me,’ one campaign ad said, ‘I voted for the Unabomber.’

Even now Kaczynski has his open advocates. For example, David Skrbina, a philosophy of technology professor at the University of Michigan, corresponded with Kaczynski for years, edited a book by him, and has written several essays supporting genuine engagement with Kaczynski’s works. One of the essays is provocatively entitled ‘A Revolutionary for Our Times‘.

Despite all this, Kaczynski’s ideas are some of the least-talked-about aspects of the Unabomber affair. Instead, people tend to focus on the man’s family drama, his early life, or various conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Kaczynski was the Zodiac Killer. When his ideas finally do appear for consideration, they are oftentimes dismissed with inane comments on the ‘academic style’ of the manifesto or the unoriginality of its critiques of technology. Even more often, the ideas are dismissed with a statement on Kaczynski’s mental state: ‘He’s crazy, a wingnut, beneath consideration’. And then, of course, there are the moral arguments, some asserting that the violence was unjustified for the stated or assumed goals, and some asserting that violence is never OK.

All of these arguments are terrible ones. Not only do they fail to address the central points that Kaczynski raises, most of the time they are unfounded or flat out wrong, and at least some of the time the arguments’ logical conclusions would be uncomfortable or appalling to the very people who argue them. Let’s take a closer look.

Was Kaczynski insane?

The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

— Industrial Society and Its Future, paragraph 2

Most of the evidence used to show that Kaczynski is insane comes from his chaotic and pitiful trial. But this idea is has been thoroughly debunked. For one thing, every person I know of has confirmed that Kaczynski is not obviously insane, and most have suggested the opposite, including the journalist William Finnegan, many of his college professors, many individuals who encountered him in Montana, professor David Skrbina, and even the judge during Kaczynski’s trial.

On 7 January 1998, Judge Burrell said:

I find him to be lucid, calm. He presents himself in an intelligent manner. In my opinion, he has a keen understanding of the issues. He has already seemed focused on the issues in his contact with me. His mannerisms and his eye contact have been appropriate. I know there’s a conflict in the medical evidence as to whether his conduct, at least in the past, has been controlled by any or some mental ailment, but I’ve seen nothing during my contact with him that appears to be a manifestation of any such ailment. If anything is present, I cannot detect it.

Indeed, all throughout the Unabomber trial, Kaczynski’s mental health was a recurring point of tension between him and his lawyers. Kaczynski absolutely did not want to be portrayed as insane, even anticipating in his pre-arrest journals that the media would attempt to paint him as ‘a sickie’ if he was ever captured. In true Orwellian fashion, this fear was used as one of the main pieces of evidence that Kaczynski was insane, and the only other primary piece of evidence was his political views and writings. For example, in her psychological report Dr Sally Johnson cites Kaczynski’s ‘clearly organized belief system that he was being harassed and harmed by modern technology’.

Several factors compelled almost all involved parties to declare Kaczynski insane, most of all an ethical one. Kaczynski’s defence team was bound by personal or, at the least, professional ethics that compelled them to avoid the death penalty at all costs. The only sure-fire way to do this, they believed, was to present Kaczynski’s mental health as a mitigating factor. William Finnegan wrote in The New Yorker, ‘There was never any real doubt that Kaczynski was legally sane. But his lawyers believed that the degree of his culpability for his crimes could be made to depend on his psychiatric classification — the more serious the diagnosis, the less his culpability.’

Because of Kaczynski’s aversion to the strategy and his defence team’s repeated dishonesty, Kaczynski requested to be represented by the civil rights lawyer Tony Serra, but Judge Burrell denied his request. When the man then requested to represent himself, Burrell ordered a psychological evaluation to see if he was fit to stand trial. The result was an evaluation conducted by Dr Sally Johnson, who, as was mentioned, cited Kaczynski’s belief system, rejection of being mentally ill, and family troubles all as evidence that the man had a psychological disorder. Johnson concluded with a ‘provisional diagnosis’ of paranoid schizophrenia that was ‘in remission’ at the time, and she declared Kaczynski fit to stand trial. Still, stricken with a sudden case of amnesia regarding the man’s sanity, Burrell denied Kaczynski’s request.

The only other party to assert that Kaczynski was insane was his family, specifically his brother, who turned him in, and his brother’s wife. But they, like the legal defence team, expressed a deep desire to keep Kaczynski from receiving the death penalty. Furthermore, given that the Kaczynski family had rather strained relationships, their testimony is at worst unreliable and at the least insufficient for declaring Kaczynski insane.

Closely related to the idea that Kaczynski was insane is the idea that Kaczynski is a sadist. But the man showed explicit compassion for at least some of the people who were harmed or could have been harmed from the FC bombs. In one letter to the New York Times, FC wrote:

…we will say that we are not insensitive to the pain caused by our bombings.

A bomb package that we mailed to computer scientist Patrick Fischer injured his secretary when she opened it. We certainly regret that. And when we were young and comparatively reckless we were much more careless in selecting targets than we are now. For instance, in one case we attempted unsuccessfully to blow up an airliner. The idea was to kill a lot of business people who we assumed would constitute the majority of the passengers. But of course some of the passengers likely would have been innocent people — maybe kids, or some working stiff going to see his sick grandmother. We’re glad now that that attempt failed.

Similarly, in his journals, one can observe Kaczynski struggling with his feelings toward John Hauser, who opened a bomb left in UC Berkeley’s computer science building. He wrote that he was ‘worried about [the] possibility that some young kid, undergrad, not even computer science major, might get it.’ He also wrote ‘I must admit I feel badly about having crippled this man’s arm. It has been bothering me a good deal.’ Still, he goes on to argue that the bombing was justified, as Hauser was a pilot and aspiring to be an astronaut, ‘a typical member of the technician class’. Later in his journals he mentioned Hauser again to say, ‘I am no longer bothered by this guy partly because I just “got over it” with time, partly because his aspiration was so ignoble.’

In other words, in Kaczynski’s eyes his ideology legitimated his killings, not his personal psychological satisfaction. Thus, in order to understand and face the real implications of the UNABOM case, we need to come to an understanding of the worldview presented or hinted at in Kaczynski’s writings, including the infamous Manifesto.

Was Kaczynski’s ideology opportunistic?

If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

— Industrial Society and Its Future, paragraph 3

Two arguments challenge the idea that Kaczynski justified (and continues to justify) his actions in light of his ideology. One, an implicit argument that functions as backup to the ‘Kaczynski was crazy’ thesis, claims that the entire ideology was a ruse, just a way to fulfil the man’s own emotional angst. The other, explicitly argued for most prominently by the journalist Alston Chase, argues that the ideology had two parts: a libertarian one and an environmentalist one. The latter, Chase suggests, was used to draw support for the real source of Kaczynski’s political motivation, a love of freedom.

The first is actually a reasonable argument, given the limited journal excerpts and information the public was given about Kaczynski. The man often made statements in his journals that, standing alone, suggested that his own emotional satisfaction was all that motivated his killings. These statements were a huge part of the case against him.

For example, about Hauser, the aspiring astronaut, Kaczynski wrote, ‘But do not get the idea that I regret what I did. Relief of frustrated anger outweighs uncomfortable conscience. I would do it all over again.’ Pulled from the context of the entire passage, some of it mentioned above, it certainly sounds as if Kaczynski was only interested in emotional relief. But if the context already given was not enough, consider what Kaczynski wrote immediately after:

So many failures with feeble ineffective bombs was driving me desperate with frustration. Have to get revenge for all the wild country being fucked up by the system….Recently I camped in a paradise like glacial cirque. At evening, beautiful singing of birds was ruined by the obscene roar of jet planes. Then I laughed at the idea of having any compunction about crippling an airplane pilot.

Once again, ideology plays a fundamental role in Kaczynski’s justification. This passage should inspire some empathy from anyone who has seen a wild place they loved become torn apart for development, a part of the man’s motivation that is rarely ever talked about. We hear about his bombs and his dirty clothes, but we have not been shown the forests that he loved or the rivers that he drank from. In at least two interviews, both of which have received suspiciously little attention, Kaczynski gives us a glimpse into the kind of life he lead in Montana. One passage in particular stands out:

“This is kind of personal,” he begins by saying, and I ask if he wants me to turn off the tape. He says “no, I can tell you about it. While I was living in the woods I sort of invented some gods for myself” and he laughs. “Not that I believed in these things intellectually, but they were ideas that sort of corresponded with some of the feelings I had. I think the first one I invented was Grandfather Rabbit. You know the snowshoe rabbits were my main source of meat during the winters. I had spent a lot of time learning what they do and following their tracks all around before I could get close enough to shoot them. Sometimes you would track a rabbit around and around and then the tracks disappear. You can’t figure out where that rabbit went and lose the trail. I invented a myth for myself, that this was the Grandfather Rabbit, the grandfather who was responsible for the existence of all other rabbits. He was able to disappear, that is why you couldn’t catch him and why you would never see him… Every time I shot a snowshoe rabbit, I would always say ‘thank you Grandfather Rabbit.’”

In another story, he explains how one of his favourite spots in the Montana forests was developed, leaving him heartbroken — the event that finally pushed him over the edge. The story sounds very similar to the ones that conservationists and environmentalists tell to explain why they fight. Indeed, Kaczynski is really only different from these wilderness-loving men and women because he killed in response to the devastation he saw. This makes all the difference for some people, but, as we will see, this is probably missing the point.

Nonetheless, Kaczynski does often speak of his actions in terms of ‘revenge’, which is, after all, an emotional justification. But again, most of these entries are still accompanied by ideological justification.

For example, in 1972, six years before the first Unabomber package, Kaczynski wrote ‘About a year and a half ago I planned to murder a scientist — as a means of revenge against organized society in general and the technological establishment in particular…’

Later, after he had sabotaged some motorcycles and logging equipment around where he lived, he wrote that his acts were

particularly satisfying because it was an immediate and precisely directed response to the provocation. Contrast it with the revenge I attempted for the jet noise. I long felt frustrated anger against the planes. After complicated preparation I succeeded in injuring the President of United Air Lines, but he was only one of a vast army of people who directly and indirectly were responsible for the jets. So the revenge was long delayed, vaguely directed and inadequate to the provocation. Thus it felt good to be able, for a change, to strike back immediately and directly.

It seems that a better explanation for Kaczynski’s framework for ‘revenge’ has more to do with hopelessness than anything else. For years before he began his bombings, the man and his brother spoke to each other about the topics in the manifesto. This was, after all, the reason he was captured. Kaczynski also wrote about technological society, freedom, and wild Nature around that time and earlier. When he quit his position at Berkeley, he told his boss, ‘I’m tired of teaching engineers math that is going to be used for destroying the environment.’ And in 1970 he even wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, in which he criticises one man’s suggestion that environmental problems are caused by excessive individual freedoms and could be remedied with collectivism. ‘Actually,’ Kaczynski writes, ‘most of the problems are direct or indirect results of the activities of large organizations — corporations and governments.’

In other words, it’s highly unlikely that Kaczynski did not hold dear at least a significant portion of his ideology, and ‘getting revenge’ was the least he believed he could do in response to the intense devastation that industry was (and is) causing. That he had to justify his actions in emotional terms was not a sign of his emotional instability, but of his perceived isolation, the sense that by himself he could not do much to truly make the difference that was required. This was perhaps the primary reason Kaczynski engaged in isolated acts of sabotage and terrorism — all the more reason to reiterate that Kaczynski is not alone, and neither are those wilderness-loving men and women who feel hopeless now.

If anyone doubts that this was the case, let him read the very last entry in Kaczynski’s journal before he was caught: ‘My opposition to the technological society now is less a matter of a bitter and sullen revenge than formerly’, he wrote. ‘I now have more of a sense of mission.’

Chase suggests that Kaczynski was indeed passionate about a portion of his ideology — but the environmentalist part, he says, was just pure opportunism. However, among other things, this assertion fails to take into account Kaczynski’s professed love for Nature in his early life and journals, all more than enough to show that Chase was far off the mark. Nonetheless, one quote from his journals stands out as particularly damning:

…I don’t even believe in the cult of nature-worshippers or wilderness-worshippers (I am perfectly ready to litter in parts of the woods that are of no use to me—I often throw cans in logged-over areas or in places much frequented by people; I don’t find wilderness particularly healthy physically; I don’t hesitate to poach).

However, in order to understand this entry, one has to understand the particular strand of environmentalism that Kaczynski was influenced by, which was best embodied by a towering figure in the environmentalist movement, Edward Abbey, and the characters in Abbey’s most famous work, The Monkey Wrench Gang. The Monkey Wrench Gang is a novel about a group of rambunctious, beer-loving rednecks who, frustrated with the industrial development of the American West, began committing acts of sabotage, such as cutting down billboards, pulling up survey stakes, and pouring sugar into the tanks of heavy equipment vehicles. The book inspired several groups, including (probably) the Bolt Weevils, who sabotaged power-line development in Minnesota during the 1970s, and Earth First!, a movement started in the 1980s and known for tactics like those described in Abbey’s novel.

Abbey, who consistently lived up to the ‘rednecks for wilderness’ image, once made a statement very similar to Kaczynski’s: ‘Of course I litter the public highway,’ the man said. ‘Every chance I get. After all, it’s not the beer cans that are ugly; it’s the highway that is ugly.’

The goal of the Ed Abbey kind of environmentalism (if you can call it that) is intimately linked to the notions of wildness and freedom. Further regulations are not the solution, but part of the problem. That industry and complex society require so much restriction on the freedom of individuals and small groups is a good reason to love wilderness and throw out the stuff destroying it.

The sentiment isn’t all that uncommon. In one stand-up routine George Carlin talked (or ranted, as he does) about Earth Day, environmentalism, and ‘saving the planet’:

I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet, they don’t care about the planet… You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that someday in the future they might be personally inconvenienced… Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet… The planet is fine. The people are fucked. Difference. Difference… The planet is doing fine, been here four and half billion years. Ever think about the arithmetic? Planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here, what, 100,000, maybe 200,000, and we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion. And we have the conceit to think somehow we’re a threat?… The planet isn’t going anywhere — we are. We’re going away. Pack your shit folks.

Another comedian, Louis C. K., expresses a similar sentiment:

One day I threw a candy wrapper on the street. I didn’t do it [maliciously], like ‘Take that shit, street.’ I did it cuz I was like, you know, shaking, I wanted the candy. Anyway I was with a friend who said to me, ‘You just littered on the street. Don’t you care about the environment?’ And I thought about it and, you know what, I was like, ‘This isn’t the environment. This is New York City. This is not the environment. This is where people live. New York City is not the environment, New York City is a giant piece of litter. It’s like the giantest — next to Mexico City, the shittiest piece of litter… So if you have a piece of litter, what’re you supposed to do with it? You throw it in the pile of litter! Cuz if you don’t, if you put it in a receptacle, then it gets collected, and it gets taken to a dump, and a landfill, and then it goes on a boat, and it goes out and gets dumped in the ocean and some dolphin wears it as a hat on its face — for ten years.

In other words, Kaczynski’s ideology isn’t the urban environmentalism pushed by liberals and activists. It’s a love of Nature that’s inseparable from a love of freedom, very much the kind of love that non-activist nature-lovers profess already. But this is an uncomfortable fact to recognise, of course, because it makes Kaczynski’s ideology dangerous.

What about the deaths?

We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.

— Industrial Society and Its Future, paragraph 4

One argument I have avoided addressing until now is that Kaczynski’s actions were wrong because killing is wrong. This is, most importantly, because the moral status of Kaczynski’s terrorism does not discount his ideas, which can stand or fall on their own. Indeed, many have argued that point exactly, including Bill Joy and Skrbina. Another reason, though, is that anyone who truly believes the argument can’t be persuaded otherwise. If killing is always wrong, of course Kaczynski’s actions are wrong.

But I don’t think many people actually believe that killing is always wrong. In an unpublished text, Kaczynski mentions that only three kinds of people make this argument: conformists, cowards, and saints. ‘The first two,’ he writes, ‘are beneath contempt and we need not say anything more about them.’ But the saints, he says, could be useful to ‘keep alive the ideal of kindness and compassion’, especially since a revolution would likely be a pretty ugly affair. And he’s right. While some certainly do oppose all violence on principle, the majority of people pushing for nonviolence fall into one of the first two categories, and there’s no real way to respond to any of them.

In other words, most people recognise that it is sometimes okay to kill. Self-defence is the most obvious example, but there are arguable justifications for all kinds of wars, assassinations, and other violence. It seems that the problem many people have with Kaczynski isn’t necessarily that he killed, but that his killings were unjustified in some way. And, whether reasonable or not, because Kaczynski’s violence and its legitimacy is one of the most important considerations for people assessing the Unabomber affair, dismissing it as ‘not relevant to the legitimacy of the ideas’ is insufficient. So I will investigate Kaczynski’s violence and various possible justifications for it.

Bear in mind, however, that discussions about the legitimacy of violence depend heavily on inarguable moral principles, so past a certain point, much of the discussion around political violence is beyond consideration to some readers. It is up to them, then, to decide what kind of violence is morally legitimate. Here I only examine whether Kaczynski’s actions were justifiable assuming his arguments are valid.

Finally, note that this discussion is bogged down by an important consideration: the goal of Kaczynski’s terrorism. He states in one FC communique, ‘Don’t think that we are sadists or thrill-seekers or that we have adopted terrorism lightly. Though we are young we are not hot-heads. We have become terrorists only after the most earnest consideration.’ Indeed, anyone who has interacted with Kaczynski knows that the man, meticulous to the utmost degree, was probably well aware of what he was doing. Still, we are left with only two ends. First, of course, is the implicit end of revolution. And second is the explicit statement in several places that FC was interested in ‘propagating anti-industrial ideas’ and getting its message before the public. So we might ask the question: was Kaczynski justified in killing to propagate anti-industrial ideas for the long-term goal of revolution?

Perhaps the FC bombings were unjustified because Kaczynski had other means available: democracy, free speech, the mass media, etc. Anyone who makes this argument, however, should also be prepared to argue that political violence is acceptable if all of the justifiable avenues of political expression are closed. I’m fairly confident that when this fact is brought up, many people would default to the ‘nonviolence’ position described above. But assuming that a person is prepared to accept the implication of his argument, he ought to consider a few facts.

For one thing, Kaczynski was well-aware of these avenues of political expression. The 1971 essay used as evidence against him actually concluded with a programme for legal action. It suggested that people form an organisation that would lobby for the government to defund scientific and technical research, which was the only ‘halfway plausible’ solution Kaczynski could think of at the time. Yet by the end of the essay it is clear that the solution is very plainly implausible, which would no doubt leave anyone concerned with the cited issues feeling rather hopeless. Furthermore, if one accepts the arguments given in the manifesto (especially paragraphs 99–132), revolution, even if extremely improbable, is still the only solution likely to solve the problems in a satisfying manner. According to those arguments, other political avenues are closed. This does not necessarily mean that Kaczynski’s bombings were justified, but it does mean that, assuming he was right, they should be considered justified only insofar as they promote revolution.

And, as uncomfortable as this might make some, the man’s terrorism was profoundly successful at getting his ideas in front of an enormous population. Not only was the manifesto published, in full, by the New York Times and Washington Post, it was also published in numerous smaller publications; it was placed all over the internet, including one of the first internet portals, Time Warner’s Pathfinder; it was stored in government and legal databases and archives that would ensure his ideas lived on indefinitely; and it elicited the insight and commentary of countless intellectuals and public figures, among other things. In all, the manifesto reached an astoundingly large audience, which mostly consisted of everyday Americans, and which ensured that even if no individual or group took the ideas seriously immediately after publication, it would remain stored in countless places, waiting for potential future actors to be inspired. As of yet, no one has suggested a plausible alternative that Kaczynski could have taken to publish his text with the same amount of influence, response, and immortality that he achieved through his terrorism. As Skrbina puts it, ‘In the end, we are appalled by Kaczynski — because he won.’

Still, some say, no revolution has happened yet, so his actions can’t have been that effective. Yet the manifesto was published and Kaczynski caught only 20 years ago. Considering that 69 years separated the publication of The Communist Manifesto and the beginning of the Russian Revolution, it is unreasonable to demand that Kaczynski’s Manifesto already have made as large an impact in a third of the time. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that revolution is in the air. In particular, some of Kaczynski’s political partners in Spain have been fairly active. And although Kaczynski has broken contact with anarcho-primitivists because of ideological disagreements, he’s had a demonstrable impact on many in the anarcho-primitivist and green anarchist movements, who were largely to blame for the 1999 Seattle Riots. He’s also had a demonstrable impact on Derrick Jensen, a co-founder of Deep Green Resistance, and Earth First!, a radical environmentalist organisation known for direct action tactics and ‘monkeywrenching’ (the one based on Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang). Again, Kaczynski and his political associates have strong ideological disagreements with all of these groups, but that he remains so influential within them is a testament to how powerful of a force his ideas are.

Others might argue that even if Kaczynski’s terrorism was successful, it is not necessarily justified. And this is true. But the manifesto argues that if there is no revolution, the consequences of technological development will be absolutely disastrous. If Kaczynski is correct, and if his terrorism was successful at furthering his revolution, then the consequences of his violence might very well have been miniscule compared to the threat. We see this kind of logic at work all the time. The military drops bombs on houses with civilians inside because it’s more important to kill the terrorists in there with them. Grandfather Smith shoots a potentially dangerous dog in the head because it’s more important for his grandchildren to be safe. And so on. Given that Kaczynski believed that what is at stake is our freedom and our wild Earth, it’s not hard to see why he saw his violence as justifiable.

Finally, some people argue that Kaczynski’s specific targets were unjustified. They argue that he was indiscriminate and his targets innocent, and that this was what made his violence illegitimate. But Kaczynski was far from indiscriminate. In fact, he has stated repeatedly that he deplores indiscriminate violence.

More to the point, almost all of his targets were, as he puts it ‘typical member[s] of the technician class’, who include ‘scientists, engineers, corporation executives, politicians, and so forth who consciously and intentionally promote technological progress and economic growth.’ These people are ‘criminals of the worst kind’, and Kaczynski predicts that a revolutionary movement is likely to demand that they be punished.

Again, the idea itself can be challenged, but on his own terms was Kaczynski justified? He was, mostly, except for three instances, and the FC communiques express explicit regret for two of them — see the quote above concerning Patrick Fischer’s secretary and the airliner. The third instance was the bomb placed in the University of Utah’s computer science building. If it would have succeeded at going off, the bomb would have lit an entire hallway on fire and trapped students in their classrooms — certainly the level of indiscriminate violence that Kaczynski deplored. Put shortly, not even Kaczynski could have offered justification for this. He did, however, mention it in passing in one FC communique:

We would not want anyone to think that we have any desire to hurt professors who study archaeology, history, literature or harmless stuff like that. The people we are out to get are the scientists and engineers, especially in critical fields like computers and genetics. As for the bomb planted in the Business School at the U. of Utah, that was a botched operation. We won’t say how or why it was botched because we don’t want to give the FBI any clues. No one was hurt by that bomb.

Other than those three instances, Kaczynski’s targets are not surprising in light of his ideology, how responsible he perceived the technician class as being for ongoing technological problems, and his ideas on retribution. Dr Charles Epstein, for example, was a world famous geneticist, Percy Wood the president of United Airlines, and Diogenes Angelakos an important researcher in the field of micro- and electromagnetic waves. And although nowadays, in the age of smartphones, people may not understand why Kaczynski targeted computer store owners (twice), he did so about four years before the birth of the internet, at a time when personal computers were still the territory of big businesses, universities, and nerds. Computer stores at the time were mostly renting out whole sets of personal computers for businessmen and universities, making them an infrastructural target in line with Kaczynski’s other actions.

There’s also the question of why Kaczynski targeted universities and university professors rather than individuals who had more obvious and tangible impacts on technical development. Part of this, as FC explained in a communique, was strategic. Universities had weaker security and professors less of a reason to be wary of a suspicious package than large businesses and businessmen. But universities are no less responsible for technical development than big businesses, and in many ways they are more so. University research laboratories and university funding are the backbone of much of the research being done in the fields of genetics, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. As one paper put it, ‘Since the 1970s, research universities have been widely recognized as the core of this nation’s science and technology system.’ Furthermore, according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, every university targeted by the Unabomber is classified as as having ‘very high research activity’, the highest classification for a research university. This clearly makes the universities rational targets for the Unabomber.

Final thoughts

All this is not to say that Kaczynski was correct about revolution. As Skrbina says of the manifesto, ‘The logic is sound. However, we are free to challenge any of the premises.’ But a discussion about revolution would require actually engaging with Kaczynski’s ideas, not dismissing them, as has been the dominant response so far. Such engagement ultimately brings us to the final argument: that Kaczynski’s bombings were unjustified because his ideas were wrong.

This argument is the strongest one that can be made against Kaczynski, as it cuts off the strength of his analysis. Those who really want to challenge the ideas presented in the manifesto will have to provide real evidence against his premises, such as the idea that the good of technology cannot be separated from the bad; and they will have to provide an alternative value set that challenges the idea that freedom and wild Nature are primary.

I say ‘have to’ because it truly is no longer optional for anyone who disagrees with Kaczynski. The idea that Kaczynski is crazy simply doesn’t hold, and the ideology presented in the manifesto makes a lot of sense to a lot of people. Furthermore, the issues cited in the manifesto are real and pressing. Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change, antibiotic resistance, mass surveillance, the sixth mass extinction — all are rapidly taking centre stage in world politics, and with them the scientists and engineers, whom the general public is coming to realise have an inordinate amount of control over the circumstances of modern life. It’s very likely that some form of anti-technology populism is going to replace what was once an anti-government populism; whereas the main objects of disdain were once politicians, the new objects of disdain will be scientists and engineers, as well as technology itself.

Already we can see this sentiment in action. In the past few years we’ve seen TV shows about wilderness and outdoor-living, often with a tinge of anti-technological sentiment, skyrocket in popularity: Mountain Men, Naked and Afraid, and Duck Dynasty are just a few of the more popular examples. Books, too, like Wild by Cheryl Strayed or A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, push a similar message of freedom, a search for purpose and meaning, and spiritual renewal in a decadent, materialistic world.

On the other end, complaints about ubiquitous technology are becoming popular as well. TV shows like Black Mirror convey a fundamental scepticism toward the idea of technical progress, and books like A Short History of Progress, Our Final Hour, and so on are all questioning, to various degrees, the technologies that dominate the modern world.

Most notably, it’s pushing into the political arena. Environmentalist sentiments are extremely popular today, and young people feel the need to address problems like climate change and the sixth mass extinction. Furthermore, because of the way the problems are being ignored, sometimes by economic necessity, radicalisation occurs easily among environmentalists. In fact, the FBI lists environmental terrorism, not Islamic terrorism, as the top domestic terrorism threat in the US.

If that isn’t enough, all this is taking place on a stage that is largely being determined and shaped by the environmental problems that take centre stage in Kaczynski’s thought. Much of the instability that is occurring and will occur in the coming years is and will be magnified tenfold by climate change. One headline in the New York Times states ‘Researchers Link Syrian Conflict to a Drought Made Worse by Climate Change’. A headline in the Guardian reads ‘Global warming could create 150 million ‘climate refugees’ by 2050.’ And the WHO has issued increasingly urgent warnings concerning antimicrobial resistance, which could, combined with modern transportation systems and densely populated city living, cause a global pandemic, or at least a very formidable one.

Clearly, Kaczynski was right about a lot, and unless someone offers a good challenge and alternative to his core ideas, the notion of ‘freedom in wild Nature’ is only going to continue attracting adherents. Dismissing the man as crazy, a wingnut, beneath consideration — well, that’s not going to work for much longer.

Incidentally, I agree with Kaczynski. Wild Nature matters, industry is destroying it, and the only real way out is the collapse of industry. For sure, various aspects of the manifesto deserve criticism, especially the parts regarding strategy, but on those three points Kaczynski is on solid ground.

In regards to the man’s actions, I find myself in a tough spot. I absolutely do not condone indiscriminate violence like the kind practised by radical Islamists, and I tend to agree with Lenin that even highly targeted acts of individual violence are a terrible tactic for a revolutionary movement. A primary role of revolutionaries is to spread social values, and terroristic acts of violence are usually a sign of weakness on this front. Furthermore, while those supporting growth and progress are indeed ‘criminals of the worst kind’, I have a hunch that Kaczynski overestimated how responsible some individuals are for our current predicament.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to overstate how successful Kaczynski was, and the man has a tendency to be right about things, mostly because he is (almost overly) meticulous about every detail. No doubt he applied the same attention to detail to his 17-year campaign. So as incompatible as it is with my views generally, it’s hard to say that Kaczynski could have done something else and achieved his goals as successfully. Still, even he is quick to tell those writing him letters that he does not think another Unabomber would be helpful for a revolutionary effort. The primary work to be done now, he says, is building cores of committed individuals who can sustain a revolutionary movement. And as I said already, I agree. In any case, I ultimately still defend my initial statement about Kaczynski’s violence: the ideas stand and fall on their own, and right now they’re still standing.

I am not arguing that everyone will come to the same conclusions. Indeed, those who simply don’t care about wild Nature and the freedom found in it won’t be very moved by the manifesto; neither will those who are convinced that technical development can be controlled by humans. But the piece is worth the read, and with complete conviction I can say that it is not only the best way to engage with the Unabomber affair, but that it is one of the most important ways to engage with the problems of our modern world.

Ishi and the War Against Civilization (2016)

Author: Chahta-Ima

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The emergence of eco-extremism and the tactics that it uses have caused much controversy in radical circles internationally. The criticisms that the Individualists Tending Toward the Wild (ITS in Spanish) and other aligned groups have received range from accusations of ultraradicalism to insanity. One major aspect of this polemic centers around the idea of indiscriminate attack. Inflamed rhetoric on the part of eco-extremists may exacerbate hostility towards these tactics among the already skeptical.

From how some talk, however, it would seem that ITS or other eco-extremists are engaged in the bombing of pre-schools and nursing homes, that is, random targets, rather than targets of specific importance to the techno-industrial system (laboratories, government ministries, etc.) It must be admitted right off the bat that many who engage in polemics against eco-extremism have an a priori negative bias against any argument no matter how well crafted, as they themselves admit that the maintenance of civilization and domestication is in their own self-interest. There is no point in arguing with them. On the other hand, eco-extremism still has much to say, so those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

The more sympathetic would ask why ITS and its allies feel that they must “double down” on the idea of indiscriminate attack. Why harm the people you are trying to help? In other words, civilization and the destruction that it unleashes upon the world are the fault of a small section of modern society, and we must focus on convincing the vast majority that is not at fault in order to have the balance of forces needed to overcome the evils that presently beset us. Aside from that, it’s just bad form. It’s understandable that “bad things” happen even in well-planned actions. The least that those who carry them out can do is say that they’re sorry. That’s just good manners. It’s better, as some Chilean anarchists did recently, to explode noise bombs at four in the morning when no one is around in order to express “solidarity” with whoever international anarchism has been asked to pray for… I mean, express solidarity with this week. But if you have to do something, the least that you can do is minimize harm and express regret if something goes amiss (but mostly you should do nothing…)

Of course eco-extremism rejects these objections as childish and hypocritical. Are these people expressing their moral superiority while playing with fire crackers in the middle of the night and then dedicating it to someone halfway around the world for no apparent reason? Do they want a cookie or a sticker for being such well-behaved children? Eco-extremism will readily admit that devout anarchism is more pious and holier than it is. It doesn’t want its help anyway. If left-leaning anarchists want to win the popularity contest in the insane asylum of civilization, by all means eco-extremism forfeits. Congratulations in advance.

There have been lectures to eco-extremists that this is not how a war against civilization is waged. Very well, let’s go ahead and take a closer look at an actual war against civilization. The editors of Revista Regresión have already written an extensive series of articles on the Mixton Rebellion and the Chichimeca War that swept much of Mexico in the 16^th century, and we heartily recommend their work here. In this essay, we are going to augment their arguments by having recourse to a well-loved example of a “cuddly” and tragic Indian, Ishi, the last of the Yahi tribe in the state of California in the United States. In this exercise, we don’t pretend to know everything about those members of a Stone Age tribe that was hunted to extinction by the whites. Insofar as any historical analogy is flawed ipso facto, here we will at least try to take the lessons from how the Yahi fought, their attitudes toward civilization down to the last man, and how the shape of their culture problematizes anarchist and leftist values held over from the Enlightenment. This essay hopes to show that the Yahi’s war against civilization was also indiscriminate, devoid of Western values of solidarity and humanism, and was a duel to the death with domesticated European life. In other words, it is a model for how many eco-extremists see their own war carried out from their individuality. Ishi, far from being a model “noble savage”, was the last man standing in a war against the whites waged with the utmost amount of brutality and “criminality” that the now extinct Yahi could muster.

The Yahi

On August 29^th, 1911, a naked and starving brown man of around fifty years of age was found outside of a slaughterhouse near Oroville, California. The man was soon taken into custody and locked in the town jail. At first, no one could communicate with him in any known language. Soon, anthropologists arrived from San Francisco and found that the man was Yahi, the southernmost band of the Yana tribe, known locally as “Digger Indians” or “Mill Creek / Deer Creek Indians”. It had long been suspected that a small group of “wild Indians” still lived up in the inhospitable hill country of northern California. The anthropologists made arrangements to take the last “wild Indian” with them to San Francisco to live with them in their museum and teach them about his culture. Having found an (imperfect) Yana translator, they could not get a name from the Indian other than “Ishi”, the Yana word for man. And that is the name he was known by from the time of his capture until his death four and a half years later.

The Yahi were the southernmost branch of the larger tribe called the Yana found in northern California north of the town of Chico and the Sacramento River. Before the Europeans came, there were perhaps no more than 3,000 Yana on their traditional lands bordered by the Maidu to the south, the Wintu to the west, and the Shastan tribe to the north. They spoke a Hokan language the roots of which they shared with tribes throughout North America. As a tribe, the Yana in particular were much smaller than their neighbors, but still had a reputation for savagery towards their neighbors. There is also speculation that the Yana may have lived in the more productive lowlands first before being driven into the less hospitable hill country by their much larger and wealthier neighbors to the south in particular. As Theodora Kroeber comments in her book, Ishi in Two Worlds:

“The Yana were fewer in numbers and poorer in material comforts than were their valley neighbors, whom they regarded as soft, lax, and indifferent fighters. Like hill tribes in other parts of the world the Yana, too, were proud, courageous, resourceful, and swift, and were feared by the Maidu and Wintu peoples who lived in the lowlands.” (25)

M. Steven Shackley, in his essay, “The Stone Tool Technology of Ishi and the Yana,” elaborates concerning the Yahi relationship with their immediate neighbors:

“Because of having to live in such a marginal environment, the Yahi were never on good terms with any surrounding groups for any length of time. Regional archeological evidence suggests that speakers of Hokan languages, probably what could be called proto-Yana, lived in a much larger territory that included the upper Sacramento River Valley as well as the southern Cascade foothills until the ‘Penutian intrusion’ at some point 1000 years ago. These groups speaking Penutian languages were the ancestors of the Maidu and Wintu / Nomlaki who lived in the river valley at the time of Spanish and Anglo contact. Considerable violence is suggested at this time in the archeological record and the proto-Yana evidently did not move into a smaller, more marginal habitat willingly. Violence at the hands of outsiders was not new with the coming of the Anglos after 1850; the Yala had maintained long-term enmity relationships with the groups speaking Penutian languages who had forcibly removed them from bottom land and surrounded them for some time.” (Kroeber and Kroeber, 190)

In general, however, the Yana lived as did most tribes, clinging to the cycle of the seasons and with little societal stratification. The one major difference among the Yana is that they had sex-duality in language, that is, a different form of the Yana language was used by each sex. As Theodora Kroeber explains, “Infants of both sexes were cared for by the mother with an older sister or grandmother helping. Their first speech was that of the womans dialect, always spoken by women, and by men and boys in the presence of girls and women. As a boy grew older and was independent of nursing care, he was taken by his father or older brother or uncle wherever they were going, for longer and longer times each day. By the age of nine or ten, well before puberty, he was spending most of his waking hours in male company and was already sleeping in the men’s house. Thus, he learned his second language, the men’s dialect.” (29–30)

Kroeber explains that female speech was often a “clipped” speech, with male words having more syllables. Though women only used one dialect of the language, they knew the male variant as well. Theodora Kroeber speculates that far from being a linguistic curiosity, the strict division of speech may have made Yana culture far more intransigent to interference from the outside world. She writes, “There remains a psychological aspect of this language peculiarity which is not subject to proof, but which should not be dismissed. The surviving Yahi seem never to have lost their morale in their long and hopeless struggle to survive. Could the language have played a role in this continuing tension of moral strength? It had equipped its speakers with the habit of politeness, formality, and exact usage freighted with strong feeling for the importance of speaking and behaving in such and such a way and no other, a way which did not permit slovenliness either of speech or of behavior.” (ibid, 31)

Theodora Kroeber examines this aspect of Yana life later in her book when describing Ishi’s relationship with his first half-breed Yana interpreter, Sam Batwi:

“Ishi was a conservative whose forebearers had been men and women of rectitude; whose father and grandfather and uncles had carried with dignity and restraint the responsibilities of being principal men of their villages. Ishi’s own manners were good; Batwi’s smacked of the crudity of the frontier town, which was what he knew best and which, by the custom of the time, he knew from its least enlightened citizens… It may well be that upon first meeting, Ishi and Batwi recognized that they were from different strata of Yana society, Batwi’s the less well regarded…” (153)

Most of Yahi culture was very similar to the indigenous cultures of California in general. The efforts of the men were centered on hunting game and fishing in the streams, particularly for salmon as seasonally available. The efforts of the women focused on gathering, storing, and preparation of acorns and other plants as a part of their staple diet. Anthropologist Orin Starn, in his book, Ishi’s Brain: In Search of America’s Last “Wild” Indian, states the following concerning the Yahi’s conservatism in particular (71):

“Yet the Yahi were also an ingrown community set in their ways. They may have intermarried with neighboring tribes (and sometimes kidnapped women in the mid-nineteenth century), but outsiders were absorbed into the Yahi way. Elsewhere in Native America before Columbus, there was volatility and change – disease, war, migration, cultural invention, and adaptation. In the Southwest, for example, the legendary Anasazi cliff dwellers suddenly vanished in the twelfth century, for reasons still debated. Over time, however, the Yahi showed more continuity and stability than these other groups. Relatively little modification occurred in fashioning spear points, laying out a camp, pounding acorns, or other routines of Yahi existence. By all appearances, Ishi’s ancestors followed more or less the same way of life of many centuries.”

As they were far north, snow and lack of food were often factors in the lean times of winter. Nevertheless, the Yana knew how to thrive on the land which they were given, as Kroeber summarizes in her picture of Yana life and its relationship with the seasons:

“Winter was also the time for retelling the old history of the beginning of the world and how the animals and men were made, the time to hear over again the adventures of Coyote and Fox and Pine Marten, and the tale of Bear and Deer. So, sitting or lying close to the fire in the earth-covered house, and wrapped in warm rabbitskin blankets, with the rain falling outside and the show moon bringing a light fall down Waganupa as far even as Deer Creek, the Yana cycle of changing seasons completed another full turn. As the food baskets emptied, one by one, and game remained hidden and scarce, the Yana dreams turned to a time, not far off, when the earth would be covered with new clover. They felt an urge to be up and about in an awakening world, while far away in the great ocean which they had never seen, the shining salmon were racing toward the mouth of the Sacramento River, their goal the Yana’s own home streams.” (39)

Starn also cites a chant sung by Ishi to the anthropologists summarizing Yahi fatalism. (42): Rattlesnake will bite. Grizzly bear will bite and they will kill people. Let it be this way. Man will get hurt falling off rock. Man will fall down when gathering pine nuts. He’ll swim in the water, drift away, die. They’ll fall down a precipice. They’ll be struck by arrow points. They’ll be lost. He’ll have wood splinters get in his eye. They’ll be poisoned by bad men, They’ll be blind.

The Yahi at War

As could be expected, the invasion by Europeans could make even once peaceful tribes openly hostile to outright savage. As Sherburne F. Cook stated in his book, The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization:

“The general effect of these events was to bring about a shift in the entire social horizon of the natives, particularly that of the Yokuts, Miwok, and Wappo. The disruptive forces, previously discussed with reference to their influence on population decline, had also the effect of generating an entirely new kind of civilization. To put it in essence: a peaceful, sedentary, highly localized group underwent conversion into a semiwarlike, seminomadic group. Obviously this process was by no means complete by 1848, nor did it affect all component parts of native masses equally. But its beginnings had become veryapparent.” (228)

Nevertheless, not all Indians reacted energetically to the white Anglo invasion. The Maidu, the valley neighbors of the Yahi immediately to the south, seemed to have not put up much of a fight to the onslaught of whites coming onto their land, as one Maidu writer, Marie Potts, indicated:

“As more white men came, they drained the land. Ranches developed so fast that we, having had this country of mountains and meadows to ourselves, were left to become either laborers or homeless wanderers. Being peaceable and intelligent people, we adapted the best we could. Sixty years later, when we awoke to our situation and presented our case to the United States Land Commission, our claim was settled for seventy-five cents an acre.

There were no uprisings in Maidu country. The white settlers who came to our area were glad to have Indian labor, and the records show some fair dealing.” (Potts, 10)

As indicated above, the Yahi were hostile even to the Indian tribes around them, and brutally so. As Ms. Potts states concerning the Yahi’s relations with the Maidu:

“The Mill Creeks (Yahi) were what we called ‘mean’ people. They had killed a lot of our people, even little babies. They watched, and when our men were away hunting or working they attacked the helpless women and children and old people. One man returned once from hunting to find his wife dead and their baby lying on the ground, eaten by ants. After the Mill Creeks had killed a number of whites, they found out that the whites were gathering volunteers for a raid to punish them. Therefore, they set up an alarm system to warn themselves, living as they were in the canyons of their rough, unproductive country.” (ibid, 41)

When the white settlers arrived in connection with the finding of gold in California in the late 1840’s and early 1850’s, they brought with them the modus operandi of “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. There was no love lost between them and the Yahi, and the Yahi were persuaded to hone their austere and intransigent ways in a guerilla war of terror against the whites. Stephen Powers, writing in 1884, describes the Yahi in the following passage:

“If the Nozi are a peculiar people, these [the Yahi] are extraordinary; if the Nozi appear foreign to California, these are doubly foreign. They seem likely to present a spectacle which is without a parallel in human history – that of a barbaric race resisting civilization with arms in their hands, to the last man, and the last squaw, and the last pappoose… [They] inflicted cruel and awful tortures on their captives, like the Algonkin races. Whatever abominations the indigenous races may have perpetrated on the dead, torture of the living was essentially foreign to California.” (Heizer and Kroeber, 74)

The California anthropologist Alfred Kroeber further speculated concerning the warlike tendencies of the Yahi:

“Their warlike reputation may be due partly to the resistance offered to the whites by one or two of their bands. But whether the cause of this was actually a superior energy and courage or an unusual exasperation aided by a rough, still thinly populated, and easily defensible habitat is more doubtful. That they were feared by their neighbors, such as the Maidu, argues them a hungering body of mountaineers rather than a superior stock. The hill dweller has less to lose by fighting than the wealthy lowlander. He is also less exposed, and in time of need has better and more numerous refuges available. All through California, the plains peoples were the more peaceably inclined, although the stronger in numbers: the difference is one of situation reflected in culture, not in inborn quality.” (ibid, 161)

Jeremiah Curtin, a linguist studying California Indian tribes in the late 19^th century, describes the “renegade” nature of Ishi’s tribe:

“Certain Indians lived, or rather lurked, around Mill Creek, in wild places somewhat east of the Tehama and north of Chico. These Mill Creek Indians were fugitives; outlaws from other tribes, among others from the Yanas. To injure the latter, they went to the Yana country about the middle of August, 1864, and killed two white women, Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Jones. Four children were also left for dead by them, but the children recovered. After the murders the Mills Creeks returned home unnoticed, carrying various plundered articles with them.” (ibid, 72)

One chronicler detailed a Yahi atrocity in the following passage:

“The killing of the Hickok children was in June, 1862. The Hickok children, two girls and a boy were gathering blackberries on Rock Creek about three-quarters of a mile from their home when they were surrounded by a number of Indians. They first shot the oldest girl, she was seventeen years old. When found she was entirely nude. They then shot the younger girl, but she ran to Rock Creek and fell with her face in the water. They did not take her clothing as she was in full dress when found. Just then Tom Allen came upon the scene. He was hauling lumber for a man by the name of Keefer. They immediately attacked Allen. He was found scalped with his throat cut. Seventeen arrows had been shot in him and seven had gone partly through so that they had to be pulled out the opposite side. (ibid, 60)

Mrs. A. Thankful Carson, once a captive of the Mill Creeks or Yahi Indians, also described other instances of Yahi brutality:

“A boy about twelve years old was killed in a most barbarous way: they cut off his fingers, cut out his tongue, and were supposed to have buried him alive, but when he was found he was dead. On another occasion a man by the name of Hayes was out herding sheep. Some time during the day he went to his cabin and found it surrounded by fifteen Indians. They saw him coming: he turned and ran, but the Indians followed shooting arrows at him as he went from tree to tree. Finally they shot him with a gun through the arm. He managed to escape capture by a narrow margin.” (ibid, 26)

Another local chronicler, H.H. Sauber, described the reasoning behind hunting the Yahi to extermination:

“Once they murdered three school children within ten miles of Oroville, and more than forty miles from Mill creek. Soon after, they killed a teamster and two cowboys in one afternoon, and were clear away and scudding through the hills loaded down with stolen beef, before anyone guessed that they had been out. Other victims, too numerous to mention, had fallen by their ruthless hands. In short they never robbed without murdering, even when the crime could aid them in no earthly way, in fact could only more inflame the whites against them.” (ibid, 20)

Alfred Kroeber echoed this sentiment in a 1911 essay on the Yahi, where he stated,

“The Southern Yana, or Mill Creeks, met with a much more romantic fate than their kinsmen. When the American came on the scene, took up their lands for farming or cattle raising, and at the point of the rifle drove them off if they interfered, as happened before ten years had elapsed after the first gold rush, the Mill Creeks, like so many of their brethren, resisted. They did not, however, after the first disastrous conflict taught them the overwhelming superiority of the white man’s firearms and his organization, tamely desist and accept the inevitable. Instead, they only hardened their undying spirit of tenacity and love of independence and began a series of vigorous reprisals. For nearly ten years they maintained unflagging warfare, destructive mainly to themselves, but nevertheless unparalleled in stubbornness, with the settlers of Tehama and Butte counties. Hardly recovered from one blow, the survivors would raid in another direction, and in such cases they spared neither age nor sex. Atrocities committed on white women and children roused the settlers’ resentment to the highest pitch, and every Indian outrage was more than requited, but still the diminishing band kept up the unequal struggle.” (ibid, 82)

Theodora Kroeber tries to temper these accounts with her own reflections on Yahi brutality and “criminality”:

“The Indians meanwhile took horses, mules, oxen, cows, and sheep when and where they could, wasting no part of these animals which were food and clothing to them. They made blankets and capes of the pelts, tanned the hides, and made “charqui’ or ‘jerky’ of such of the meat as was not eaten fresh. In other words, they treated the introduced animals as they did deer, bear, elk, or rabbit. They seem not to have realized that the animals were domesticated, the dog being the only domesticated animal they knew. They stole and killed to live, not to accumulate herds or wealth, nor did the Indians really understand that what they took was the private property of a single person. Many years later when Ishi was past middle age, he blushed in painful embarrassment whenever he recalled that by white standards he and his brother Yahi had been guilty of stealing.” (61)

Theodora Kroeber in her work does not seem to address the Yahi’s brutal style of warfare in depth, emphasizing the exigencies that they confronted during the massive white invasion into their lands.

Ishi

In spite of having “home field advantage” and an exceptionally energetic approach to attack on their enemies, the Yahi were gradually hunted down and destroyed until there were only a handful left. In 1867 or 1868, a massacre at Kingsley Cave killed 33 Yahi men, women, and children, which was the last major blow by the whites to the last wild Yana. As Theodora Kroeber States,

“Ishi was a little child of three or four years old at the time of the Three Knolls massacre, old enough to remember terror-fraught experiences. He was eight or nine when the Kingsley Cave massacre took place, old enough, possibly, to have taken some part in the cleaning up of the cave and in the ritual disposition of its victims. He entered the concealment in which he would grow up at not more than ten years of age.” (ibid, 91)

With the open military defeat of the Yahi, the savage began a time of concealment, which A.L. Kroeber would classify as, “the smallest free nation in the world, which by an unexampled fortitude and stubbornness of character succeeded in holding out against the tide of civilization twenty five years longer even than Geronimo’s famous band of Apaches, and for almost thirty five years after the Sioux and their allies defeated Custer.” (Heizer and Kroeber, 87)

The remaining Yahi hid, hunted, gathered, and stole all that they could under their difficult circumstances. They lit their fires in ways that could not be seen from far distances, they had their settlements distant from where whites would normally travel and frequent. Soon their presence became a rumor and then a mere legend. That is, until a few years before Ishi walked to civilization, their camp was found near Deer Creek in 1908. Ishi and some remaining Indians escaped, but within three years, Ishi was all alone, which made up his mind for him to walk to the enemy where he was sure that he would certainly be killed, as had the rest of his people.

By 1911, however, through the victors’ problematic benevolence, Ishi went from a sworn enemy to a minor celebrity, moving to San Francisco and having a constant stream of visitors coming to the museum where he stayed. People were fascinated by this man who was the last true Stone Age person in North America, someone who could knap and carve his own tools and weapons from stones and sticks. Ishi made “peace” with civilization, and even made friends. He developed his own preferences for foods and other goods, and meticulously kept his property as he had when he lived nearly forty years in hiding. Nevertheless, within less than five years of arriving in civilization, Ishi the last Yahi succumbed to perhaps one of the most civilized diseases of all: tuberculosis.

Nevertheless, there were some rather interesting details that are rather indicative of Ishi’s attitude towards life in civilization. Ishi refused to live on a reservation, and chose to live among the whites, in the city, far from the corrupt Indians who had long ago given into the vices of civilization. As T.T. Waterman stated in one indirect reference to Ishi in a journal article that he wrote,

“It has always been supposed that remnants of several tribes made up these Mill Creek renegades. From what we have recently learned, it seems unlikely that there was more than one tribe involved. In the first place, the only member of this hostile group who has ever been questioned [i.e. Ishi], expresses the liveliest dislike for all other tribes. He seems, and always has seemed, more ready to make friends with the whites themselves, than with the neighboring groups of Indians. In the second place, all the other Indian tribes of the region profess the liveliest horror for the Yahi. This awe extends to even to the country to-day which the Yahi frequented. Even the Yahi and the Nozi, though they spoke dialects of one language (the so-called Yana) express the most unrelenting hostility to each other. In other words, the Indians who lurked about in the Mill Creek hills for several decades after the settlement of the valley, were probably the remnant of a comparatively pure group, since there was little likelihood of intermixture.” (Heizer and Kroeber, 125)

[It should be noted here that Orin Starn rejects the idea of the ethnic purity of the Yahi in the historic period, but gives no real reasoning behind it (106). This theme will be discussed below.]

In his voluntary captivity in civilization, Ishi was noted for his sobriety and equanimity toward those around him, devoted to the duties assigned to him at the museum at which he lived, and also to showing the manufacture of artifacts he used for survival. Theodora Kroeber describes Ishi’s general attitude toward his civilized surroundings,

“Ishi was not given to volunteering criticism of the white man’s ways. But he was observant and analytic, and, when pressed, would pass a judgment somewhat as follows. He approved of the ‘conveniences’ and variety of the white man’s world – neither Ishi nor any people who have lived a life of hardship and deprivation underrate an amelioration of those severities, or scope for some comforts and even some luxuries. He considered the white man to be fortunate, inventive, and very, very clever; but childlike and lacking in a desirable reserve, and in a true understanding of Nature – her mystic face; her terrible and her benign power.

Asked how he would, today, characterize Ishi, [Alfred] Kroeber says, “He was the most patient man I ever knew. I mean he has mastered the philosophy of patience, without trace either of self-pity or of bitterness to dull the purity of his cheerful enduringness.’ His friends all testify to cheerfulness as a trait basic to Ishi’s temperament – a cheerfulness which passed, given half a chance, into a gentle hilarity. His was the way of contentment, the Middle Way, to be pursued quietly, working a little, playing a little, and surrounded by friends.” (239)

For the eco-extremist or anti-civilization perspective, Ishi’s latter years appear problematic, even contrary to the desired narrative. Even Theodora Kroeber uses Ishi’s seeming magnanimity as graciously accepting defeat and accepting the ways of the white man to be a supporting of the ideas of humanism and progress (140). However, this is a mere matter of interpretation. One cannot judge a person who lived forty years in hiding, seeing all of his loved ones die either violently, of age, or of illness, and pass judgment especially when he was at the point of starvation and death. Through it all, Ishi clung to the dignity and sobriety that is, ironically enough, the essence of Wildness as Ishi saw it. Most of all, however, Ishi bore witness to that Wildness, he communicated it, and shunned those who had turned their back on it and embraced the worst vices of their conquerors. As the editors of Revista Regresion stated in their own reply concerning the Chichimecas who “surrendered” to the whites in the 16^th century in the article, “On Ritual Magazine”, “San Luiz de la Paz in the state of Guanajuato is the last registered Chichimeca settlement, specifically in the Chichimeca Missionary Zone. Here can be found the last Chichimeca descendants, the Chichimeca Jocanes, who preserved from generation to generation the memory of the conflict that threatened the Viceroyalty during those years. A member of RS was able to engage in conversations with some of the people of this town. We will keep these sources anonymous so as not to have them associated with our ecoextremist group. Those involved in these conversations confirm the fierceness of the ChichimecaGuachiles and proudly emphasize their warlike past. They mentioned that, with the defeat of the last hunter-gatherer nomadic savage tribes, the surviving Chichimeca bands decided to concede and show the Spanish that they now followed the foreign religion; that they adhered to the new commandments and would adapt themselves to sedentary life. They only did this in order to preserve their language, their traditions, and beliefs. The elders as well as the shamans (madai coho), who came down from the mountains after many years of war with peaceful intentions, nevertheless decided to live apart so that their stories and customs would not be erased from memory. Thus they would be preserved as a legacy for coming generations.”

If it were not for Ishi’s walking into civilization instead of choosing to die in the wilderness, we would not know his story, or the story of the last free band of wild Indians in North America. Thus, even in defeat, Ishi’s “surrender” is truly a victory for Wild Nature, one that can inspire those who come after him to partake in similar struggles according to our own individuality and abilities.

It should be noted by way of a postscript that many “revisionist” historians see Ishi’s history as much more complicated than the initial story told by the anthropologists who found him. Some scholars think that because of his appearance and how he knapped his stone tools, Ishi may have been racially Maidu or half-blooded Maidu – Yahi. This would not be surprising as the Yahi often raided surrounding tribes for their women (Kroeber and Kroeber, 192). Linguists have found that Yahi had many Spanish loanwords, postulating that some in Ishi’s band had left the hills in the not-too-distant past and worked for Spanish ranchers in the valley, only to return to the hills once the hostile Anglos came. Though self-preening scholars think they are finding nuance in the Yahi story, in reality many of their insights were in the original reports, even if not emphasized.

Further, Starn himself, otherwise quite the revisionist, admits the possibility that Ishi and his band remained hiding in the hills due to a notable conservatism in their way of life and worldview:

“That Ishi was here so detailed and enthustastic [in re-telling Yana tales], Luthin and Hinton insist, evinced his ‘clear reverence and love’ for traditional Yahi ways, however difficult life was for the last survivors in the confines of the inaccessible parts of the foothills. Besides their fear of being hanged or shot, the decision made by Ishi and his little band not to surrender may also have measured attachment to their own way of life – a steaming bowl of acorn stew on a chilly morning, the gorgeous starry nights, and the reassuring rhythm of the seasons.” (116)

Lessons from the Yahi War

I have meandered from the original point of this essay but I have done so purposefully. The intention has been to let Ishi and the Yahi, the last wild tribe in North America, speak for themselves, instead of engaging in simple polemics where sloppy sloganeering replaces real in-depth attention to a subject. What is clear is that the Yahi did not wage war as Christians or liberal humanists. They slaughtered men, women, and children. They stole, they attacked in secret, and they fled into the shadows after their attacks. They were not well-liked even by their fellow Indians, those who should have been just as hostile to civilization as they were. And the prospect of certain defeat did not stop them from escalating their attacks until there were few of them left. Once that point was reached, they literally held out to the last man. In that, eco-extremism shares or at least aspires to many of these same qualities.

The Yahi were a perfect example of what the eco- extremist seeks as outlined in the editorial of Regresion 4:

“Austerity: This decadent society makes us want stuff that we don’t need, though some refuse to see this and are enslaved by the endless pursuit of more trinkets. The majority of people are trying to keep up with the Joneses, they dream of making it big, of having the latest gadgets and comforts, etc. For us, all of that is an abomination. Simplicity: making do with what you have and rejecting civilized vices regarding coveting unnecessary things. These are well-known traits of the ecoextremist individualist.”

The Yahi, like many of the Chichimeca tribes of what is now Mexico, lived in “inhospitable” hill country at odds with their more affluent and numerous neighbors in the lowlands; this was the case even prior to the arrival of the Europeans. These neighbors, notably the Maidu, did not fight back against civilization because their relatively affluent life made them more conducive to accepting the civilized way of life. Unlike the Mesoamerican kingdoms, the Maidu did not know agriculture, but they were nonetheless already “domesticated” on one level.

It was the harsh and Spartan culture of the Yahi that strengthened their opposition to the Europeans, even when the latter showed superior power, even when it was clear that it was a war of extermination that they would likely lose. They redoubled their efforts and fought their own war of extermination to the best of their ability, sparing neither women nor children. Through cunning, guile, and a superior knowledge of the landscape, they waged a campaign of terror on the whites, a campaign that confounded all who studied the indigenous tribes of the region. Even other Indians feared them (just as other people who say they oppose civilization excommunicate the eco-extremists) as they did not divide the world into neat dichotomies of Indians vs. whites. To them, those who were not with them were their enemies and were treated as such. The Yahi’swar was thus indiscriminate and “suicidal”, just as the eco-extremist struggle aims to be. “Indiscriminate” in the sense that it is not driven by humanistic or Christian considerations. It didn’t take into consideration who may have been “innocent” or “guilty”: it attacked all non-Yahi, all who had surrendered to the genocidal ways of the white man.

The Yahi weren’t aiming to make friends with other tribes: even when Ishi enters civilization, he refuses to associate with the Indians of his region who surrendered so easily to white civilization. To preserve his dignity, he prefered to stay with his conqueror rather than with the conquered. The Yahi war was “suicidal” in that it took no consideration of the future: it aimed to live free in the here and now, and to attack those who were attacking them, without weighing the cost. That is because their way of life was forged on the margins on hostile lands, and much of their dignity centered on attack on those who they considered soft and inauthentic. There was no future for the Yahi in civilization because there was no room for compromise with civilization.

Here I will speculate (purely based on my own opinion) as to why someone would adopt eco-extremist views in our context. Of course, there is much anger, perhaps even rage, involved. I imagine that there would need to be to carry out these actions. However, what does the eco-extremist love? Modern humans are so alienated from Wild Nature, so callous to a way of life where they don’t depend on civilization for their every need, that they lament someone being wounded by an exploding envelope, yet shrug off, or even endorse, the destruction of a forest or a lake or a river for the benefit of civilized mankind. They’re so numb to their own nature that they think that Nature itself is a product of their own ingenuity, that trees only fall in the forest so that they can hear them, and that the sine qua non of life on Earth is the continued existence of eight billion hungrier and ever greedier people. If anyone is blinded by hate, it is the humanist, the leftist, and the apologist for “law and order” who makes their own existence the non-negotiable condition for the continuity of life on Earth. If given the choice between the destruction of the planet and their own beloved abstraction called, “humanity”, they would rather destroy the world than see humanity fail.

What is even sorrier is that most civilized humans won’t even be thankful for the noble sentiments of the anarchist and the leftist. To them they will just be snot-nosed bomb throwing punks who should chill out, go to the football game, and stop bothering others with their politics or solidarity. The leftist / anarchist has Stockholm syndrome for masses who will never listen to them, let alone allow them to win them over. They want to be seen in a good light by society, even though society will never pay them any heed, let alone like them. They refuse to see society as the enemy, and that’s why they’ll perish along with it, not knowing why the dream of the Enlightenment failed, why all men will never be brothers, why the only thing in which civilized humans are equal is in their complicity in the destruction of Wild Nature. They aim to be the star pupils of civilization but will always remain the miscreants, the outsiders, the dirty anarchists who need to get a job.

Eco-extremism will grow because people know that this is the endgame. Indeed, from Muslims to Christians to all sorts of other ideologies, apocalypse is in the air, and nothing can stop it. That’s because civilization is a death wish, and always has been. It knows that man cannot be dominated, that the only way to make him submissive is to turn him into a machine, to mechanize his wants and needs, and to remove him further and further from the chaos within himself that is Wild Nature. In this sense, the spirit of Ishi and the Yahi remains, it will always resurface when you least expect it, as a tendency and not as a doctrine, as a cry that fights today without fear for tomorrow. Eco-extremism will have no end because it is the savage attack, the “natural disaster”, the desire to let the fire burn and to dance around it. The anarchist recoils and the leftist fears, because they know that they can’t defeat it. It will continue, and consume everything. It will burn up utopias and the dreams of civilized futures and leave only Nature in its place. For the eco-extremist, that is a cause of rejoicing and not of horror.

—Chahta-Ima
Nanih Waiya, Spring 2016

Works Cited

Murder of the Civilized (2017)

Author: Mallory Wuornos

Source: Black Seed, Issue 5.
<www.archive.org/details/black_seed_5>

Date: Summer 2017

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“The Indians who rose up against the New England colonies in 1675 had been exposed to the merciless concepts of European total warfare and had the improved technology and tactics to inflict heavy losses on the white populace. In their desperate attempt to save their culture and to take back their lands, the Indians abandoned most of the self-imposed restraints that had limited the death and destruction in their traditional patterns of warfare.”

-Patrick Malore, The Skulking Way of War

“‘Man,’ whatever people think of him, is never anything more than a temporary bourgeois compromise.”

-Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

“The lesser the motive, the better the murder.”

-Answer Me! Motto

There is a never-ending debate among anarchists of the left regarding what constitutes violence, what revolutionary violence is acceptable, and whether or not it will motivate the working class to rise against its oppressors. Nowhere in these banal conversations do people take the position that interpersonal violence is inevitable, or even desirable, as it is part of our nature. It puts into question social projects aimed at bettering the world. The Homo Sapien has always been a bad lot, there is no denying that. The earliest skulls dug up have shown evidence of blunt force trauma. Even if every person on earth (currently over 7 billion people) had all our needs met, we would still find reasons to bludgeon one another. There is no rescuing humanity from itself. Illusions of a peaceful and safe world come at a huge price. You merely need to look at the prosperity and peace (mislabeled freedom) of the West, compared to the constant battle for survival in exploited countries.

My obsession with cruelty among humans began at a young age. I grew up in a European country with a much longer history of empire building than the US, but of course that brutality was not in our school’s curriculum (which centered around religious studies). I wouldn’t learn about what empires and colonization meant until I was much older. What was etched in my mind were the endless horrors of the Monarchy, sadistic methods of torture, how to instill fear of all manners of deviance, and the equally cruel methods of execution (which attracted huge crowds to see the gory spectacles of be-headings, hangings, and—most horrific of all—the burnings). Along with these nightmarish tales came stories of the misery of peasant life and the diseases that spread quickly in cities that grew more and more populated and filthy. I was fascinated by the black plague and other diseases that came with industrialization. Along with these gruesome history lessons came the implication that our society has progressed, materially and spiritually. And again, no mention of the brutal subjugation of and robbery from people in far away lands.

Most anarchists believe monsters are a product of society, rather than a uniquely human problem that no utopia, no matter how well prefigured, could ever banish. Anarchists shy away from being called terrorists when we should be accepting that label with open arms. Instilling fear in your enemies when they are much bigger and more powerful is an age-old military tactic for a reason. But lately there has been a reaction against any notion of individual power and the incomprehensible violence it can sometimes take the form of. “Edgelord” is now a common denigration by leftists and others who desire a social revolution for those who talk about the human impulse towards violence and cruelty and what that means for those who believe in a social revolution. In the words of author Christian Fuchs, “the exclusion of killers from humanity makes our world a phoney planet where every serious discussion of violence is repressed.” This is especially true in times where there is a real fear of terrorism and power-hungry authoritarians.

“We are all murderers to a greater or lesser extent.”

-Octave Mirbeau

We live in a world saturated by violence, but for most people it is distant and mediated. Despite all the evidence to the contrary—live-streamed suicides and murders on social media, police killings shot on body cameras or civilian cell phones, or the various acts of anti-social violence experienced in the cities and towns—the civilized want to deny that they themselves are capable of cruelty. Those who do violence are the barbarian others, beyond the gates, on the other side of the tracks. Most of the physical violence inflicted on people won’t be seen or felt by those living in prosperity (barring a natural disaster or painful death), who are as removed from this violence as the drone operator sitting safely in a container in Nevada. It’s as invisible to them as the cancer growing in a child’s lung from the choking industrial smog in far away places and as the violence perpetrated within a stone’s throw of Hollywood against those on Skid Row (to those who never have a need to go there).

Like alchemists, anarchists think they can turn shit into gold if only enough people will rise up. The people will revolt and bring on the socialist utopia. Anarchists might envision this magical leap happening through violent actions but the nitty gritty of political violence isn’t clear. How will people be targeted? Who will be up against the wall? How do you eliminate a global capitalist system that so many humans now rely upon to eke out a miserly existence, without increasing suffering? Would anybody be capable of dropping the blade of the guillotine in this age? It’s very messy. Those who take the war against society seriously will be denounced by the very same people who believe in the overthrow of the ruling classes, as if a spiritual awakening will bring about their new world. Remember, utopian attempts have notoriously had effects opposed to what their dreamers envisioned.

The belief that humans are inherently peaceful creatures, enlightened through our reason. is still a tightly-held belief, even for anarchists. There are far too many who would have us also forget those who bombed, assassinated, and plundered until their deaths. A common question among revolutionary anarchists is, why are anarchists so weak? Despite the revolutionary platitudes glorifying violence against the ruling class, the cops, the state, fascists, and every other form our enemies can take, the threats ring hollow for all but a few. Pointing out the brutality that would be necessary to accomplish this task is not macho posturing, it is an observation of the failures and excesses of revolutions. This is why the actions of the lone wolf will always, despite their vileness, be important: they aren’t waiting for a critical mass of “power from below.” They take power in their own hands. Sometimes this looks very ugly but at its core is always a desire for freedom.

Like a lion in a zoo, our freedom only extends to a concrete fence, making whatever small patch of grass she has to stretch out on seem even more pitiful. Being wild and free in the midst of mass society looks more like attacking anything and everything in the most vicious way possible. To seek freedom means making people, including ourselves, uncomfortable through attacking long-held beliefs, such as those telling us we deserve to be safe and that human life is more important than anything else.

What I call ecologically-motivated murder is more likely to be equated with fascist ideology (the volkisch movement has been researched extensively) than are “lone wolves” who have no clear ideology to explain their disturbing actions. These loners can only be degenerates. Society, including many anarchists, would rather forget its demons, but lately it seems that pessimism could be making a comeback, much to the chagrin of those doing positive social work. Few accept those existing on the fringes who are likely to be more apolitical and morally objectionable to a majority of people, but whose actions reverberate through society in a powerful way.

Cruel and violent people who transgress civilized boundaries, such as the rules of war, are not marketable to the masses, making them irrelevant to anyone who wants to brand anarchism as a cure- all for society’s ills. There is a notion that the viciousness of society is a side effect of civilization, rather than something innate in humans. Those who want to keep anarchy palatable to broader society quickly distance themselves from acts of savagery, and severely compromise anarchist principles (for example working with nationalists). Yet it takes savagery to successfully attack a much larger and stronger force, to instill fear. and to become offensive rather than reactive. Like George Bataille, I also believe we need a thought which does not fall apart in the face of horror.

One of the only Amazonian tribes to successfully fight off the Spaniards knew they had to match the ferocity of the invaders. And match them they did, by using the Spaniards’ own torturous method of execution. In the jungle the Shuar were used to moving to avoid conflict, but a man named Quirruba had a better idea. He gained followers who swore secrecy and ordered them to seek out as much gold as possible.

When the Governor of Logrono arrived in their area, they stealthily approached at midnight. One account reports that an army of over 20,000 Shuar surrounded and conquered the settlement, slaughtering the Spaniards in their homes before they could come together. Quirruba entered with troops carrying the gold they had amassed and the tools needed to melt it down. After everybody besides the Governor had been killed, they told him to prepare to receive the tax he had prepared:

“They stripped him completely naked, tied his hands and feet; and while some amused themselves with him, delivering a thousand castigations and jests, the others set up a large forge in the courtyard, where they melted the gold. When it was ready in the crucibles, they opened his mouth with a bone, saying that they wanted to see if for once he had enough gold. They poured it little by little, and then forced it down with another bone; and bursting his bowels with the torture, they all raised a clamor and laughter.”

It would be amazing to see earth shoved down the throats of mining executives, or hot oil poured down the gullets of oil executives, giving them only a small taste of the excruciating pain they have caused so many others. Unfortunately we don’t live in the time or the world of the Shuar’s fierceness. We are taught from an early age not to solve problems with violence (unless, of course, you are a nation), and history likes to portray all “social progress” as a more or less peaceful expansion of the enlightened civilization of the West. But there are still Quirrubas’ in the world who disregard the rules of engagement and fight on their own terms.

John Linley Frazier was a typical middle-class American in the late 1960s. He had a wife and good solid work as a mechanic until he discovered drugs and the hippie subculture. Along with his new lifestyle, he also got interested in ecology. Suddenly, on orders from the Almighty, the mechanic stopped driving and quit his job, explaining that he would no longer contribute to the death cycle of the planet. As you can imagine, his new found love of Nature put a strain on his marriage. He left his wife and moved to a hippie commune, where he proceeded to scare the fuck out of his fellow hippies. They saw him as paranoid and volatile, something that, post-Manson, most in the counterculture were desperately trying to distance themselves from. Wandering from commune to commune Frazier began living what one article described as the lifestyle of an Aquarian Age hermit, and moved into a six-foot-square shack in the woods, (predating by decades Ted Kaczynski’s similar retreat from society) not far from a prominent ophthalmologist, Dr. Victor Ohta.

Dr. Ohta had also not ingratiated himself with the local hippie milieu. He flaunted his wealth: a Rolls Royce and a Lincoln Continental, expensive clothes and jewelry, sons enlisted in the best private schools, an opulent mansion designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.

On the 19^th of October, 1970, it burned to the ground.

As the firefighters made their way up the two dirt roads leading to the property, they found both blocked by Ohta’s vehicles. After they had cleared the obstacles and reached the house they made a horrifying discovery: floating in the swimming pool were the bodies of Dr. Ohta, his wife, and their two sons, aged and 12. The doctor’s secretary (a wife and mother of two herself) and the family cat were not spared either. They had all been shot execution style, one bullet each, with the exception of the Doctor, who received four.

Frazier had entered the mansion and found Dr. Ohta’s wife Virginia alone. Holding her at gunpoint with her own .38, he bound her with one of her colorful scarves and waited. One by one the rest of the family along with Ohta’s secretary were taken hostage and bound with the same luxurious scarves. Moving them outside next to the pool, the doctor was given an ultimatum: burn your house to the ground and renounce your materialism, or die. The doctor couldn’t part with his worldly goods, and like an avenger for the forest that had once lived where he was standing, Frazier executed them all and tossed them in the pool. In the midst of the bloody carnage, Frazier sat down at the doctor’s typewriter before lighting the mansion ablaze. The note would be found under the windshield wiper of one of the cars.

“Halloween, 1970. Today World War will begin, as brought to you by the People of the Free Universe. From this day forward, anyone and/or everyone or company of persons who misuses the natural environment or destroys same will suffer the penalty of death by the People of the Free Universe. I and my comrades from this day forth will fight until death or freedom against anyone who does not support natural life on this planet. Materialism must die, or Mankind will stop.”

-Knight of Wands, Knight of Cups, Night [sic] of Pentacles and Knight of Swords.

In the end it was the local hippies who squealed on Frazier, who—even while locked up—continued to make people uneasy, showing up to court with half his hair, half his beard, and one eyebrow shaved off. Despite his odd behavior and bizarre crime, he was declared competent to stand trial and received the death penalty. After California put its executions on hold, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He was found hanging in his cell on August 13, 2009.

A more contemporary ecological murderer is Adam Lanza. I know that to even mention him is a cardinal sin among morally righteous anarchists. He is the person who killed multiple people, most of them children, at his former elementary school. On December 10, 2011 he wrote on a forum he frequented: “I should call in on John Zerzan’s radio program about Travis. I’m really surprised that I haven’t been able to find anything he’s written or said about the incident, considering how often he brings up random acts of violence. It seems like Travis would be a poster-chimp of his philosophy.” [added emphasis] In his call to John Zerzan’s weekly radio show, Adam Lanza, who Zerzan described as being very articulate, discussed the effect domestication had on Travis the Chimp, who after ripping a woman’s face off in 2009 went on a violent rampage that only ended after the police unloaded their fire power on him:

“Travis wasn’t an untamed monster at all. Um, he wasn’t just feigning domestication, he was civilized. Um, he was able to integrate into society, he was a chimp actor when he was younger, and his owner drove him around the city frequently in association with her towing business, where he met many different people, and got along with everyone. If Travis had been some nasty monster all his life, it would have been widely reported, but to the contrary, it seems like everyone who knew him said how shocked they were that Travis had been so savage, because they knew him as a sweet child. And there were two isolated incidents early in his life when he acted aggressively, but summarizing them would take too long, so basically I’ll just say that he didn’t act really any differently than a human child would, and the people who would use that as an indictment against having chimps live as humans do wouldn’t apply the same thing to humans, so it’s just kind of irrelevant.”

A year later, Lanza’s crime sent shock waves through the nation. Zerzan had little to say about the incident. It was of course portrayed as another tragedy of civilization, and not as a natural response to an unnatural way of existing in the world. Like Travis, we were raised to be something we are not. Also like Travis, some humans escape the world of the civilized through acts of uncontrollable violence.

He left no manifestos and has been essentially erased, probably due to his immorality. While Zerzan said little to nothing about the nature of the shooting, society (including anarchists!) as usual in their desperate search for answers zeroed in on the easily digestible explanations of access to guns and mental health care. When tragedies occur, the liberal mask of many anarchists’ politics reveals itself as they also cry for the safety of answers. Lanza had demonstrated his interest in anti-civ ideas, not only wrestling with the ideas, but putting those thoughts into terrible action, yet people still seem mystified as to why anybody would do what he did.

People who cared to read what he wrote, knew exactly where Adam was coming from when he opened fire in that classroom. He couldn’t have been any clearer about his motivation. He was the embodiment of Travis the Chimp, Tyke the Elephant, and other beasts who viciously cast off their shackles, their violent rebellion ending with their own deaths. Like skirmishes in wars long forgotten, there is mass cultural amnesia surrounding these acts of hostility toward the civilized. The town of the elementary school destroyed the school (building a new one over it), and also razed the house that Lanza had grown up in. Apparently unsavory people had begun showing up at the site. Perhaps some of those people listened to Zerzan’s show and were making a pilgrimage to pay their respects. The erasure of Lanza extends to his Wikipedia page, which redirects to the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting page. This is true of personal wikis for many other school shooters as well.

Attacking innocents is incredibly taboo. Even to admit you understand, much less are sympathetic to, the actions of people like Frazier or Lanza, will cause you to be shunned. This is especially true when the taboo against the killing of children is transgressed. Everything must be palatable to the masses. Nothing is more sacred to the masses than children, who represent hope for the future of the human race. But that future will no doubt be as horrific in its banality as the world now. An article in Newsweek summarized Adam’s motivations (adding of course that this way of thinking is deranged):

“children were indoctrinated from a very young age to become part of a sick machine that was self-perpetuating. They were manipulated to live unhealthy lives. In Adam’s deranged world-view, they were already doomed to live in a joyless world that would use and abuse them. By killing them, he’d be saving them from the hell he was enduring.”

Both Frazier and Lanza’s messages were clear to those who understand, but mystified everyone else: humans have, to their detriment, completely removed themselves from nature and through the ways of civilization we have all been imprisoned. Frazier’s fury came from a transcendent moment where he saw the obscenity of materialism that we are bound to while Lanza saw how we are shaped from birth to accept this fate and enjoy being caged. Like warriors before them they refused to see humans as more valuable than other life on earth and had no moral qualms about extinguishing lives no matter how young and innocent. In fact, they may be seen as having acted from a place of kindness, as suggested by Adam Lanza’s very personal killing of his mother before he left for the school. In his mind he wasn’t deranged; he had been pacing his cage his whole life, until he could pace no more. Then he pounced. We are all capable of nurturing and compassion, but we are also capable of the most horrific brutality, given the right conditions. These instances of cruelty, whether from long ago or in our lifetime, shouldn’t be swept under the rug. They are not horrible abominations that we must do everything to forget. They are human responses, maybe one of the last meaningful human actions we can observe, which is perhaps what terrifies people so much. As Fuchs observes, “Deep down in every one of us there is a ruthless primal killer inside. Perhaps this is the fundamental truth from which all censors, moralists and inveterate optimists flee in panic.” Let us not flee in panic from our own impulses, but learn from them and come face to face with society, its warts and all.

Eco-Terrorism: A Cry of Desperation (2017)

Author: A.S. Robak

Date: December 18, 2017

Source:
<web.archive.org/.../www.medium.com/united-green-alliance/eco-terrorism-a-cry-of-desperation-bae38098a2d9>

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It should not come as surprise to the majority of our population that there is a fairly new phenomena that has arisen within the later half of the 20^th century that pertains to the preservation of our environment. Just as light green environmental groups and lobbyists have gained traction within the mainstream, so have their more radical underground counterparts. Groups such as Greenpeace and PETA have attempted to solve our impending ecological and environmental crises time and time again through peaceful methods, but have had absolutely zero success in accomplishing this. However, unilateral organizations such as Earth First! and Deep Green Resistance have taken it into their own hands to halt the industrial complex that has been devastating the life systems on our planet for so long. Not only have these groups had a substantial amount of success in preserving the Earth and its life systems, but have gained sympathetic supporters from the general population in the process. These groups are in opposition to the mainstream environmentalist drivel that has been in circulation for so long, without accomplishing anything. The perspective taken by many of these groups and individuals is not that our system can be reformed to accommodate the other life on this planet. The problems we are facing in regards to the environment lie at the heart of the techno-industrial system as a whole. The problem of our crumbling ecological situation cannot be solved through legal means. Nothing short of the immediate destruction of the techno-industrial complex will be able to save our environment from it’s impending obliteration. We have demonized and cast out individuals such as Ted Kaczynski, who did nothing more than take this problem into his own hands. These people and organizations are here for the betterment of the planet. It makes no sense that we push the agenda that they are wrong, and must be locked up for their actions, when they are the ones who are right. They are the ones who have the courage to see the problem of our crumbling environment, and do something about it that will actually matter. The public should not look down upon these individuals and organizations as “Terrorists,” but should be able to see that these are the measures that must be taken in order for our environment to be truly saved.

Demonization and propaganda against these individuals and organizations will never truly bring them down, it will only make them stronger. Whenever one of these groups is pursued by the authorities, it only garners more attention to the cause. This is a widely observed phenomena. Not to say that this is a bad thing, but it is only aiding the cause of radical environmentalists when the government and the media attempts to demonize them. Let’s take a look at the Earth Liberation Front, which has operated internationally as a “Domestic Terrorist Organization” since the early 1990s. However, up until the early 2000s, not much was known about this group. For over two decades, this group has coordinated unilateral attacks on complexes which seek to enforce the human strangle hold upon the Earth. In the late 1990’s the group gained a significant amount of popularity within North America, with multiple arsons and bombings directed at ski resorts, power lines, and truck dealerships within the Pacific NorthWestern United States. These attacks were not directed at individuals, only the structures that allow these individuals to destroy the Earth. The goal of these attacks was to cause significant amounts of property damage, causing these destructive operations to halt their exploitative practices. Remember, nobody was killed or injured in these attacks. That was not the goal. Despite press releases from the ELF Press Office concerning the motives of these attacks, the group had become classified as a “Domestic Terror Organization.” The classification of the ELF as such only brought more attention to the cause. This is why many within the radical environmentalist community would now justify and defend the actions of the Earth Liberation Front, seeing as their motives were just and necessary in the fight towards a clean Earth. Legal actions have been taken to break down the ELF, but to no avail. Yes, the “Terrorists” such as Daniel McGowan, who were guilty of committing arsons and bombings in the state of Oregon in the late 1990s were later arrested and convicted. However, this exposure brought more people from the general public to look at these actions and justify them. Now, we can look at the Earth Liberation Front in 2017, it is larger than ever, with cells across the globe. It would have never grown to the size that it is today if the United States Government had not classified it as the most dangerous domestic terror threat in the country in 2001.

In another example, we can take a look at Ted Kaczynski, or “The Unabomber.” For 19 years, he led a bombing campaign across the United States that was targeted at individuals who were responsible for the destruction of the Earth, and the advancement of the technosphere. He had managed to elude the authorities for so long, with zero clues whatsoever in relation to his identity or location. The only way that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was able to catch him, was through the publishing of his 35,000 word manifesto:Industrial Society and its Future. On September 19^th, 1995, the New York Times and the Washington Post published this manifesto in its entirety, in order to appeal to the Unabomber’s request, as stated in a letter mailed to both of these newspapers. This decision to publish his was very counterproductive on the part of the FBI. Not only did this decision lead to the American public becoming aware of the Unabomber’s motives, but may have sparked a new era of anti-technology and anti-industry movements. When this manifesto was released to the public, many people around the globe were able to access it through the internet, thus making the dispersal of this information very easy. In doing this, they created a whole new generation of future Unabomber’s, who are ready and willing to look past our technological facade, and rebel against it using whatever methods are possible. However, the publishing of this manifesto did lead to his arrest in 1996 in his cabin in rural Montana. His brother, David Kaczynski, was able to analyze and recognize the writing as his brother’s and subsequently reported this to the FBI. All in All, the decision of the FBI to allow the publishing of Industrial Society and its Future to the American Public was counterproductive. This manifesto has done nothing more than spawn a new generation of Ted Kaczynski’s, who are aware that technological society has done the exact opposite of liberation. It has only enslaved and weakened both us and the Earth. This feeding into the Neo-Luddite and Anti-Civilization ideologies is not necessarily a bad thing, however. Ignorance is not bliss, and it is only better for the general population to know the truth about the dangers of technological society, rather for them to be hidden within a techno-industrial masquerade of lies and deception.

If we are to define “terrorism”, we can see that it is clearly defined as “The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, in the pursuit of political aims.” Pondering this, we can explore whether or not these “Eco-Terrorists” are truly terrorists in the common sense of the word. In many of these circumstances, the attacks carried out were not directed at civilians, but at creations of the system itself. It doesn’t make much sense that one would be able to “Terrify” that which is not alive, but is a building or an industrial complex. Yes, these actions may be considered violent, and possibly using intimidation. However, in no way are these groups using “terror” to advance a political goal. On the other hand, who is the real terrorist in this instance? Is it the coercive complexes that uphold the techno-industrial system, which is used to rape the planet of all that is good, or is it those who are courageous enough to stand up to this environmental tyranny? It is the gambit of the techno-industrial system to demonize and destroy all who oppose it. Considering this, we can see that those who are labeled as “Eco-Terrorists” by the technocrats, will certainly be looked down upon by those who the technocrats influence, without thought that the true terrorist may be the technological system itself.

In addition to the fact that the government, as well as the media are only feeding into public sympathy for radical environmentalism, these complexes can do absolutely nothing to stop these operations from taking place. Hypothetically, we can say that the government passes a law that is supposed to debilitate “Eco-Terrorist” organizations. Let us say that a government passes a law which makes it harder for one to buy the materials required to build bombs or conduct arsons. In absolutely no way is this ever going to affect the ability or desire of the “terrorist” to continue doing these activities. Absolutely nobody who is already committing a punishable offense will see that these materials have been made harder to obtain, and thus means that they are unable to proceed as they were before. There are two options that will be followed in this instance. The first is that instead of obtaining materials on the free market, one would have to purchase materials from a black market instead. Yes, this is illegal. However, one would not care if it is illegal, seeing as they are already breaking the law by the mere existence of their “Eco-Terrorist” organization. The second option that will be pursued in this instance is the idea to improvise, adapt and overcome. If one already has their mind set upon an operation that will further the destruction of techno-industrialism as we know it, one will not halt their pursuit once it has been made harder to do it. The only logical way forward is for one to come up with alternatives that will allow one to accomplish the same thing, or something close to it. Hypothetically, let us say that it has been made harder for one obtain a material required to make a bomb. However, I had my mind set on the bombing of a local coal plant with a few of my comrades. We would not see this and think that there is no way that we can proceed. Of course it only makes sense that we either find a way around the obstacle, or find an alternative method. In this instance, it would make sense to find a replacement material that has the same use in the construction of explosives, or we could rescind our idea of a bombing, and resort to arson instead. There is no law that any government can pass that can possibly get between these groups and their goals. If these groups do truly believe in the complete and utter destruction of the techno-industrial system in order to liberate humanity and the Earth, then they will surely do whatever it takes to accomplish these goals. Under no circumstance will a revolution be halted due to illegality. History has shown us otherwise.

Seeing as there is nothing that can be done to prevent these attacks from taking place within the positive law spectrum, there is only one option that the public must take in regard to the rise of “Eco-Terrorism” in the 21^st century. It is not unrealistic for me to say that we as a society will have to learn from the motives of these groups and individuals, and see how they are relevant in our society today. Fighting this movement is not an option. The radical environmentalist movement is based on an ideology of non-failure. Nothing can be done to stop the movement that is willing to do anything to bring about the destruction of techno-industrialism as we know it. The adaptation of our society at large to the rise of this movement will allow it to succeed. As our society becomes more and more conscious of the truth underlying this destructive game, we will slowly but surely begin to side with these groups that were once deemed “Eco-Terrorists.” The only way that we will be able to prevent the violent destruction of this system, is through the peaceful dismantlement of the system itself. However, seeing as our society is currently only willing to take legal measures to reform the system, these attacks are necessary to further the ideology that will not stop until the civilized structure that is currently being used to rape the Earth of its resources has been entirely obliterated. As our crumbling civilizational structure continues to destroy itself under the weight of humanity’s industry, public opinion will become more and more favourable towards the construction of a new, improved, and sustainable society.

To conclude, these unilateral attacks that have been taken, and will continue to take place against the techno-industrial system can not be stopped by any form of natural law. The only method that will allow the violence to cease, is the adaptation of the general public to the fact that this way of life will never be able to sustain itself, and must be destroyed in favor of something that is not as harmful to the planet which we rely on. This popularization of radical environmentalism is entirely the fault of the government, and of the media, which has brought these groups to the forefront of environmental discussion within the general population. As the government and the media attempt to expose and demonize these environmental groups and radical individuals. As the government attempts to hinder the actions of these groups through new laws, these groups only become more innovative at finding ways to break through natural law in favor of the goals that will aid the Earth, not just us, within our selfish, human-centric point of view. We must learn from these so called “Eco-Terrorists” if we are to build a better future for all life on this planet. As our failure of a civilization continues to destroy itself, the few members of society who are willing to do something about it, will continue to fight against the injustices that take place across our planet, no matter how much they are demonized and suppressed by the government. These acts of “Eco-Terror” are no more than cries of desperation as the Earth is crushed under the weight of humanity.

A comment reply by a Wilderness Front contributor (2019)

Author: qpooqpoo

Date: Feb 15, 2019

Source:
<web.archive.org/.../www.web.archive.org/screenshot/https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/aqn29y/comment/egjmmrr/?context=3>

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For someone so smart and with valid points you can really see when crazy sets in and you start bombing people, like that’s going to change anything....

You’re completely wrong about this. History will judge his actions to have been instrumental in inspiring a serious revolutionary movement against the technological system. For any serious revolutionary movement, you WANT to alienate the kind of people who will be offended by violence. Those people make moderate reformer types--not the kind of rabid, fanatical, willing to die for the cause extremists you need for the core of a revolutionary movement. There are other important reasons you’re wrong: The people he killed were criminal promoters of the technological system and it’s a shame there might not be a hell for them to go to. If you find this statement bizarre, offensive, or hard to relate to, great! You and your ideas will stay away from people who are inspired by that statement and people like you won’t threaten to co-opt the revolutionary movement into a useless reform movement.

I suggest you need a more thorough study on the dynamics of successful revolutions. Read about the Russian, Chinese, American, and Cuban revolutions, especially the importance on placing a clear distinction between the uncompromising rabidly radical minority revolutionary movement and the compromising, wishy-washy, reform-minded movements.

WE BELIEVE therefore WE ADVOCATE (2020)

Authors: Walter Bond & Camille Marino

Source:
<web.archive.org/.../www.veganfinalsolution.com/about>

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WE BELIEVE that non-human animals and the totality of life on earth are vastly more important than the life of individual humans, or the human race as a whole.

WE ADVOCATE a misanthropic worldview and motive behind all our actions, deeds and writings. For the animals we have become species traitors. This includes, but is not limited to, an aggressive stance against reproduction, an advocacy of abortion and euthanasia. The only breeding not wholly intolerable in our eyes, is solely for the purpose of rearing a new generation of animal liberators and subversives against society.

WE BELIEVE that vegans who’ve transformed Animal Liberation into a business model are, in fact, animal traitors. Those who exploit the holocaust to monetarily profit, self-promote, or advance their own selfish human issues are enemies of the struggle.

WE ADVOCATE the elevation of actions on behalf of animals over the profit margins and so-called “respectability” of what amounts to scam charities in the name of our suffering animal brothers and sisters. In fact, those hobbyists that now litter the movement of animal liberation with careerism we view as the worst type of bottom feeders.

WE BELIEVE that human civilization, industry, technology, and technique are the bane of the earth and all life upon her.

WE ADVOCATE living a minimalist and simple life, if possible, completely to the detriment of society. The more we can live a lifestyle in opposition to the system and help drain its resources, the more we hasten it’s demise. The only thing prosperity is good for is liberating animals, funding our campaigns on their behalf, and otherwise funding resistance against the techno-industrial complex.

WE BELIEVE that veganism is an ethic, as well as a diet. It is, in fact, the optimal and natural diet and way of life for all primates. Which of course human beings are. We see veganism as not only natural but superior to all other ethics and lifestyles, bar none.

WE ADVOCATE hatred and intolerance towards all people, regardless of race, creed, or culture that don’t put animals lives above their own first in their diets and consumer choices by going vegan for life; not only those who actively engage in nonhuman exploitation, but also those with the ability and means that do nothing to halt the animal holocaust.

WE BELIEVE the measure of how much we respect a human’s rights is in direct proportion to the way each individual respects animals’ rights.

WE ADVOCATE a complete revision of the concept of “rights,” which more and more has become synonymous with desires. Rights are only relevant as personal boundaries. Your rights end, where the animals’ begin.

WE BELIEVE that pacifism is no virtue, and violence is no vice.

WE ADVOCATE a total rejection of pacifist values and supplant them with an aggressive zest for physical activity, martial arts, fight and self-defense culture. We also acknowledge the aesthetic beauty of properly-directed violence. For example, when we see humans destroyed by natural disaster or mauled by feral animals, we can’t help but to rejoice and see the ironic humor in it.

WE BELIEVE that nothing that has ever been done in defense of the earth and animals is too extreme, nor could it be. The decimation of the entire human race does not even compare to the number of animals that die in one day at the hands of speciesist human oppressors.

WE ADVOCATE deconstructing and challenging the societal myth that violence in defense of animals is somehow wrong. While we do not advocate violence (because that is illegal, and therefore we can’t), we do acknowledge it to be an irrational taboo to be discarded.

WE BELIEVE that human-centered issues are a distraction to animal liberation.

WE ADVOCATE a total lack of concern for egalitarian issues. The whole laundry bag of activist, and so called “total liberation” issues, not only seeks to put the focus right back on worthless people, but also undermines the animals’ safety by making society more cohesive and functional.

WE BELIEVE in tactical reality as opposed to orthodox morality.

WE ADVOCATE a complete disregard for moralism and orthodoxy outside of the vegan ethic. For far too long, veganism has been constrained with a silly and infantile need to be viewed as soft and safe, peaceful, reasonable, and tolerant; the specific strategic flaws that allow abusers to continue unimpeded. This has only succeeded in attracting an oversocialized, and far too domestic type of soy milksop sissy to our ranks.

WE BELIEVE that both left-wing and right-wing politics are hostile to the earth and animals as they both seek to grow industry, and ultimately, the power of the human race.

WE ADVOCATE a third position beyond left- and right-wing ideology; a third position that encompasses the best of both, and discards the rest.

WE BELIEVE in personal responsibility and authority over personal freedom and self-importance.

WE ADVOCATE a hierarchy where those that exercise self-discipline and self-sacrifice for the good of animals and the earth are deemed more deserving of life than the gluttonous, selfish drones that shovel dead animals into their grotesque faces, simply to satiate their lust for rotting meat. With hierarchy, we seperate the wheat from the chaff.

WE BELIEVE in utilitarianism. Whatever helps animals and the earth is good. Whatever harms them is bad. And whatever does neither is of no concern.

WE ADVOCATE whatever tactics or actions that protect animals today and tomorrow in the real, material world, not symbology that makes activists feel good about themselves.

WE BELIEVE that conditions in the social order have become so intolerable as to make destruction and collapse desirable for their own sake, independent of any plan or ideal for the future.

WE ADVOCATE nihilism and a breakdown of the social order. Animals and the earth will never be respected in human society. ALL human history attests to this fact. Therefore, more than anything, the world needs the failure and collapse of human societies and civilizations. Nature is not in need of our stewardship. It is us that need the earth. Nature finds its own balance. Just as water in a ravine attains it’s own level. All that is needed is for the human race is to STAND DOWN!

[1] Marshall Curry (Director). If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front [Documentary]. Oscilloscope. June 22, 2011. Original link. Archived link.

[2] Bron Taylor. Dark Green Religion [Book]. University of California Press. 2010. Original link. Archived link.

[3] Bron Taylor. Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism [Essay]. Terrorism and Political Violence 10, no.4: 1–42. 1998. Original link. Archived link.

[4] Alexander Reid Ross. The Left Overs: How Fascists Court the Post-Left [Essay]. Anti-Fascist News. March 29, 2017. Original link. Archived link.

[5] Ernst Jünger, Der Waldgang, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1980.

[6] Unabomber, Manifeste: L’avenir de la société industrielle. translated and introduced by J.-M. Apostolides. preface by Annie Le Brun. Jean-Jacques Pauvert/ Editions du Rocher, Paris. 1996.

[7] Theodore Kaczynski. La Société Industrielle et son Avenir, Editions de l’Encyclopédie des Nuisances, Paris. 1998.

[8] “L’Allemagne cammémare les victime5 de la RAF”, Le Mande, 25/10/2007, p. 10.

[9] “Ils reprennent le concept ‘Brigades rauges’“. Le Monde, 27/lO/2007, p. 3.

[10] “Un tribunal accorde la semi-liberté au fondateur d’Action directe”, Le Monde, vendredi 28 Septembre 2007, p. 10.

[11] Ernst Jünger, Der Waldgang, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1980.

[12] Bill Devall, George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered, Gibbs M. Smith, Publisher, U.S.A. (Layton,Utah), 1985.

[13] Rachel Carson, Printemps silencieux, préface de Roger Heim, Editions Plon, Paris, 1963.

[14] “Le chantage ‘écoterroriste’ des défenseurs des animaux”, Libération, 1-2/9/2007, p. 11.

[15] “Des militants de la cause animale annoncent avoir contaminé des solutions pour lentilles”, Le Monde, 4/9/2007, p. 13.

[16] “Les militants antivivisection sement la peur”, Le Figaro, 22-23/9/2007, p. 9.

[17] Frédérique Roussel, “Rage against the machine”, Libératíon, 21/6/2007, pp. 30–31.

[18] Kirkpatrick Sale, La révolte luddíte: briseurs de machines à l’ere de l’industrialisation, Editions L’Echappée, collection “Dans le feu de l’action”, 2006.

[19] Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis, Les bríseurs de machines, de Ned Ludd a José Bové. Editions du Seuil, 2006.

[20] Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us”, Wired Magazine, April 2000, pp. 238–262.

[21] Ernst Jünger, Der Waldgang, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1980.

[22] Friedrich Nietzsche, Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, un livre pour tous et pour personne (1883–1885), Editions Robert Laffont, 1993.

[23] From the report “Health: US 2004,” by the US Health and Human Services Department. See AP news story, 2 December 2004.

[24] In the bibliography, see Powers et al. (2003), and Split and Neuman (1999).

[25] Though evidence suggests that humans also scavenged dead animals killed by other predators. But doing this, of course, still meant fighting off the competition, including perhaps the predator who made the kill. One can imagine that this still involved considerable risk, effort, and skill, especially when armed with only sticks and stones.

[26] For the connection between modern meat consumption and cancer, see: Chao et al. (2005); Nothlings et al. (2005); Norat et al. (2005); Xu et al. (2007); Egeberg et al. (2008); Allen et al. (2008). Also, the industrial production of domesticated meat has an astonishingly negative impact on the global environment. It produces 22% of human-induced global warming gases, more than the total transport sector combined (see Lancet study, 13 September 2007). According to the UN’s FAO agency, livestock directly or indirectly utilize an amazing 30% of the earth’s entire land surface area. And they represent fully 20% of the total land animal biomass (“livestock a major threat to environment,” 29 November 2006). This cannot but have a catastrophic long-tcnn impact on the planet.

[27] Gram et al. (2004).

[28] Kessler et al. (2004).

[29] Reported by the AP (5 May 2008)--“Anti-psychotic drug use soars among US and UK kids.” See also Rani et al. (2008).

[30] Christakis et al. (2004), and Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi (2002). Regarding the possible connection between television and autism, see Waldman et a.l. (2006). Autism in fact seems to be more prevalent than commonly thought; recent estimates suggest that about one of every 150 children (0.7%) has some form of this disorder, significantly higher than previous estimates (see Rice, 2007).

[31] Ahoujaoude et al. (2006).

[32] Nakazawa et at. (2002).

[33] See, for example, the AP story of 5 April, 2007 (“Technology may fuel recorded assaults”), citing evidence; that rape and other sexual assaults are on the increase due to the ability to record and transmit images of such acts.

[34] Carr (2008): “Is Google making us stupid?”

[35] Reuters news story, 21 December 2004: “Mobile phone radiation harms.”

[36] Los Angeles Times, 25 May 2006: “Cell phone use may signal teen anxiety.”

[37] Story by G. Lean, in the British newspaper Independent (18 May 2008). “Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give birth to children with behavioral problems.” He adds, “using the handsets just two or three times a day was enough to raise the risk” of hyperactivity and emotional problems. For the full report, see Divan et al. (2008).

[38] As reported in the Independent, “using a mobile phone for more than 10 years increases the risk of getting brain cancer” (7 October 2007). Long-term users “are twice as likely to get a malignant tumor on the side of the brain where they hold the handset.” See Hardell et al. (2007). See also AP story, “Cancer expert warns employees on cell phones” (24 July 2008).

[39] AP news story, 27 April 2007: “Schools say iPods becoming tool for cheaters.”

[40] CNN news story, 14 April 2009: “Scientists warn of Twitter dangers.”

[41] See Reuters news story (27 April 2007) on a report of the Irish government: “Text messaging harms written language.” Teens were found to be “unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses, and a limited vocabulary.”

[42] Zimmerman et al. (2007). For each additional hour of video watched per day, infants understood six to eight fewer words, on average.

[43] Dynarski et al. (2007). Among their main findings: “Test scores were not significantly higher in classrooms using selected reading and mathematics software products.”

[44] New York Times, 4 May 2007 (page A1). Headline: “Seeing no progress, some schools drop laptops.”

[45] State of the Future Report (2009), by The Millennium Project. As an added bonus, it now appears that the very same emissions that cause global warming also lower the IQ of unborn children. See the article in Time magazine (23 July 2009: “Study links exposure to pollution with lower IQ”), or Perera et al. (2009).

[46] Forrester Research Study, “The State of Consumers and Technology: Benchmark 2005” (3 August 2005).

[47] There were of course a few exceptions, including: Wright (1995), Fulano (1996), Akai (1997), Finnegan (1998), and Coatimundi (1998).

[48] Gibbs (1996).

[49] Sale (1995).

[50] See also his essay “Mechanical creation” (1865).

[51] Marcuse (1964) and Illich (1973, 1974).