A text dump of responses to Ted Kaczynski’s death
People close to the Unabom case
Anti-Tech Quarterly (Garden Crew)
People close to the Unabom case
Summary
News Sites
People close to the Unabom case
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I Grew Up Next To The Unabomber. I Felt Such Anger Toward Him - So Why Am I Grieving His Death?
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Unabomber’s death sparks new interest in University of Michigan’s Kaczynskiana archives
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A Great Passing: Reflections on 20 Years with the Unabomber by David Skrbina
Mainstream
New York Times
Washington Post
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In 1995, The Post weighed whether to print the Unabomber’s manifesto
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Before he was the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was a mind-control test subject
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Ted Kaczynski, who planted fear and death as the Unabomber, dies at 81
San Francisco Chronicle
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Ted Kaczynski, who left trail of death and terror as Unabomber, dies at 81
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Who was the Unabomber? Colleagues, classmates say Kaczynski's intellect isolated him
Chicago Tribune
TMZ
Radical
Anarchist News
Counter Punch
Dark Nights
Ted Kaczynski (May 22, 1942 – June 10, 2023)
Advocacy Groups
Anti-Tech Collective
Anti-Tech Quarterly (Garden Crew)
Blogs
Último-Reducto
Video Essayists
Count Dankula
Styxhexenhammer666
JF Gariepy
The Old Glory Club
Mad at the Internet
Chad Haag
Chad A Haag Philosophy Channel3 weeks ago
Cabin Productions
Podcasts
Anarchy Radio
Shops
Fitch & Madison
Theodore J. Kaczynski, 1942-2023
Forums
Explore @jashdholani favorite ideas, collected on Memo'd
En hårlös björn i en ofrivärld
Primitivism
Kaczynski Luddposting
Anti-Tech Revolution Now
Dont mourn Ted, organise for the revolution he desired!
r/tedkaczysnki
Posted by u/mkultravictims
Rest In Peace Theodore John Kaczynski.
r/antitechrevolution
In Full
News Sites
People close to the Unabom case
Unabomber Victims Reflect on Kaczynski’s Death
When a package containing a bomb arrived for Patrick C. Fischer at his office at Vanderbilt University in 1982, sent by Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, it put Mr. Fischer’s secretary in the hospital for three weeks with burns and lacerations. Mr. Fischer’s brother and sister-in-law, who are also computer scientists, wondered if they could be next.
Eleven years later, in 1993, a colleague who worked in the same computer science department as Mr. Fischer’s brother at Yale University, David Gelernter, became another one of Mr. Kaczynski’s victims. He was severely wounded and permanently lost the use of his right hand.
“We realized that this man was after computer people,” the sister-in-law, Alice Fischer, said on Monday. “He had attacked a store that sold computers, he had attacked at least two computer science people and we were both professionals in computer science.”
Mr. Kaczynski was arrested in 1996 after a nearly 20-year terror campaign in which he mailed bombs to academics, corporate executives and others in technology, killing three people and injuring 23 others.
The news over the weekend that Mr. Kaczynski had died by suicide at a federal prison medical center in North Carolina renewed terrifying memories for some victims and their families. It also prompted reflections on the degree to which the antipathy to technology that inspired Mr. Kaczynski’s deadly crusade continues to resonate more than a quarter century after his arrest.
A year before the arrest, Mr. Kaczynski tried to justify his actions by writing an anonymous 35,000-word manifesto, published jointly by The New York Times and The Washington Post. In the document, Mr. Kaczynski condemned industrialization and argued that technology was alienating people, damaging the environment and luring people into depending on it.
“It still has lessons for us today,” said Ms. Fischer. She includes a lesson on the Unabomber’s campaign in an ethics class she teaches each semester at the University of New Haven to her computer science students, many of whom, she said, are hoping to work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. She said she regarded it as “very important history” for her students and a cautionary tale.
“Technology is a tool in its own right. It’s neither good nor bad,” she said. “If it falls into the hands of bad people, it’s bad.”
Her husband, Michael Fischer, whose brother was away from his office when the bomb arrived and died in 2011, said he has observed a growing skepticism about technology in today’s society that has some parallels with Mr. Kaczynski’s manifesto.
“In one sense, that was what was driving Kaczynski,” Mr. Fischer said. “What he wrote was that he was concerned about the possible downsides of technology and the world at large was not seeing those downsides. They were just seeing all the good things that come out of it.”
Mr. Fischer said the Unabomber nightmare largely came to an end for him and Alice when Mr. Kaczynski was arrested, but “the fact that he died in prison is a kind of final closure.”
Other victims and their relatives said they had spent decades trying to make sense of Mr. Kaczynski’s actions.
Jonathan Epstein, the son of Dr. Charles J. Epstein, a geneticist known for his research on Down syndrome and other genetic disorders who was injured when he received a bomb from Mr. Kaczynski in 1993, said that it was still not clear why his father was targeted.
It has been 12 years since Dr. Epstein died, and the news of Mr. Kaczynski’s death has reopened a chapter that he tried to put behind him.
Mr. Epstein said he never read the Unabomber manifesto in its entirety, but read summaries of its ideas.
If Mr. Kaczynski had published the manifesto today, Mr. Epstein said, it might seem relevant to current debates about the power of technology and artificial intelligence. But he has no doubt that “there would be no change in attitudes by the vast majority of the public in terms of the condemnation of his methods of using explosives.”
Gary Wright, who in 1987 was seriously injured by a bomb attributed to the Unabomber that was left in the parking lot of the computer repair shop he owned in Utah, has thought about Mr. Kaczynski’s warnings.
“I’m debating doing a TED Talk on that topic and debating the manifesto,” Mr. Wright said. “Because, throw away the murders, right? Throw away the meaning and everything else. It was the wrong method, but if you apply where we are today, it’s kind of prophetic in a way, that here we are today, we’re debating A.I., we’re debating all kinds of things. You got mental health issues due to social media.”
“He did see some elements early on that maybe others weren’t recognizing,” Mr. Wright added.
But this was not, he emphasized, “justifying anything.”
On his website, Mr. Wright lists the effects of the bombing: More than 200 pieces of shrapnel were removed from his body, and he underwent at least a dozen surgeries over a 15-year period to repair the damage.
Mr. Wright said he had been prepared for news of the death of the person who had tried to kill him for “quite a while,” having been “aware that he was sick.”
Mr. Wright said that he moved on with his life a long time ago.
“It took me a long time to get here, but it was about redefining forgiveness in a way that was acceptable to me,” Mr. Wright said. “I didn’t accept anything he did, but what I really did was look at it and say, ‘Look, I love myself enough that I’m not going to let others see me as less than what I could be or what I am.’”
I Grew Up Next To The Unabomber. I Felt Such Anger Toward Him - So Why Am I Grieving His Death?
“Ted just died,” I told my husband in a hushed voice.
As we stood in the shadows of the Duke of York’s Theatre, where we were meant to see the premiere of “The Pillowman,” I felt like a prisoner to my complicated emotions in this land foreign to me. Everything hit me at once while crowds of people passed by, laughing, drinking and taking in the vibrant nightlife of London.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“I think so. I knew this was coming. It’s just hard to put words to,” I replied as he took my hand.
I was only 16 when my neighbor, Theodore J. Kaczynski, was arrested. Better known to my family as Ted or Teddy, and then “The Unabomber,” this man had held our nation captive with his killing. Universities, airlines, storefronts, scientists ― his targets were so scattered it felt as though these attacks could happen to anyone. He reveled in the control he held, and he treated it much like a game.
Though I found out as a teenager that the hermit next door was planting and sending bombs for 17 years while seemingly living a peaceful existence beside us, it took me more than 20 years ― and writing a book about the experience ― to fully process it. To this day, it is still hard to reconcile the serial killer with the man bringing me gifts as a child.
The former professor, who lived next to my family from 1971 to 1996, killed three and injured more than 20 innocent people in the name of revenge. He sat in his rural 10-by-12 cabin with no modern conveniences and wrote of murder in his journals, where he described his victims as experiments.
In his journals he outlined his ideas, which would later be presented in a manifesto, and documented bomb construction and experimentation in our shared woods. His anger was fueled not only by isolation during the cold Montana winters but also his vehement hatred of modern technology.
Two decades after Ted explored the pristine forests in Lincoln, Montana, and then planned and plotted, I worked to unearth the full range and rage of Kaczynski as I interviewed the only man that was ever truly close to Ted, his brother David Kaczynski; the FBI agents that ended the Unabomber’s reign of terror, including FBI agent Max Noel; and many others who knew Ted during his bombing campaign. With this insight, paired with my own memories of a childhood sharing a vast backyard, I saw the murderer and I saw the man who became a killer. I cried for his victims ― children left without a father, mothers without a son, wives without a husband. I thought of the people who were targeted and left to wonder Why? and Who next? until the domestic terrorist was arrested in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison in 1998.
The compassion I felt for the people who suffered at the hands of Kaczynski always outweighed my childhood fondness for the killer next door. But there was still a part of me ― the child on the side of the mountain with the unkempt hermit ― that held a small amount of clemency for the longtime neighbor.
This theme came to the forefront once again just a couple of years prior to learning of Ted’s death.
During the past few years, I corresponded with Ted in an effort to better understand his criminal mind and his motives, while attempting to reclaim a part of my own childhood. I wrote to him about my memories of him, my father’s part in the UNABOM investigation and arrest, and even my father’s passing. I also looked for his thoughts on topics such as social media, school shootings and even rising depression and anxiety rates (which is a topic frequently researched and described in Kaczynski’s writings).
Ted’s response to my outreach reaffirmed that my neighbor hadn’t changed during his years in prison. In fact, I felt that the two-sided letter I received penned in the curly handwriting that I had come to recognize told so much about the man that I had to include it in my own book.
The front of the letter was a nod to our shared time together, surface responses to my questions and advice that was far from what I had expected.
The back of the letter was a stream-of-consciousness about freedom written from Ted’s Supermax prison cell.
But it would be dishonest, albeit naive, to say I wasn’t hoping the man would offer an apology for the pain he had caused. Even though I knew the chances of that were extremely low, I continued to write to him.
As I was preparing to address a letter I wrote to Ted in December of 2021, I typed the convicted killer’s register number into the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ search engine. Expecting the Supermax to appear, just as it had only a couple of months prior, I took pause as I read the bold typeface scrolled across my screen: LOCATED AT: BUTNER FMC.
The Unabomber, the man living off the land and waging his own war of domestic terror, was now in a federal security medical center, no longer held in the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
After multiple conversations with sources close to Ted, I found that the aging man was fighting cancer. The move to Butner was made out of necessity, and I kept this news private. I knew that Ted had started treatment for an aggressive cancer, so it didn’t come as a shock when I located a letter that he had written that stated that his condition was terminal and he had only two years to live.
Still, I never could have imagined that the news of the death of the serial killer next door would have come while I was on the streets of London, sandwiched between an international true crime event and an evening in the West End that was meant to examine the role of artistry in society.
On that muggy evening in the U.K., the news alerts overtook my phone. Then I spotted the headline, “Kaczynski Is Said to Have Died by Suicide in Prison.” The article stated that he was thought to have taken his own life, early in the morning on June 10, “according to three people familiar with the situation.” As I write these words, an autopsy still hasn’t been completed and an official cause of death cannot be announced until that is final.
As I focused on mental health, suicide and cancer, images of Kaczynski flooded my thoughts. In my mind, he resembled the young Berkeley professor rather than the austere bomber in the orange jumpsuit. Remembering the early years with Ted was so visceral that I could smell the mountains we shared, see the vibrant sunflowers in the afternoon sun and feel the hand-painted rocks that Ted had brought me as gifts.
This slideshow of memories was rapidly replaced with a barrage of headlines. Seeing “Kaczynski” and “suicide” together was haunting, as I had written the two words together multiple times while drafting my manuscript. Years prior, I had discovered that Ted’s father, lovingly referred to as “Turk,” had died by suicide. After Turk discovered he had cancer, the husband and father ended his life.
But the theme of suicide didn’t end here. More than 25 years before Ted’s death, the bomber had attempted to end his life while he awaited trial in Sacramento, California.
As thoughts of cancer and suicide circled my mind, I felt grief overtaking me.
This emotion was uncomfortable, and I reminded myself that my childhood “monster” was gone.
This man had murdered innocent people and caused so much heartache. I thought back to the times I was home alone, forced to hide in a coat closet while my strange neighbor knocked on my door and peered through the windows. I remembered the writings and interviews I had completed that revealed the danger that had been lurking in my backyard. Traps that could have killed me and my family were discovered. One of our dogs was lethally poisoned with strychnine. And most terrifyingly, my little sister, only a toddler at the time, was in Kaczynski’s rifle scope as he considered killing close to home. My stepmother’s recounting of the day she read these words in Ted’s journals still haunts me: “It would be easy to take the little bitch out [my sister]. But then the big bitch [my stepmom] could get away. Or if I shoot the big bitch, then the little bitch would be left on the hill.”
The unearthing of the danger we unknowingly faced as his neighbors for all of those years only fueled my already existing anger toward this murderer. How could I possibly be feeling what I knew to be grief?
You may have heard the saying that “with every loss, you feel all the losses that have come before.”
Ted is inextricably tied to my childhood ― the carefree years of riding horses and my motorcycle, playing in the Blackfoot River while my dad spent the afternoon fishing, and answering the log cabin door for that wild-eyed hermit that just happened to be our neighbor. He’s also directly tied to and responsible for the loss of parts of my childhood innocence and my naive sense of security that was shattered when we learned what he had done.
In addition, Ted’s passing brought to the forefront my own emotion tied to my father’s death. It brought back the grief I felt when my sister passed away unexpectedly at the age of 24. It was a reminder that my own time is limited ― that the cycle of life can be brutal and unrelenting.
There isn’t a person that can outrun or outsmart this part of our human condition, not even the Unabomber — a serial killer obsessed with dismantling technological society.
I do not know where my emotions will go from here. Should we grieve for the death of someone who did unforgivable things? And if we do, what does that say about us? Maybe it simply says I am human ― that loss isn’t simple and neither is trying to understand why people do evil things. Or that sorrow is messy and complicated and can be intimately connected to parts of ourselves we lost or left years ago. One thing does feel certain: Now that Ted is gone, a bit of me ― some version of myself I knew all of those years ago when he was just my neighbor ― has vanished, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get it back.
Jamie Gehring is a Montana native who grew up sharing a backyard with Ted Kaczynski, the man widely known as the Unabomber. She was featured in Netflix’s “Unabomber: In His Own Words,” where she discussed her family’s role in Kaczynski’s capture. She was recently shortlisted for the Best New True Crime Author award by CrimeCon UK, and her narrative nonfiction debut, “Madman in the Woods: Life Next Door to the Unabomber,” has been described as being both universal and deeply personal. Jamie holds a bachelor’s degree in visual communications and spent the first half of her career in finance. She currently lives in Denver with her husband, three children and two cats.
Unabomber Dreams by Gary Greenberg
Ted Kaczynski had a recurring nightmare. “I would see myself and my cabin isolated on a tiny little patch of land,” he told me, “surrounded by a gigantic shopping center.” The dream wasn’t exactly prescient, but while the “intrusion of civilization” into his backwoods refuge did not occur, his cabin did end up surrounded by cement and steel—the airplane hangar in Sacramento to which the federal government transported it after his arrest. So did he, sentenced to live out his days in a supermax cell not much smaller than his cabin, where even the bed was cast in concrete.
The Unabomber confessed this dream to me in a letter that arrived 25 years and one day before he died, evidently by his own hand. It was the first of thirty he sent, part of a year-long exchange in which we were each trying to enlist the other’s aid. He was hoping I would use my modest credentials as a mental-health professional to clear him of the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia that government psychiatrists had rendered. I was hoping he would let me be his biographer, or at least sit for his first media interview. I still don’t know whose agenda was more unsavory, but in any event, neither of our dreams came true.
What did come to fruition, although it took a quarter century or so, was his wish to be dead, which was the reason he wanted me to take on his psychiatrists in the first place. The schizophrenia diagnosis had been central to his defense team’s effort to spare him the death sentence sought by the prosecution. Kaczynski strenuously objected to this strategy, just as he had opposed their desire to enter an insanity defense at trial. He refused diagnostic testing until the judge insisted on it as a condition of considering Kaczynski’s motion to fire his lawyers and represent himself. The resulting diagnosis had sealed his fate, and he wanted me to help him with an appeal that would bring a different conclusion to his case. “I’m not interested in life in prison,” he wrote. “Faced with a choice between life imprisonment and the death penalty, I’d just as soon have the death penalty.”
If I pondered the implications of participating in a therapist-assisted suicide, I don’t remember it. I suppose I figured his chances of success to be very low, and I was unlikely to carry much weight against the government’s expert forensic psychiatrists. But more to the point, I was caught up in a grievance we had in common: the use of psychiatric diagnosis to explain away disturbing behavior. His beef was centered on the “unendurable injustice” of “having the insanity defense forced on me…and at being dishonestly represented as insane”—specifically, he wrote, by making “it appear that I thought the negative phenomena resulting from technological progress were directed at me personally…and that I thought the erosion of freedom in our society was the result of a concerted intention to destroy freedom.” Mine was with the claim of psychiatrists that their diagnoses represented diseases no different in kind from diabetes or bacterial infections, a claim to which the diagnosis of schizophrenia in a man who wrote these letters seemed to give the lie. For both of us, the issue was the way power can speak to, and drown out, truth.
At least that’s how it seems 25 years later, but that may be because the news of Kaczynski’s death arrived on a day when one of those negative phenomena was pouring south from Canada, shrouding the country in the smoke of wildfires kindled by lightning in forests dried by heat and drought. I wasn’t taking it personally, not exactly, but my wife’s flaring asthma felt pretty close to home, and I had to suppress my inner Unabomber, who was near outrage at the ongoing failure of the people in power to reckon with the truth of climate change. Not that I think sending bombs through the mail to people I don’t know is a solution—or anything other than evil—but the fact that forty years after scientists began to warn about the warming atmosphere, with floods and droughts and famines on the rise, with a choking miasma enveloping the nation’s capital and financial center, evidence of a planet literally on fire, our leaders are still trying to carry on business as usual, which increasingly is no business at all: it’s enough to make your blood boil. And to make you realize that in this one way, Ted Kaczynski was right: “technological civilization,” as he called it, very well may do us in.
There was other momentous news on that smoky day, about another self-pitying menace to the public. The former president unleashes mayhem through social media rather than bombs, and from grand mansions rather than a ramshackle cabin, but the two men share a thirst for chaos that seems boundless, and detached from any aspiration to a better world. It’s not hard to imagine Kaczynski applauding him, or his compatriots in his home state of Montana, who recently made it illegal to include data about carbon emissions in state-required environmental reviews. For that matter, he’d probably be gratified by the Arizona politician who warned Merrick Garland that 75 million armed people were out to get him or by the representatives in Congress who just recently took the world economy hostage—and not only because vengeance and spite were the Unabomber’s stock-in-trade, but because, as he once wrote to me, “if we want changes of revolutionary magnitude, then what we want is not reform and compromise, but polarization.” To see our leaders deepening division and unleashing chaos, and their supporters cheering them on, would be the fulfillment of another of Ted Kaczynski’s dreams: the utter collapse of the society that technology makes possible.
There may have been a time when the Unabomber wasn’t quite so dedicated to the destruction of everything—maybe as late as 1998, which is when he made the first suicide attempt I know of. He’d returned to his cell after hearing the judge in his trial decide to allow his attorneys to go forward with an insanity defense against his objections. He fashioned his bedsheets into a noose and tried to strangle himself. As he blacked out, he realized that he might fail and be left disabled by brain damage, so he aborted the attempt.
I have to conclude that at that time, unlike after his imprisonment (and after his cancer diagnosis), he must still have had some hope, however slight, of going free. Something still mattered to him; the nihilism incipient in his terrorism was not fully realized until he was entirely overwhelmed by circumstance, outmatched by all the forces arrayed against him. Twenty-five years later, some large portion of Americans, and many of our leaders, appear to be reaching the same point: overwhelming despair leading to the conclusion that seeking after moral principles is a fool’s errand, that nothing matters other than brute power, and that if you can’t have or keep it, then you might as well destroy everything, even yourself.
I can’t blame them, not really. After all, we do seem to be lurching from crisis to crisis without any relief on the horizon, the stakes are as high as they get, and solutions seem elusive, to say the least. Ted Kaczynski put it this way, after cataloging all the ills of the “industrial-technological system”: “It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.” I’m not sure he was right, but the system may have other ideas.
Unabomber’s death sparks new interest in University of Michigan’s Kaczynskiana archives
ANN ARBOR, MI - Julie Herrada exchanged letters with Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, known widely as The Unabomber. While never speaking to him in person, she said he was candid and professional, even if only through his letters.
Herrada is the curator of the University of Michigan’s Labadie Collection, which since 1924 has collected material documenting radical movements like anarchism. When Kaczynski was arrested for his 17-year bombing spree in 1996, Herrada sought his writings for the collection.
For the last 24 years, Herrada has curated box after box of thousands of documents, from his lengthy “anti-tech” manifesto to fan letters to even his musical compositions. The collection is known as Kaczynskiana, and she said it draws people from all corners of society.
Kaczynski, who killed three people and injured 23 others through bombs sent in the mail, died June 10 in a federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina. He was 81. He targeted people he thought were advancing modern technology and harming the environment. His manifesto critiques industrialization and advocates for anarchism to defend nature.
Interest in UM’s Kaczynskiana collection has increased slightly since his death, but Herrada and other librarians can handle it, she said. She said the collection contains letters to Kaczynski from a range of people, from housewives and grandmothers to anarchists and environmental activists.
“I struggled with the sense that these letters represented but a microcosm of the people in our society,” she wrote in a University of Wisconsin article. “They wrote on perfumed paper, colored paper, decoupage paper, anonymous postcards, business letterhead, and frayed-at-the-edges notebook pages. Some were very well educated, others barely literate.
“There were many bright and normal people, as well as some seemingly unstable ones, who were merely curious about the intellect and personality of the man known as the Unabomber.”
Herrada first wrote Kaczynski to procure his writings in 1997, a year after his arrest, while he was lodged at a federal “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado. The motivation, she said, was to help provide future social science researchers with his writings to help “unlock secrets.”
His attorney Judy Clarke wrote Herrada back to let her know her client was “very interested.” From there, Herrada corresponded directly with Kaczynski.
It would take two years to negotiate a formal agreement for Kaczynski to gift material to the UM library. The lengthy process was partly a negotiation with Kaczynski and partly navigating the university’s general counsel, which sought to avoid negative publicity, Herrada said.
And two of Kaczynski’s surviving victims were University of Michigan faculty -- graduate assistant Nicklaus Suino and psychology professor James V. McConnell, a leading figure in behaviorism. In the 1985 attack at McConnell’s home, the blast wounded Suino and damaged McConnell’s hearing, according to MLive files.
Herrada secured the formal donation agreement in 1999. Upon reading the letters for the first time, she said she felt sadness, compassion and pity for the people who reached out to Kaczynski.
The names of most of the people who interacted with Kaczynski are redacted, except for media personalities seeking interviews with him and similar public figures. This privacy is part of the ethical consideration of collecting controversial material, Herrada said.
While Kaczynskiana may be controversial, it is a part of American history worth preserving, she said.
“A little controversy about our collections is better than whitewashing social history,” she said.
A Great Passing: Reflections on 20 Years with the Unabomber by David Skrbina
June 12, 2023
Theodore J. Kaczynski died at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina on June 10, 2023. He had been serving multiple life sentences, without parole, in a “Super-Max” facility in Colorado for his role in the Unabomber crimes between the late 1970s and 1995, in which he killed three people and injured 23 with mail bombs. He was 81 years old.
I won’t elaborate here on his crimes; such material can easily be found online — and indeed, this is virtually all that the mainstream media want to discuss about Kaczynski: his bombings, his murders, his mental health, his “terrorism.” The last thing they want to discuss is the reason why he conducted his bombings: because of the mortal threat posed by industrial technology, and the need to destroy it.
Ted understood the dangers of modern technology better than most, and he eventually constructed a solid and compelling argument against it and against the ability to “reform” or fix it. He outlined his case in a lengthy essay, Industrial Society and Its Future (ISAIF), which he felt had to reach many people in order to have an effect. He therefore determined that only by acquiring sufficient notoriety and leverage could he ensure a high-visibility publication. For him, a campaign of mail-bombings did the trick. In September 1995, he — one man, working alone — effectively defeated the entire United States government, including the FBI, and forced them to print his entire manifesto in the Washington Post. It is an astonishing story.
Sadly, his own brother recognized the text as Ted’s work, and turned him in to the FBI. Six months later, they arrested him at a small cabin in rural Montana. After a year of comical legal proceedings, the government negotiated a plea deal: life in prison without parole. This was 26 years ago. After 24 years in Colorado, he developed cancer, was sent to the facility in North Carolina for extended treatment, and died there last week.
I have a special interest and special connection to this man. I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, but my earlier degree work in mathematics and science gave me an excellent grounding in technology, and I was blessed to have a great philosopher of technology, Henryk Skolimowski, as my friend and mentor for many years. I met Henryk when I was an undergrad student at the University of Michigan — incredibly, Ted’s own alma mater, where he earned his doctorate in math in 1967. Henryk was an early and prominent critic of modern, industrial technology, and he put me on to the substantial and compelling writings of the French theologian Jacques Ellul, whose own book, The Technological Society (1964; French original 1954), was a landmark work. It was this very book that also prompted Kaczynski to his initial skeptical ideas. Eventually, I became Ted’s most famous “pen pal” — more on that below.
I should note that I was a technology critic from around 1980, well before anyone had heard of a “Unabomber.” I knew there were solid, well-grounded arguments against advanced technology. I knew about the thesis of ‘technological determinism,’ in which technology is seen as a primary driver behind social and political change. And I knew that only radical solutions were likely to have any effect. Ted knew these things, too, and he had already concluded that rebellion, in some form, might be able turn the tide, before the system was able to utterly crush human dignity and destroy the natural world — as it evidently was doing.
Thus, I was highly intrigued when stories began emerging in the early 1990s that a person or group with an “anti-tech ideology” was behind a string of mailbombs. I awaited each new little snippet of Unabomber text that was teasingly leaked out by the media. I could quickly see that this person was intelligent and serious, and had a real driving motive for what he was doing. The government could see it, too, and that’s why they were so worried.
Then came the bombshell release of the manifesto, in full and unedited, on September 19, 1995. “He won,” was my immediate reaction; “he beat the US government.” No matter what happened after that, the manifesto was out in the world, for millions to read. Ted had won.
I purchased two copies of the Post that day: one went into my personal files (where it stands today), and the other was to use as a cut-up for my wife and I to type the entire thing into my PC. It seems weird now, but there was functionally no real Internet at that time, no online source to copy-and-paste from. So we typed the whole thing, by hand, into our simple home computer, just to put it into a form that could be worked with, drawn from, and shared. (Yes, there was irony in digitizing an anti-tech manifesto, but such is the nature of a technological society; it forces us all into compromises and ‘hypocrisies’ in order to function as members of society.)
There followed Ted’s capture, the yearlong trial process, and the years of incarceration. For a while, the media loved to talk about Ted: his upbringing, his genius IQ, his troubles at Harvard, his alleged run-in with “MKUltra,” his mental health, his homemade bombs, and so on — everything except the manifesto. Odd, I thought; his anti-tech philosophy was what drove him to his actions, and it addressed a global threat to all humanity, and yet no one — I mean, no one — wanted to talk about that. Wow. That was a major eye-opener for me, into media deceit: They would talk about trivial issues galore, but real and substantive things that threatened the very system that they were a part of, forget it. Never think that the media is about truth-telling, or “shining a light,” or holding the powerful accountable. No — they are about profits, self-preservation, and defense of their chosen ideology, nothing more.
I went on to complete, firstly, my Master’s degree in mathematics (at Michigan), and then my Ph.D. in philosophy, in 2001. By 2003 I was an adjunct faculty in philosophy at the Dearborn campus of the University of Michigan, teaching, among other things, the Philosophy of Technology. Since I created this course from scratch, I was free to compile new reading material for the students, including parts of the manifesto. This was paired with a pro-tech piece by Ray Kurzweil, for contrast. But since it had been six years since his incarceration, and the media had dutifully said nothing about Ted in that time, I decided to write to him directly: to get his latest thoughts, both on the manifesto and on any new ideas he might have. I expected no reply, but sure enough, some four weeks later a hand-written letter appeared in my university mailbox. The return addressee: Theodore Kaczynski, Super-max prison, Colorado.
Thus began a long, detailed, interactive dialogue with Ted that spanned some 12 years, resulting in around 150 letters from him to me, and leading to his first book, Technological Slavery (first published in the US in 2010). It seems that I was the only person with any academic credentials willing to carry on a serious discussion with him. This was shocking to me; it really showed the complacency of American academics; their unwillingness to tackle serious, controversial issues; and frankly, their cowardice. And even though I was a fellow “Luddite,” it’s not like I was mindlessly buying every argument by Ted. Much of our correspondence consisted of my challenges and push-back: “what about this . . .,” “did you think about that . . .,” “a critic might say this . . .” One can see this in Technological Slavery, where about a quarter of the book is “Letters to David Skrbina,” in which Ted defends himself against my critiques. It was a fascinating and fruitful dialogue.
Over time, I published my own anti-tech books. First, the reader Confronting Technology (the latest edition of which was published in 2020), giving a look at anti-tech views throughout history. And most importantly, my own monograph, The Metaphysics of Technology (Routledge, 2015), in which I lay out a metaphysical basis for technological determinism, and where I analyze the long history of technology skepticism in Western thought. From the mass media, one would think that the only stout anti-techies in history were the original Luddites, and then Kaczynski himself. This is far from the truth. There has been ample warning — dire warning — by many of our most brilliant thinkers. If we don’t know that, the blame falls to ignorance, censorship, and cowardice.
Since the publication of Technological Slavery, events have proven Ted right. Things are as bad, or worse, than he forecast. The Internet and social media have imposed a terrible psychological cost on people, especially children and teens. We have killer drones buzzing around the planet, in the hands of militaries and individuals alike. Most of the industrial West is saturated with electromagnetic radiation (think 5G), dangerous chemicals, and toxic wastes. The moral and cultural quality of society continues its long decay. We have “lab-leaked,” and maybe lab-created, pandemics such as Covid, which is nothing if not a high-tech construction — let alone those clever, high-tech “cures,” the mRNA vaccines. Super-AI creations such as ChatGPT threaten to run amok with our social infrastructure, leading, in the worst scenarios, to literal human extinction. And people spend hours and hours per day, every day, on office computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
Lest we think that technology is under our control and works for us, consider this: If technology is getting ‘better’ everyday, as it surely is, and if it is intended to promote human wellbeing (how could it be otherwise), then why aren’t people doing better? Are we getting stronger, healthier, and happier as technology progresses? No — in fact, precisely the opposite: People are worse off, year by year, in nearly every way. And yet technology is supposedly under our control, and serves us. How can that be?
If technology is getting better every year, why isn’t the health of the planet improving? With better technology, species should be thriving, waters and forests regenerating, the skies becoming cleaner and clearer. And yet, precisely the opposite is happening — by nearly every measure, the planet is getting worse. How can that be, if technology is under our control?
The answer is this: Technology is not under our control; it is not a “neutral tool” to be used for good or ill; it is not something that we correct or reform as we like. Technology drives itself. It is an autonomous process, something like a law of nature. It needs us, for now, but soon it will not. And then all bets are off.
In my Introduction to Ted’s Technological Slavery, I explained that he was being badly maligned, woefully misunderstood, and that one day he would seem prophetic — perhaps even a kind of savior. But this would occur only if we grasped and acted on the implications of his ideas . . . ideas that belonged to the likes of Ellul, and Mumford, and Illich, and Orwell, and Whitehead, long before they were “the Unabomber’s” ideas.
For years, we didn’t want to “give a terrorist a platform.” For years, we didn’t want to grant Ted any “satisfaction.” Now those excuses are gone. Will we now, in our own self-defense, reexamine those issues that he raised years ago? Or will we continue to thrust our heads in the sand, as the timebomb ticks away?
Mainstream
New York Times
Washington Post
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In 1995, The Post weighed whether to print the Unabomber’s manifesto
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Before he was the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was a mind-control test subject
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Ted Kaczynski, who planted fear and death as the Unabomber, dies at 81
San Francisco Chronicle
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Ted Kaczynski, who left trail of death and terror as Unabomber, dies at 81
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Who was the Unabomber? Colleagues, classmates say Kaczynski's intellect isolated him
Chicago Tribune
TMZ
Smaller Sites
Anarchist News
Submitted by anon
Goodbye, Uncle Ted
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
They crawled out of the CIA
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a hermit in the woods
Never knowing who to blow up
When the rain set in
And I would've liked to know you
But I was just a kid
Your brainworms burned out long before
Your nail bomb ever did
I REALLY THINK IT'S GREAT SEEING ANOTHER TYPE OF HUMAN WORSHIP
Submitted by anon
on anarchist news:
“Science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race,”
Science is always done in the name of protecting the human race, it's nice that murdering people gives you the privilege to lie all the time.
Submitted by anon
RIP uncle ted, you were an inspiration to some
Submitted by anon
Acid is groovy -- don't kill the pigs.
Submitted by anon
From the 'Guardian' (UK) today:
Even in his own journals, Kaczynski came across as not a committed revolutionary, but a vengeful hermit driven by petty grievances.
“I certainly don’t claim to be an altruist or to be acting for the ‘good’ (whatever that is) of the human race,” he wrote on 6 April 1971. “I act merely from a desire for revenge.”
Submitted by anon
Revenge is a good enough motivator.
Submitted by anon
If you are a loser. Certainly works for numerous right-wing creeps.
Submitted by anon
Works for plenty of leftwing creeps too
Submitted by anon
Revenge is a double edged sword, karma is consequential, umm, one must control one's seething ressentiment to avoid prison, umm, nasty people sometimes get life without parole,,,,,
Submitted by anon
Waging personal war on civilization over decades, spending the time to write elaborate essays about it, and sending mail bombs to a dozen targets... yet it's still "petty grievances", lol.
State lapdogs someday gotta have to realize how such dumb, poorly-informed arrogance is not serving their cause. Or won't!
Submitted by anon
He disagreed with most green anarchists’ utopian view of primitive society. He said that it was full of violence and oppression and that that was perfectly fine. Also, obviously, a product of mk ultra. “Fun” fact: taught math to a young Jeff Epstein.
Submitted by anon
He was not exactly a style model of a life well lived for the impressionable young 'uns.
Submitted by anon
He seems like an MK Ultra bent unit gone off the reservation.
Submitted by anon
Uh… you do know what that idiom means right
Submitted by anon
Uh -- yes.
Submitted by anon
shouldn't we all go off the reservation?
Submitted by anon
No. We need an anti-wage labor social movement of the wage-earning class and of enlisted people in the armed forces -- not an individualist, I-am-psychologically-owned-by-the-alienated-individualist-pathology-of-the-United-States-of-'Murika trip.
Submitted by anon
If only he had found a partner during his incarceration and overcome his raging homophobia. I suppose we will never know,
Submitted by lizard3
may those forests of darkness and wildness keep you soul in peace
r.i.p. tk
Submitted by anon
Not sure why this is on an anarchist website.
Submitted by anon
He literally wrote he was an anarchist in Industrial Society and Its Future
Submitted by anon
Do you think he was, if you take his actions and other ideas into consideration? The former mayor of Reykvavík also called himself an anarchist.
Submitted by anon
his actions and most (i said most, so don't dig up the exceptions here) of his ideas were anarchist, and lots of people call themselves anarchists these days, most are not, ted was. stupid comparison.
Submitted by anon
He literally wrote he was an anarchist in Industrial Society and Its Future
Akin, perhaps, to Mussolini saying, "fascism has always been anti-capitalist and anti-plutocratic." Or that this brand of anarchism is not worth a shit.
Submitted by f
Because he has had a large influence on eco-anarchist milieus all over the world.
I think you know that though and are just being a disingenuous cunt.
Submitted by anon
I did not know that and do not know if it's true. Please avoid the personal attacks.
'NOT SURE WHY THIS IS ON AN ANARCHIST WEBSITE.'
Submitted by anon
He corresponded with, and wrote for, Live Wild or Die!, Green Anarchist magazine, Green Anarchy magazine, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, and the Earth First! journal. His correspondence with Jensen, Zerzan and Tucker is no secret either.
Submitted by anon
What does Derrick Jensen have to do with this?
Submitted by anon
not sure why you are here, Ted was an anarchist. Not sure why the post is taken from Their media though.
Submitted by anon
If he was an anarchist he was an extreme right-wing one. He was an extraordinarily alienated individual and people who draw inspiration from him are barking up the wrong tree.
Submitted by anon
He was an extraordinarily alienated individual'
You say that as if it's a bad thing. Do you prefer good little well-adjusted citizens?
Submitted by anon
right wing, you fuckin' leftist. he was not "right wing" for fuck's sake is that how all you people see anyone who doesn't think like you. fuckin' programed robots.
Submitted by lumpy
it's extremely easy to prove ted had a fuckton of reactionary politics, do better. you're just chirping away with your own "programming"
Submitted by SirEinzige
Let’s see those receipts.
Submitted by anon
If "reactionary" = "right wing" then what does that make all you fucking woke millenials?
Submitted by anon
Winning ;-)
Submitted by lumpy
face palm for 2 whole minutes
If?
If it means right wing? .... have you looked the fukin word up yet? i'm old as shit, you knuckle draggin waste of fukin oxygen. use the computer for something besides porn and look up the word. jfc ...
Submitted by anon
I said this earlier and the authoritarian moderators deleted it :-( I demand recognition!
Well said, lumpy. You are the only anews named account with a damn.
Submitted by lumpy
if it's any consolation, anon is still the best anarchist writer of all time
Submitted by anon
Best anon writer here. TK was, by ideological definitions, though these are all too broad and negate unique individualist qualities, but to keep you happy lumpy he was a NEO-LUDDITE. You understand don't you, machinery wrecking, violent uprising, idealistic (possibly math-logic elitism).
Submitted by anon
You are not me, fake anon.
Submitted by anon
Thanks!
uwu
Submitted by Best Anon 1
Thanks, much appreciated, I am a philologist, thus, I've read Neech,,
Submitted by anon
just call him a homophobic sexist fuckhead.
signed,
committee for precise name-calling
Submitted by lumpy
that's what right wing means tho? what else? "fiscal responsibility"? ha!
Submitted by anon
no, it' snot what right wing means. right wing means a part of the state. like left wing does. both words come with lots of associations that are no longer helpful to informed conversation, especially not for anarchists.
right wing used to mean anti-russian, small government, pro-business, fiscal responsibility, etc--(whether or not right wingers were consistent is a different topic). "conservative" doesn't mean that any more, not even rhetorically (de santis, for example).
also, the more specific the words used, the more likely online anons won't just talk past each other.
signed,
continuing the committee's work
Submitted by lumpy
the committee might want to consider definitions outside the american context then ...?
traditional use of "leftist" includes at least some anti-state positions, originally anti-monarchist ones when it was still the crown versus everyone else and later, most anti-capitalist positions could be broadly defined that way, including most of the anarchists throughout history. that's an admittedly euro-centric history but nonetheless, it's how the word was used in the english language context. i'm personally more of an anti-civ, anti-state position but since i'm not a millionaire, being a leftist sympathizer is how you can tell I understand some basic math and economics.
only "right wing" has ever consistently meant a pro-state position, with only one qualifier needed, when the far right attempts to seize power from the centre, which is when they pretend to be a force of opposition, steve bannon style.
Submitted by lumpy
oh! and just to piss everyone off at the funeral, the other common trajectory for an isolated, closeted, far right old crank: a cabin in the woods, mailing "revenge" bombs to people he's never met, confusing murderous egomania for a political position.
that's a much less common fate for a reactionary but it happens! or you could look at mishima, there's another ridiculous, self aggrandizing way to be a closeted asshole. capture a military base and then kill yourself inside it when the rest of the far right betrays you. so many options to choose from when you're a self-hating queer reactionary!
but gotta be very dramatic tho, so everyone knows how important you are and you get all that validation you totally always deserved but people just didn't get how cool and important you were but you'll show them! you'll show them all!
THE LONE WOLF IS NOT RIGHT WING
Submitted by SirEinzige
There have been numerous lone wolves with diverse unpredictable politics and positions. Ted came out of left wing movements not right wing ones. Nothing about his trajectory or adjacent positions make him reactionary. He may ATTRACT reactionaries for various reasons(the left currently having more institutional power as opposed to the right wing dominated Fordist and early post-Fordist era where T-Bomb attracted more leftists and post leftist.) but that does not make him reactionary.
Submitted by lumpy
fuck off ziggles, you and I haven't bothered with a discussion about definitions in a long time. you ain't sincere, fuck right off the edge of the world you chattering dumbass. your arguments by empty assertion are beyond boring
do you even know what stochastic means? nobody can force you to make connections in your thinking
by SirEinzige
I’m plenty sincere Lumpy, that tends to be a trait of sperg brains like me:) You pinched a turd of a take and I called it for what it was(not the first time probably not the last).
In regards to stochastic, how on earth does that demonstrate that K-Bomb was reactionary? Like lone wolf violence there is nothing that is ideologically specific. If this is all you have in regards to connections then you have all but confirmed to me that you have nothing.
Your point was retarded. Take the L Lumpy.
Submitted by anon
Since SirEinzige and Lumpy are both Canadians can we put together a collection so they can meet up in person and have a face-to-face debate and/or clumsily make love?
Better yet why doesn't Anews pay for it from their riches? Also they might as well just get a .ca domain name.
Just sayin'!
Submitted by anon
Another poster here, wtf don't you understand about Neo-Luddites and their opposition to the oppression of the working-class as being a totally Marxist goal because machinery gave an elite ruling class the control of the means of production. TK was a leftist seething in ressentiment!
Submitted by anon
Alot of vertical mind thinkers look upon the left/right as a binary when infact it is a dichotomy of the same origin, power and control. It's only the form of its organisational methodology which gives either faction its distinct style, but in the end the same gaol is in mind, hierarchical authoritarian structured nation state, a modern hyper-tribal violent warmongering order.
Woke are inverted fascists and vice versa.
Submitted by anon
Insisting that anarcho-capitalists, national anarchists and other right-wing anti-statists aren’t “real” anarchists doesn’t make them go away in reality.
Submitted by lumpy
it's not that they're not "real", it's that gibberish arguments don't define what words mean.
lots of people exist but make no sense when they talk, should they get to define words? no.
Submitted by anon
Lumpy is correct here... we got gazillion of confused dumbasses and self-absorbed assholes out there who'll just pretend being whatever suits them and their business. Have you forgot this is the same shit country where TV preachers been getting rich?
Anarchism as position just cannot include paradoxical positions such as nationalism or capitalism, regardless of the Youtuber trash out there. We've been there WAY BEFORE them and we'll still be around when everyone will have forgot them.
ANCAPS AND ANNAZIS ARE JUST OUT OF POWER IDEOLOGUES
Submitted by SirEinzige
This should be obvious. The caps represent old age capitalism being turfed by scientific management capitalism and the nazis represent no more white normativity or supremacy. They're not anarchists.
Submitted by anon
no one is talking to those people here. they are not anarchists. it' snotabout them going away, its about them being irrelevant to conversations here.
Submitted by anon
Rest in Power Uncle Ted <3
Submitted by anon
What he was about was bullshit and bad news - and it appeals to a certain kind of vicarious living USA type. There is nothing useful in it.
Submitted by anon
Dang, if Alicia Keys and Woody Harrelson keel over quick, maybe Chomsky will get to enjoy a quick moment actually being the most famous living "anarchist" in his twilight years.
Submitted by Anarchist
Good to hear. It's a relief.
OH DAMN, I GUESS SOMEBODY MAILED HUM A PICTURE OF A SMARTPHONE.
Submitted by anon
“Science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race,” he wrote in the manifesto, tapped out on a battered typewriter in his mountain cabin and then sent to The Washington Post and New York Times with a demand to print it or risk further attacks. "
No, the use of science is always best excused by "the human race".
Submitted by anon
TK has honestly had a pretty huge influence on the way I think about politics and anarchism.
My opinion: he was honestly a casualty of the educational/academic institutions in the U.S. Overall, his home life was pretty standard, his brother wrote a really shitty book about it. He realized how fucked up civilization was during his adolescence and young adult hood...and he winded up giving into his arrogance about being a "smart person", which unfortunately deprived him of some of the finer methods for escapism and indulgence of anarchist hate.
R.I.P. Ted Kaczinsky, your publicity stunt was very effective but there's no chance that humans will ever have an "anti-tech" revolution, maybe we will have the luxury of seeing a new dark age like SE rants about, but who knows? Maybe space age communism is where we are and headed...
He lived a life of grungey rebellion and dirt... you will be missed by some...excuse my bad manners. At least you knew the stupidity of the victimhood politics.
Submitted by GhostOfTed
Thanks, brow!
Counter Punch
Dark Nights
Ted Kaczynski (May 22, 1942 – June 10, 2023)
Posted on 2023/06/12 - 2023/06/12 by darknights
“There are many people today who see that modern society is heading toward disaster in one form or another, and who moreover recognize technology as the common thread linking the principal dangers that hang over us… ”
T.J.Kaczynski, Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How
Kaczynski will be looked back as one of the individuals who tried to do what they could to hasten the demise of techno-industrialism. Years without the chance to interact with the natural world and wilderness that he tried to defend, walking only in brutal concrete yards and without any chance to escape to the wild, the existent collapse and horror we are living in today and which only a small elite are profiting from, serves to vindicate this incredible man and stands as it falls – a bewildering and tragic testament to Ted Kacznski’s vision, warning and courage. Vengeance for the comrade. For the end of the machine world.
Dark Nights
–
From La Nemesi:
It is with grief that we learn of the death–a few hours ago, on June 10–of Ted Kaczynski, an inmate in U.S. maximum security prisons since 1996. We publish some words from fellow anarchists.
More rational words will surely come out shortly. Now as anarchists we feel compelled to break the news of the death of revolutionary prisoner Ted Kaczynski. We mourn this passing and will add his name to the list of our revenge, continuing to weave the black thread of our paths of denial.
–
Posted in GeneralTagged Ted Kaczynski, USA
Advocacy Groups
Anti-Tech Collective
*** BREAKING NEWS ***
Theodore John Kaczynski died today, June 10, at a prison medical facility in Butner, NC.
We hope to provide commentary in the coming days.
Anti-Tech Quarterly (ATC) not yet released.
Anti-Tech Quarterly (Garden Crew)
Ted Kaczynski is dead but his ideas live on. It is not the man himself who should be idolized; but his ideas which should be hearkened to. While he has been seen as the face of the movement, the task is really up to those who will take up the banner and put forth the work. The anti tech movement does not end with him, but starts with us! So in reality there is no loss to the movement itself.
You can see how the media will attempt to distract from Kaczynski’s ideas by attacking his character and focusing on his personal life. We cannot be deceived or intimidated by media. Instead we must continue to stand up against the system, spread these beliefs and put them into motion.
Despite any perceived setback; there is a future which can be seen by those who have the vision and ambition to look past the dehumanizing conditioning of technology and the all-encompassing tyranny of the industrial state. One thing is for certain: Technological progress is leading humanity down a road without freedom or wild nature. The only way to overturn technological slavery is to revolt against the Techno-Industrial System. We will only continue further on the road to revolution.
#tedkaczynskiwasright #tedkaczyski #tedpilled #antitechnology #antitech #neoluddite #neoluddism
Blogs
Último-Reducto
Theodore John Kaczynski ha muerto
El 10 de junio del 2023, falleció Theodore John Kaczynski, alias Unabomber, a la edad de 81 años.
Video Essayists
Count Dankula
Tweet: Ted Kaczynski has passed away. Don't approve of his methods, but the issues he pointed out about the trajectory mankind is taking are as true today as they were back then. We don't even try to live within nature anymore, we instead bulldoze it and live atop its corpse.
71K views2 weeks ago
Uncle Ted Has Passed Away
I know, ‘what am I like?’ I’m always early to the party on this channel aren’t I? It’s because I can only film when I come into the office and hen you've got a baby you don't have much time.
Ted Kaczynski: Unabomber died by suicide in US prison medical centre, AP sources say
The federal Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny in the last several years following the death of Jeffrey Epstein, who also died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019.
'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski - who carried out a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died by suicide, sources have told The Associated Press.
The 81-year-old, who was suffering from late-stage cancer, was found unresponsive in his cell at the federal prison medical centre in Butner, North Carolina, at around 12.30am on Saturday.
The Harvard-educated mathematician has been locked up since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences, plus 30 years for the campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge.
He admitted to committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently injuring several of his victims.
Kaczynski was given the name 'Unabomber' by the FBI because his early targets seemed to be universities and airlines.
Emergency responders performed CPR and revived Kaczynski before he was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead later Saturday morning, the people told the AP.
They were not authorised to publicly discuss Kaczynski’s death and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Kaczynski’s death comes as the federal Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny in the last several years following the death of Jeffrey Epstein, who also died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019.
He didn’t, he didn’t, but whatever.
He was awaiting trial on sex abuse charges.
In 2021, Kaczynski was transferred to the federal medical centre in North Carolina, a facility that treats prisoners suffering from serious health problems.
Like I reported on in the in the Ted Kaczynski video I did.
Kaczynski lived as a recluse in a dingy cabin …
It wasn't dingy, it was homely and lovely. I liked his wee cabin
… in rural Montana, where he carried out a solitary bombing spree that changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes.
His targets included academics and airlines, the owner of a computer rental store, an advertising executive and a timber industry lobbyist.
In 1993, a California geneticist and a Yale University computer expert were maimed by bombs within the span of two days.
Two years later, he used the threat of continued violence to convince The New York Times and The Washington Post to publish his manifesto, a 35,000-word screed against modern life and technology, as well as damages to the environment.
And like I said before, it's 35,000 words of the most based shift that you will ever read. And it is correct.
The tone of the treatise was recognised by his brother, David, and David's wife, Linda Patrik, who tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the Unabomber for years in the nation's longest, costliest manhunt.
Authorities in April 1996 found him in a small plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.
Now, some things are saying he wasn't suicided. He wasn't. You know, he got Epstein and everything. Like, I don't believe he was because the man was 81 years old, right? And he was in the final stages of cancer, there was literally no reason to Epstein him what I believe? Because I've heard some cases of this happening is. When cancer starts to like proper ravage your body like you're you're absolutely fucked at that point, like there's no coming back and it starts to eat your mind a little bit like a lot of people, they don't, they don't really talk about this then they definitely don't show it in movies, but. Whenever people are in the final final stages of cancer like that, that's you. Pal, you've got. You've got weeks now. Days. Probably your mind's gone. You don't recognise anyone? You're babbling. You're seeing a bunch of incoherent rambling stuff is an extremely sad state of affairs, and it's extremely horrible way to watch someone go out.
Now Ted, as we know was a hyper genius, you know, he went to Harvard at like 1415 and stuff like that. He was an extremely intelligent person, his, you know, biggest thing he had was his mind and his thought. And I think that when he was getting into the later stages and he felt his mind going, that he thought, I want to go out as me. I want to go out as me. I want to still be me and here and not some, you know, drooling, mongoloid. You know, whenever, whenever the final curtain falls, which and so I'm gonna go out on my own terms while I'm still me. Which I completely understand and respect. I would probably do the same thing. I completely get that.
So yeah, I understand why he did that. That's why I don't believe he was esteemed cause. I mean, there was no point like he was on his way out. There was definitely no point in Epsteining him.
However, it is very sad that it's sad in the sense of he should not have done the things he did to get his message across. But the problem is people would have just dismissed him as some. Looney maniac. But considering the things he did is why so many people are getting very interested in his work, apparently after his death, all the Zoomers and TikTok are now getting right into Ted Kaczynski, which I think is a good thing. No, not the bombing, you know, not the not the killing people part. Not that, but all the stuff he wrote, you know, technological slavery and stuff like that they were all correct. All good. And he's right.
He highlighted a bunch of basically, mankind is going down on unsustainable trajectory. We're becoming completely detached from the environment that that raised us dump any random human and the, you know, the forests out in the wild, you know where we lived and survived for like millions and then hundreds of thousands of years as Hunter. Others and all that stuff as well. Put any of us there and we'd die. We'd die in seconds, like even though it's where we're from, it's the it's, you know, it is it his, his mother's womb. It is where we're from. It is what raised us, it is the environment that created us. But dump anybody there now and they would fucking perish in a day.
Like and Ted was talking about that disconnect instead of trying to live within nature, we instead bulldoze it and live on top. Of it's cops, right? We are getting rid of nature even though all of the bounty that we enjoy so much comes directly from nature. So yeah, he was right and very, very many things. He was,
Trans people are trying to claim him now though. Well, sorry you can't fucking have them.
Styxhexenhammer666
JF Gariepy
The Old Glory Club
Mad at the Internet
Chad Haag
Chad A Haag Philosophy Channel3 weeks ago
There goes my hero . . . Rest in Peace (1942-2023).
Cabin Productions
It finally happened. Rest in peace. Pour one out for him tonight.
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Anarchy Radio
"Who's Joking?" by JZ. The Joker (2019) - 24 carat nihilism. Death of Ted K, Unabomber relevance in a violent technoscape. (Indigenous) kids survive 40 days in Columbian jungle. Collapse in the heat. Trump sideshow. Resistance briefs. The Machine advances, occupying more of what was once intimacy. Chatbot 'literacy.' Plastic in Utero zine unveiled. Three calls.
Zerzan: You've been listening to quack smack on kwva. If you miss any portion of the show or just want to listen again, you can find the full show recordings online at KWVA radio.org. Plus, we're on Twitter at kW, a sports. Join us again for our next episode tomorrow at 6:00 PM, right here on KWVA Eugene 88. .1 FM.
Carl: Good evening. It is 7:00 o'clock. You are listening to KWVA. Eugene. It is time for anarchy radio. That's right. Anarchy radio.
Zerzan: The views expressed on this program are not necessarily the views of kwva radio or the associated students of the University of Oregon. Anarchy Radio is an editorial collage providing analysis and opinions of John Zerzan and the community at large.
Carl: See, I told you. It's anarchy radio. John and I are going to get all situated. Phone number is 541-346-0645. And we have music from Heinz to get us motivated.
Zerzan: June 13th. Anarchy radio. Yes Sery, thank you. Well, just talking about this with Karl a little bit the Joker. I'm willing to bet that the number of you folks. Who gets the show? Probably watch that movie 2019 movie The Joker. Well, I was kind of surfing around. I saw the Denver Nuggets versus the Miami Heat, the NBA Basketball Finals. And you know their star, the nugget, the Nugget star. Nikola Djokovic. Fantastic player. All pro center called the Joker because the 1st 3 letters of his last name are Jay. OK for one thing. And so he's routinely referred to as the Joker. Anyway, I saw some of that, and there was this guy in the stands dressed as the Joker, not the hoopster. Mind you, but the character in the movie. And I was just jolted by that because I was pretty blown away by that movie. The acting for one thing, but it was just such a 24 carat take on nihilism. Guy who was worked as a clown, you know, kind of. Low paid gig worker, you know, was a clown for kids, parties and so forth. Anyway, he's right on the verge of madness. He's given to hysterical laughter quite inappropriately, almost every time. What's going on? The backdrop for the movie is that everything is going downhill in a hurry. And it's harder on him. He gets beat up in the opening scene of the movie, for example, and society's kind of crumbling. And so it’s kind of a madness motif society wise, as well As for Arthur, the main character. Anyway, this is just a lead up I just wrote a short thing. Called who's joking? And I’ve kind of given it quite a bit away already, but I'll just run through it anyway. The Denver Nuggets All Star Center Nikola Jokic is called the Joker. As I watched a bit of the NBA playoff finals, Denver versus Miami, another Joker came to mind. A fan sported the clown makeup of the protagonists of the 2019. Movie The joke. But if adult to have been reminded of that very nihilist figure, especially in the context of a basketball game, the movie powerfully portrayed Arthur's plight, his violent escape from convention into madness in a ruinous collapsing society. The Joker, the film not the Hoopster, is a very potent reminder of the real situation. We are in the calamity of eco collapse, the mental health crisis, especially among youth. Trumpist populism, the rising suicide braid, mass shootings and drug scourge, et cetera, et cetera. A pretty endless ensemble of pathological symptoms of decaying civilization. Arthur is not a quote political character in the movie. I think that gives him an even stronger, more telling significance. In the final scene. The crowd as he's being taken to jail. Hails him as a hero for revealing the violence he's committed. So in that ending, one could discern a kind of political point, and overall one is lender led to ponder the depth of our predicament in reality. In the 1980s, Donna Haraway revealed her Cyborg, A projected avatar of quote, transgressive boundaries. And a potent fusion between nature and artifice. That is. When we meld human and machine, gender will be transcended. No more patriarchy. But here we are in the barren techno verse, certainly no closer to the end of gender inequality, one more healthy techno pipe dream. Getting back to the Joker, Arthur's self destruction is not a way forward. Rewilding A refusal of this techno landscape, however, just might be glimpsed or hinted at. In his break with society. By the way, there were nine people shot. In Denver, following the Nuggets win last night. Brings it all back together, I guess. And let's see, by the way, 541-346-0645. Lots of stuff to talk about tonight, including of course. The techno craziness of the week. Well, one major thing. And I'm grateful for quite a number of people who told me about this early Saturday morning. The death of Ted Kaczynski. At the federal. Prison hospital in North Carolina. He'd been diagnosed as a. A terminal cancer case about two years ago, and he was there, transferred from the Supermax prison in Colorado. Over a year and a half, so. It wasn't a surprise to people who knew that he was. You know, living as long as he did. Sort of predictably I guess. Yesterday it was a very long piece. In the business section. The obituaries section. Of the New York Times, Theodore J Kaczynski, boy genius, turned Unabomber, dies at 81. You think they would have had time to do a more coherent job as if that's the job of the New York Times in the 1st place, but. It's it covers a lot, but it kind of wanders all over the place. In terms of his history, it's, you know, that's what an obituary usually is, of kind of a thumbnail history and. You know what is the significance of this person? Even mentioned by the way anti SIV. That's in quotes anti servena. In a strange kind of unexplained way. Well, the piece. By one Alex Traub, in part is talking about the influence of Kaczynski. And it's 35,000 word, so-called Manifesto Industrial Society and its future. It’s sort of. Wonders here and there. Here's the part that's. Well, he's trying to make sense of it all. I guess and. It's kind of superficial, he, he says of his critique of technological society. Well, he doesn't really even talk about the Internet. Well, for one thing, he wrote it in the 70s, basically well before the Internet. So, and it's pitched at a deeper level than that. Come on, you know, have you ever heard of Jacque? Well, he never heard of the Internet either. And yet. He had some very, very basic tell. Insights as to what is technological society and how it works. And how really nothing escapes it? Now in the 50s. You know, Speaking of pre cyberspace and all that, and here's one little part. As he's trying to figure out. What is the connection? What do people make sense of this or not? He says this is a quote. More curious was the way a variety of law abiding Americans developed an interest in the same line of thought. Yeah, that's kind of telling. There is now especially a. Quite a strong anti tech current I would think. We all are forced to use it. I mean, there's no. Safe Island from it at the moment, that's for sure, but. Yeah, he goes on to refer to people. Especially the young referred to Uncle Ted. So I don't know it just here and there it's you sort of scratching your head at the end of it if you didn't know anything about it to begin with, I guess. Well, another staple of the week. For example, late Saturday night this past weekend in Syracuse, NY, 13 injured in a spree of shooting, stabbings and car collisions. At a quote chaotic mass gathering. Six shot outside a Houston nightclub. At the same time. And of course, pigs are pigs are killing more people, especially blacks, including black children. Another staple. And Thursday night in southeast France, 6 stabbed at a park, 4 kids critically wounded, a nation in shock. It doesn't often happen in France. And we have a color right. Todd, how are you?
Caller #1: Hey, hey, John. I wanted to jump in here just for a moment to mention you were talking about Uncle Ted and I am an arts writer, and I've been seeing that young people almost on the right, more on kind of the avant-garde. Right. The Alt right are very obsessed with Ted Kaczynski. Because of his comments about leftism, oddly enough, even as much as you know he has that whole section of. The thing about leftism. But it's interesting that he's become kind of this for young people. This figure that who, whose conclusions they accept in a very cynical way. Among intellectuals, very young intellectuals, they kind of accept it, and they're they're embracing this, what they call accelerationism, which is this concession to technological acceleration, with the hope that AI will provide some transcendence.
Zerzan: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Caller #1: But there's obviously a. Lot of foolishness in that, but anyway I. Just wanted to mention that Ted Kaczynski. Was surprisingly current among right wing intellectuals, and they've been doing a lot of memes and. Things about him.
Zerzan: Yeah, thanks for that. Thanks very much. Well, you know, I think there’s a fairly obvious misunderstanding there. I mean the. Industrial society's future starts with this fairly long assault on the left, and leftism and how. It's so much a question of domestication. Well, that's not a word. He uses but. You know? Uh. Making people more conformist. It's just another part of that whole thing. And you know, first I was a little put off by that. I thought that was detracting from what he was about to get into, which was technology. Not is. That take on the left. I was. I was mistaken about that and I realized. Pet among kids, I was starting to notice. Oh, they got that they weren't fronted off by that. But you know it's. Another part of that one might say, I noticed that anarchistnews.org. You know a bunch of stuff on their chat board since the weekend. Really saying the same thing. Well, he was. And this critique of the left and the same thing with the folks who are the contemptuous, they criticize the left, therefore they must. Be right wing. No, that's absurd. I'm there. I'm anti left. I'm certainly no right winger, you know, that's just a dumb jump into this binarism that doesn't obtain. You know, it just. Doesn't and. People on the right, I mean, they're no brighter than. Other people, shall we say, and. You know, so that that's not surprising, I guess. You know, in celebrity culture. People try to grab onto anything and you know, he was pretty. Anti left, that's for sure. Kazinski was and. You know, and I and I hate to say this, but I think also. As his life went on, some of the not so bright parts of that came out too, and I'm talking about now. I'm maybe a little off the subject, but he was not anti civilization.
Caller #1: Yeah. No, definitely. You know, I there was a reading of his work again on there's this, you know, Twitter spaces. You can have these gatherings online and people did a full reading of the work with about 100 people listening to the whole, his whole so-called manifesto, as you said. And it was striking how he is he doesn't really have a precise thing that he wants to go back to. You know, he talks about industrial. But he doesn't. He doesn't use terminology about civilization, and so I think it's true that his criticism is not very far, and that's why I think he gets confused in trying to resurrect this political revolution. You know, he's very strategic in this. You know, cadres that he wants to advance, but without a coherent plan, I think it kind of falls flat. Because he doesn't get into the fundamental technological problem as much as he should.
Zerzan: Right, I totally agree. And just strategically, I mean it’s very instrumental and. You know, it's not very cool politically. I mean, Derrick Jensen comes to mind along with the same lines. He doesn't know much political history, so he grabs puts in anything he can think of and some of that is straight up backward. Its authoritarian. Vanguard is kind of stuff. And, you know, it's kind of embarrassing that would be. Anybody's model of liberation, but he doesn't mind because he's only thinking about technology. Only think about the way technology does its work, and so anything that you know is handy. Maybe he just uses it without, you know, without much background in.
Caller #1: It in terms of strategy and kind of the politics of the future. Have you been getting calls from the press about his death that any, I mean, I'm curious. Because you know, if if Kaczynski, if people sort of accept a lot of Kaczynski's press premises, that's what people are saying. But they don't agree with his strategy. You would think there would be more discussion of what the strategy. Should be. You know what I mean, people you know a lot. I keep hearing people say, well, he was right, but he shouldn't have killed people. But they never have any solutions themselves.
Zerzan: Was really curious. I was kind of expecting a bunch of media stuff, but there wasn't any to me. Anyway, there wasn't any. I didn't get any. Emails or calls about it and you know, yeah. And some people said, well, you got to be ready for the media nonsense and everything. But you know, maybe what's worse is there wasn't any. I mean, not that so wonderful to be. Doing the media stuff all the time, but no, it's like.
Caller #1: Right. As a cultural moment, yeah, they weren't prepared. They don't. They're not prepared. The mainstream to even have a discussion of what he meant. Well, it's.
Zerzan: Right. Right. That's, that's disappointing that don't get to bring it up at all. It's just a one day wonder kind of a thing. Well, it's not. It's still conceivable there will be something, but. I haven't seen anything yet.
Caller #1: Well, and it's also interesting because as I said, I think it's occurring over this. What's about to be a backlash against this artificial. I think you're for the first time seeing it's not very defined yet, but you're seeing this grassroots anger about what artificial intelligence is going to mean for people's lives.
Zerzan: Oh, I think you're so right. And that was another somebody I was in touch with said what a juxtaposition in the business section. You got all the latest stuff on the onslaught of chat, chat bots and all the AI stuff and. All the news and claims and everything. And then you turn the page and there is the critique of technology, wouldn't they wouldn't occur to somebody to join the two like like well, was he right? I mean, what? What did he have to say about this? And does it bear on this juggernaut of now?
Caller #1: Right.
Zerzan: AI is doing everything.
Caller #1: So they, yeah, they refused to consider his legacy. That's what I've noticed and they want to. That's why I think the cultural battle is important because some people, what I was hearing a lot is people trying to turn him into a freak. You know, they're trying to say that he was taught, you know, MK Ultra. You know, there's conspiracy theories about that, that he was beaten as a child, that he was transsexual, if you can believe it, even that weird right wing political thing is getting into him. So you know they are trying to just turn him into. A freak so. People don't consider his, you know, righteous anger.
Zerzan: Yeah, well, that's true from the very beginning in the 90s, that's what they were doing. All of these different variations on the same theme that he was just twisted and. You know, he he was kept from his parents as a tiny infant. And so then he was warped for the rest of his life, ignoring the whole thrust of his arguments in in the so-called manifesto. But yeah, and then now they dust that off, you know, and just and the worst of the mainstream stuff. Is well, he terrorized America. He murdered all these innocent people. I mean, just the most gross. Stuff you know and when I was getting that question back in those days and they wanted they wanted anarchist to say, oh, I'm delighted that people send bombs in the mail. What a great idea, I said. No, I don't endorse, endorse that at all. But are those people so innocent? That got his wraths think about that, maybe.
Caller #1: Right. And then that's like the word Churchill argument after 911, you know, similar people sort of freaked out over this. People don't allow for systemic criticism, as you say anymore.
Zerzan: Right, right, right.
Caller #1: Like, it's very dangerous.
Zerzan: Yeah, maybe, maybe less and less, but I think you're right too to say that there's this backlash. Which is fairly obvious. You know, there are people that they don't, they don't only fear the latest stuff, but they hate. It I mean you know.
Caller #1: And they're willing to act, you know, I mean, you know, there's the writers strike as well. You have the writer strike, which is partially about AI. You have the in Hollywood. You've got the AI artist and an uproar. I think you'll have all these programmers too. You know who are going to who are losing their jobs.
Zerzan: Sure, music, folks.
Caller #1: Music, yeah.
Zerzan: Novelist name, you know, you name it.
Caller #1: Novelists, yeah. And then they're saying all these people, you know, imagine all these kids who are in school for 10 years to study, you know, translation and or, you know, some kind of English, you know, a lot of these people, just their lives are just. Taken away from them with this. So anyway, but anyway it's been I'm sure I'm anxious to hear more. Of your thoughts about Kaczynski? I think it's a cultural moment and that's always. What I've always loved about your work at. Least is that it? Is trying to help people envision how to move forward and stories and the culture is important for that. I think Ted was a part of people's lives, you know, even if they disagree with him politically.
Zerzan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll put thanks for calling, Ted.
Caller #1: Thank you. Thank you.
Zerzan: Todd, I'm sorry. Take care. Bye.
Zerzan: Well, I don't. Know if I have much more to say about. About Ted Kaczynski, but feel free to call about it and we'll see as we proceed. You know, one big story. Of interest, these four kids that were found in the jungle of southern Colombia after 40 days, a big gun. You know, stories like that. The child falls into. Well, they can't get him out. And it goes on and on and on. Or the minors or whatever. But anyway. The point? This, and it wasn't totally lost on people, I don't think. But they were fine. They were indigenous, get it? They were at home in nature, not cut off from it, and conditioned to fear it, I got a really interesting. Message from somebody out of the country. Someone I know named Ernesto let me quote a little bit from that. He says of course, the show of the media has already started and they branded the jungle as quote, dangerous, hostile, malignant. Being very curious, because those same media and other press sections. Invite the protection of the Amazon jungle. Contradiction or intentional ill will. The surviving children who are found are indigenous in their vital traditional training. Allow them not to feel like strangers in the jungle, which would generate an urgent question for all rational education systems. Do we have to prepare people to live on Earth? We are on or continued training the spurious stem skills to go to Mars. Anyway, Ernesto. He did very well, I think. Yeah, it's like it reminds me of that big tsunami at the end of 2004. And the fact that non domesticated. Beings, human and non human, survived. Quite nicely. All of the deaths were domesticated people or other domesticated species. Straight up, you know, as simple as that. Well, another piece of the collapse was revealed. During the week, I would say early Sunday morning, the tanker truck. In Northeast Philadelphia, Industrial section of the I-95 Freeway. Yeah, this burned up. Quite brightly and cause the stretch of the freeway to collapse. The I-95 is a major East Coast freeway. It'll be closed for months. More facets of the general collapse. And let's see. I don't know if I'll get to all this stuff, but anyway, the we're all ready in fire season. All this stuff about fires in Canada impacting especially the northeastern part of the US. Rising heat could make orange skies ordinary front page piece in the New York Times on June 10th. Quote a greater likelihood of extremes, sometimes catastrophic weather all over the world. That's a quote. In Puerto Rico last week. Heat index 125 degrees. And in the LA Times today. An article called off the charts or part of it said off the charts the North Atlantic Ocean. Is a full 2 degrees warmer than it was 40 years ago. And yes, El Nino is just starting up now, which will make that worse. Thousands of dead fish washed up on Texas Gulf Shores. Another case of hypoxia. A dead zone, little or no oxygen. Is the Gulf of Mexico becoming a Dead Sea while part of it is already? And more and more. Race horses sacrifice to the spectator, sport of horse racing. Belmont Park, for example. Most lately. Well, let's see. I hope we hear from Artemis. Because I want to hear more about his new scene issue issue #1. Is about to come out and really looking forward to that. You know these perspectives that there's so many ways of changing the subject or avoiding the subject or just drowning it out. For instance today. All Trump, all the time you could sit there and stare at TV. You could see him leaving his resort to go to a. To his plane and then a motorcade just endless, endless trivia. And you do have a caller here, I think. And you know all about the big Danger Republic is hanging by a thread. Such a threat. Well, there was nothing nobody showed up. Virtually nobody showed up and supported Trump in Miami. Just like. Two months ago in New York, that's kind of a joke anyway.
Carl: Somebody called Artemis.
Zerzan: Oh, I think I've heard the name. Hello there. Hi there.
Artemis: Hey, how are you?
Zerzan: Good. Good. Hoping you'd call.
Artemis: Yeah, I was. I was thinking I was going to wait for the music break because we're about that time, but then. you know, you said my name, so here I am.
Zerzan: Good, good.
Artemis: So first thing before I talked about the scene, I got two things I want to touch on real quick. First thing, of course, is about Ted, and this popped up is that apparently there's reports that he actually he might have killed himself in his cell. And even the Wikipedia page refers to it as his cause of death as suicide.
Zerzan: Well, you know, maybe that's hard to sort out if you if you're terminally, you could check out and you're you know it’s suicide, but it's also you're at the end of the end of your.
Caller #1: And you know.
Zerzan: Rope anyway, I mean. In a sense, it's, you know, hard to distinguish, I suppose.
Artemis: And I had some people say, oh, I can't imagine him doing that. But from my understanding, and it could be wrong is that when he was first incarcerated, maybe during trial, he might have tried to kill himself. I can't remember if that's true or not, but I was like, well, I mean, you already tried once. I mean and. Then two and two years, basically with terminal. Cancer. I mean, come on.
Zerzan: Yeah, yeah.
Artemis: It's not that hard. It's not without it's not beyond the realm of belief. But then I read that I was like, wow, I mean, that's wrong because I know some people were writing him and he just stopped when his health got so bad, you know? And that's his contact with the outside world, that it's.
Zerzan: And he did tell at least one person that he wouldn't be around much longer to go forth, you know, to to.
Artemis: I don't put. It past them.
Zerzan: Push on with things he did in fact try to kill himself. Back in the very end of 97 early 1998, when he found out. I was actually the one who told him that his lawyers were lying to him, had been for months. You know, the insanity defense. Everybody knew that's what they were pursuing, but he wasn't in the courtroom when they did that. So he he was.
Artemis: Right.
Zerzan: Maybe you didn't really wanna know. I, you know, I wouldn't know, but. Yeah, he tried to hang himself that night because that was the very last thing he wanted is to be portrayed as. Obviously so anyway.
Artemis: Yeah, yeah. And then the second thing before the disease, because I don't want to make this all about me is I was checking anarchy news today and your name popped up in an article I was reading by Felipe Correa attribute pronouncing that wrong. He's a Brazilian academic and anarchist who wrote a historiography. So, like, basically an analysis of history. Or historical write INS called Black Flag read discussing the anarchism and I want to read a very short section of it. He's basically talking about like how historians historically misunderstand or mislabel anarchists. And he says another similarly similarly decontextualized technique used by past historians is listening adherence based on their self identification as anarchists, rather than identifying adherence based on the ideas and practices of which they advanced. Another example is founded in Mickey's study, which, although not absolutist, and his assessment. Includes individualists such as Brown, Benjamin Tucker, or the newspaper Anarchy, a Journal of Desire arms, as well as primitivists such as John Zerzan and newspaper green Anarchy. However, beyond self identifying as anarchists, these authors and publications do not have much in common with the mainline historical anarchist tradition.
Zerzan: Right. Oh, I know. I see. I didn't know about that.
Artemis: And of course he's one of those. He's like a platformist organization organization organization, where he's like, oh, you know, you're not like me. I'm still stuck in the 19th century. Right.
Zerzan: Yeah, we want to steal it.
Artemis: Sorry, you know. As John Moore said, there is the first first wave anarchism and 2nd wave anarchism. You know, kind of divided by the Spanish Civil War and these people can't get out of the fact that. Socialism isn't the answer, and they're stuck in the labor struggle. You know, they have an advanced theory by any regard, so they think anyone who has is not a real anarchist, you know.
Zerzan: It's embarrassing. It's that to be 2023. Hello. Anyway, it's. Yeah, that that's sort of revealing the piece, yeah.
Artemis: So I just, I read that I was like, you know, it's just funny that they think anarchism is this revolutionary, living, breathing system. But then they keep it as the same thing Bakunin was writing, you know, basically, it's just, it's ridiculous. But I guess for the scene, plastic and utero. Journal of anti Save Anarchy Reborn from the compost to wasteland modernity. It is a mouthful. I know. I've had people tell me that, but that's partially kind of the joke, you know, because it was plastic and utero and I was writing the Jason Rogers for those that are familiar. And I was like, how do I make it like identifiable. And that was her suggestion. The Nice long subtact subtitle.
Zerzan: Right.
Artemis: And she was like, you don't have to use the whole thing. And I was like, oh, but that's too good. Like, that's so on. Point just yeah. You know, so the I came, you know? So it's basically Jason's idea for the subtitle, but basically it will come out sometime next week. I'm starting to take orders, but I'm trying to get a PO Box. However the local post office is only open 3 hours a day or something like. That and so I'm trying to get in and I try to use their online portal and it doesn't work. So classic automating things doesn't really work, so I'm waiting on the PO Box. Hopefully sometime this weekend I can get in there. And do that. It's $3 a copy. If those people are interested cuz I can call in again when that is happening. If people want to contact me online, my e-mail is tmg1995@protonmail.com.
Zerzan: Yeah, they should get in touch. We can't. We can't tell people to buy stuff, but we can pass on the information for sure.
Artemis: Yeah, if you're interested in talking to me about anything, you know, that can be that. And I want to say I appreciate, you know, you writing for it because I might have mentioned this before, but when I tell people, oh, I'm putting this scene together, they're like, that's close. Oh, yeah, like John's right before it. Jason Rogers. Steve Kirk. I've written for it, though. Oh, that's so great. How did you do? Did you get? Him to do. That I was like. I asked them. You know. Funny thing that if you treat people like human beings and you. Reach out and talk to. Things happen, but you know, I think it's really cool and some people that have contributed who are first time writers, they're they're, like excited to know, like, Oh my writing will be next to Johns or Steves or whoever, you know.
Zerzan: Oh, it's great. First time people, that's wonderful.
Artemis: Yeah. And I mean that was my goal is that you know, it's nice to have quote UN quote old blood people names that are recognizable because people might be more willing to get it if that's the case. But also getting people who have new ideas. For example, my friend style, who's a primitivist, who lives not far from me, wrote a piece about. Free time and you know there's the whole age-old. Like, do we really have free time? Right. But then connects it to what's called Doom. Scrolling right when people just scroll endlessly on their phones, that's not free time.
Zerzan: Right, right.
Artemis: That's not a hobby. that’s that's not, that's. You know, nuking your brain, you know, you're turning your brain. Off is that is that leisure?
Zerzan: Right, you. You might remember Dax, the student at EU of O here who started the you know, that's that he that was he was saying that too in in his way.
Artemis: Yeah, what he said is, you know, I think I'd start with me. I think about that a lot is his idea of are you making new memories authentic memories or are you? Just sitting around.
Zerzan: Yeah, yeah.
Artemis: You know. And Jason Rogers has talked about and I've had to look this up because it's true people have less and less hobbies in it. It just becomes primarily consumption of media. You know, and how dangerous that is, because I think about that, you know, in my students, in my, in my peers. It's like, what do you do for fun? They're like, oh, you know, like, I watched kids. Chuck, I'm like, OK, something other than that and I don't want to be like the old grumpy person, this like, get off your phone, you know?
Zerzan: But yeah, less of everything, though, like less dating.
Artemis: But it's like.
Zerzan: That was some decks talked about too. You know, how I was quite unaware of it. You know that it works out that there's less. Dating, you know, just because you it's all online and the way it works out is that works against it. You know, another anti social thing about social media.
Artemis: Yeah, it it's, it's disheartening, you know, I mean, I work right now with some environmental environmental work during my during the summer, awesome teaching and everyone's like, oh, like if you want to identify this plant, you can use this app I'm like. I could, but I won't. So like, why not? I was like, I just feel like we talk about it or like use a guide or bring someone out that knows it, like, have a conversation about what these plants may be or what this represents. Why do I have? To use an app for it.
Zerzan: Yeah, yeah.
Artemis: And that’s actually really much the digitization of like conservation or preservation is actually really off putting because there's no connection. There's more and more mediation even between people working with nature.
Zerzan: Yeah, yeah.
Artemis: You know which. Is you lose an element. People don't seem to get that there's dehumanizing or whatever. It's immediately, you know, purely that's what it is.
Zerzan: And what, what do you get at the end of it is, you know, one reads. About these well, these different languages, more and more isolated groups and their languages are dying. You know, traditional stuff and Oh well, the answer is to digitize everything. Yeah, that's certainly the way that a living language. Stays alive. You know that? No, they can't even. I mean, have you noticed what's you know, what's the fruit of all this kind of? Anyway, yeah, it is. It's kind of madding. But, and, you know, people are pushed in that direction and everything militates to go that way. You know, that's the solution. It's always a technical solution.
Artemis: And I think, you know, Jerry Mander kind of touched on this and I actually. Quote him on the back cover of plastic and utero is his idea of like the artificial is when our entire environment is artificial and everything looks for that lens. All you know is what other people have. Told you.
Artemis: And by people it means like a very. Small click of people. Have designed a new reality. And so when you design language or when you're preserving languages through technology, you're preserving nature, right quote UN quote. Preserving it right. What you're doing is you're looking at it. You're filtering it through the technological lens. Are you preserving something?
Zerzan: Hmm yeah.
Artemis: Is that preservation because all you're doing is transforming it into another medium of control?
Zerzan: Yeah, yeah.
Artemis: Right. And people don't seem to be able to grasp that as it's like, well, it's Democratic is, is technology democratic? I mean, are we at the point where we're going to accept? Cell phones or democratic, you know, even even my non radical liberals should be able to admit that's not true.
Zerzan: Yeah, it’s quite, it's not a secret.
Artemis: Right. So I'll let you go. But for those again, those are interested. I also have a podcast on civilized we just uploaded a new video today in an interview with an indigenous activist Malasa with his organization the First Nations. Union. That's two parts that will come out came out today and then later this week and again, if anyone's interested, you can reach out to. I plan to do a second edition probably sometime late this year, so people are interested in contributing. They can e-mail me or when I get the PO Box you can send me any copies of any writing or artwork or letters. Anything that doesn't go tick, tick, tick will be acceptable for my PO Box.
Zerzan: Good, good. I can jump on #2. Well, thank you for calling super.
Artemis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for. Thank you. For platforming, John, I appreciate it.
Zerzan: Ohh my pleasure.
Artemis: Have a great one.
Zerzan: You too. Well, there was a I guess I could have to sort through the assign the ratings here to find out the most. Telling thing, but one thing today. There was a piece about medicine. Health and the I think the beginning of this pointed out that about 75% of Americans say that their doctor isn't compassionate. So here's the article in today's New York Times AIS helping hand. And the solution? You don't have to guess, you already know the machine is empathetic, compassionate. It's not about the doctors becoming more compassionate. And why aren't they compassionate? Not none of that stuff? No, no. It's AI's helping hand. That's just. It should be a parody, but it's not. It's just straight up. What it is, you know, they're not hiding it and they're celebrating it. And that's just so grotesque. Yeah, well, human. Anyway, the point is obvious. And a little bit more on Apples vision Pro. Much noise about that late last week, there was a piece that was so ideological it just you could cut it with a knife or something. Their aim is to quote shift the way we look at technology and the role it plays in our lives. In other words, it's not a tool. You know this dumb always repeated thing. It's just a tool. Depends on what you do with it. It's neutral. It's just a discrete tool. No, it's not. It's it. Tell you it's ideological. This headset shifts the whole way. We look at it and technology in our lives. You know, straight up it's just it's amazing. It's they're not hiding anything. I don't know yet. In parallel fashion, all the lies continue, even if they're ridiculous. Hello there.
Caller #3: Hello I'm so I’ve been listening to your show for a little while.
Zerzan: Hi, thanks for calling.
Caller #3: Now and then, I figured since last episode was rather barren in terms of calls, I would call in today. But so you were talking a little bit earlier with your first caller about. Youth and youth politics, I guess sort of tangentially, but I was just wondering if you. So I am kind of I am definitely in. I am in the sort of milieu of the anti civilization. Politics, if you will, and I was wondering. If you had any sort of advice or you know what? What young people who are? Sort of coming into that same. Stratosphere of ideas. You know, we should what we could be. Doing to sort of. Build the cultural climate I guess of. Of critique of technology, critique of civilization, and you know, any sort of authors or organizations or actions you would. Point us to.
Zerzan: Well, I think the basic thing is just to speak up about it. It’s very difficult when you feel like. the whole space, the whole oxygen, whatever you call it. As is occupied by the technology and the technological alternative to anything that you want to change, or you know the needs doing. You know lots of ways to do that. I think the literature on the subject is available. You can. You can find that without too much trouble varieties of that. You know. Critiques of technology and starting well, you know, we're just talking about Kaczynski. We had our differences, but I continue to recommend the technological society, the Industrial Society, excuse me and its future. I think it's a very cogent piece and it's not hard to read. It's not an academically written thing and it's kind of modest, actually in its style. So I think it's accessible, you know. I don't know if I'd recommend so much, what he drew on quite a lot. Jackie Wells, the technological society. Which is available in English since the 60s, but it's kind of hard going. It's kind of the abstract French style in English, so it's not. It's not that easy as a. As an intro, I'd say, although it's very worthwhile. But just, you know, just. To try to. If we can raise our voices, if we can interject that into conversations of different kinds and. You know lots of ways to do that. You know, letters to the editor or call in to a show or. Start your own show or your own podcast. You know, that sort of thing. It takes some. You know, you gotta overcome a certain amount of inertia, you know, because we know what we're up against. The whole chorus of all this stuff is. You know it’s so it makes it hard going, but. As as Collins have said, there is something going on I think in terms of antipathy that's there and can be tapped into and you know. Encouraged so. Yeah, that's a very general. Thing David. You know, I think it's just a matter of trying to do it. And you know then when you do it, then you can maybe more at ease doing it and better at doing it. And you know, just find out what happens.
Caller #3: Yeah. Thank you. I guess that's kind of all I had to call in for today. I just want to say thank you to for, you know, putting on this show. It's a great resource to have out there and thanks to Artemis and the other people who call into the show regularly and have their own stuff that they put out, it’s really it's, it's good to have that. Stuff out there.
Zerzan: Great to hear from you, Nico. Thanks for calling. Well, I was just mentioning some of the more recent claims. I don't know what more to say about them. They speak. They speak for themselves. Here's something from. Well, it's piece in the New York Times. This past Saturday, June 10th. It's called students learn the Abcs of AI. Well, it doesn't tell you too much. Well, but what it's about is. This is promoting quote, a new kind of literacy. When you push a button in the chat bot does it for you. I mean, how is that literate? I mean, the whole question of literacy and numeracy and all that. Quite interesting. In its own right, but. You know just. To pause for a minute on that level of. Whether it's. Literate or illiterate? I think it's kind of obvious which one it is. And here was a piece of. About classical music composition and something new, at least I think it's new called Rave Real Time Audio variational auto encoder. That's a mouthful. AI input into classical music is what this is all about. This points out something kind of. Pedestrian, I guess, but maybe it's worth quoting. At the end of the piece, this is in the Sunday New York Times. Two days ago. It is almost impossible to create something computationally powerful without the assistance of a huge technologically advanced institute or corporation. Yeah, that’s kind of obvious, but kind of gives it away too, isn't it? It really does that, I mean. That's what you're buying into. That's what it's really about. Bottom line, a huge technologically advanced institute institution or corporation. Or civilization. Yeah, maybe an obvious point, but interesting that it comes out. And uh, let's see the verge. On Friday, at a piece about a. An indie book cover contest. Sci-fi and fantasy department type books. Well, it killed off the contest because the chat bought 1, so they kind of canceled the whole thing. In fact, the piece is called how AI killed an indie book cover contest. Yeah, you know more of the. Same kind of stuff. And here's some stuff just from today. Just from Tuesday the 13th, this is from Vice. A bit about virtual sports betting. Well, yeah, it's virtual. I mean, this is kind of obvious too, I guess. Like betting on. Horses that aren't real horses, you start to wonder, what are we totally adrift from actual? Reality and let's see this is I think this. Is from wired. Just a little while ago today, as new Beatles record will be out this year. Thanks to AI. This is this isn't really a chatbot creation. I mean it isn't just cooked up from a AI machine learning, but. But it's sort of that it's apparently. They've got some. Kind of unusable stuff from John Lennon, his voice. It's being remastered by artificial intelligence. And I don't know, it's not. It isn't the most horrible example I guess, but Paul McCartney said that it's scary, but exciting because it's the future. Well, the future or what? I mean, if they're going to. Rescue some stuff that otherwise we wouldn't get to hear, OK. You know, it's hard to think.
Carl: It's not, he also said. We never finished that song because George Harrison didn't like it and The Beatles was a democracy.
Zerzan: Is that right?
Carl: Yes, that's what he said.
Zerzan: Oh, no kidding.
Carl: And I'm like, huh?
Zerzan: Didn't know that. Wow, I didn't catch that part.
Carl: So, like what does George Harrison think about this now?
Zerzan: Wow, that's crazy. Well, this was from wired to day. The CEO of Microsoft at Satya Nadella. Says he can't imagine life without AI. Even if it's the last thing invented, in other words, and it's the end of life. Ohh geez. Well, I've got some. That's some action stuff, but I think I'm going to save this. It might have been good to use it because it's a little bit uplifting. Compared to some of this stuff, but. Here's one more getting back to a little bit more environmental stuff. National Geographic today at a piece about Rome. You know the Eternal city. Well, it may not be eternal after all. It's pretty vulnerable in the industrial era, subject to rising sea and flooding. Wasn't built for what's under way now. It's going to sink if techno industrial reality perseveres. See even Rome. Yeah, man, I don't really have time for some of this. More heartening political stuff, but Kathy will be here next week. To Co host this show, we'll get into stuff like that. And so yeah. Really appreciate the three calls tonight. Stay tuned for transcendent phase and. Did you want to?
Zerzan: Go out with that.
Carl: OK, it's all.
Zerzan: Yeah, that would be good.
Carl: It's all cued up.
Zerzan: Oh, cool. Take care out there.
Carl: It was queued up. It went to sleep.
Shops
Fitch & Madison
Theodore J. Kaczynski, 1942-2023
Dear Readers, Friends, and Colleagues,
The greatest revolutionary thinker of our era—and one of the greatest thinkers of all time—has passed away. Although he has passed, Theodore Kaczynski’s powerful and unquestionably unique and insightful ideas will not only live on, but will continue to spread in leaps and bounds, remaining forever as a guiding light for all true revolutionaries fighting in this greatest struggle of all: the end of the technological system to save Wild Nature and human freedom. Not only will his ideas live on, but so too his personal example: marked by utterly unwavering persistence, tireless hard work, good humor, and boundless faith, optimism, and hope. But above all: courage.
It has been an honor and a privilege to have worked very closely with Dr. Kaczynski over nearly a decade to ensure that the absolute highest quality materials of his are published, and Fitch & Madison shall continue with renewed vigor to spread Kaczynski’s ideas and books as far and wide as possible with all the dignity, respect, and honor they deserve. Our commitment and faith remain not only undeterred but revitalized. Should we falter, many others are in line to lift the banner and continue the work of making his books and ideas available to all.
We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all those who have supported our efforts throughout the years and we raise a toast to all serious anti-tech thinkers: that precious minority with the thoughtfulness, foresight, and strength of character to see beyond propaganda and conditioning to think logically and critically about the most important matter of our time: the fate of the biosphere and human race in the face of rapid technological growth.
For Wild Nature, onward and upward.
—The Fitch & Madison team
Fitch & Madison Publishers, LLC
Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Note: To all those concerned: Volume Two of Technological Slavery will be published in the coming years. Dr. Kaczynski has completed the manuscript and we will publish this second (and final) volume after his passing, per his wishes. Unfortunately, we do not have a set date of publication for this book.
Forums
now is as good a time as any to remind folks that kaczynski was basically a black pilled white supremacist and not actually a green anarchist contrary to popular belief
BREAKING: Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, has died in prison at age 81, Federal Bureau of Prisons says
folks can argue he was never explicitly racist but the subtext was heard loud and clear and continues to be to this day
here's a 2020 letter from prison in which kaczynski denounces racism solely because it's ineffective strategically to the advancement of his cause, calls for mixing distinct cultures out of existence, and says that ecofascists are left-wing socialists
Ecofascism: An Aberrant Branch of Leftism
in this piece he argues that leftists fighting for social justice issues are actually enforcers for the system he wishes to see dismantled
https://thetedkarchive.com/library/the-system-s-neatest-trick…
hear me out: what if people's civil rights are actually tangible things with material consequences for their lives and livelihoods and abandoning their defense to seek one's own liberation from the constraints of living in a society is selfish bullshit
https://thetedkarchive.com/library/hit-where-it-hurts…
the whole conception of anti-civilizationalism is anti-human and malthusian IMO. it's generally upper middle class white guys mad they have to deal with other people's shit and happy to see scores of people die in collapse if it means they can have their quiet cabin in the woods.
i want luxury gay space communism 🤷♂️
Replying to @JewishWorker and @_Jack_Graham_
The word "basically" is doing some REAL heavy lifting here but yeah
i'll take that
in this letter, tk argues that anti-racism, etc. is a distraction from the goal of dismantling industrial society and that revolutionary groups should explicitly disavow "efforts to help women, homosexuals, or racial minorities" to alienate leftists
https://thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-letter-to-an-anonymous-german…
hm that sounds familiar...
Here's a blueprint for the developing red-brown alliance. I won't link to the source for this right now (I'm working on a long piece to provide proper context), but this is being promoted currently, and has ties to the RFK Jr network.
Uncle Ted is no more A math genius, he hated modern technology so much that he mailed bombs to computer store owners and airline CEOs He did this from a mountain hut His own brother betrayed him to the FBI Dig into the Unabomber's insights on how tech CORRUPTS your soul
1/ Uncle Ted on how modern life steals your sense of agency: “Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal, can fight in self-defense…the modern individual is threatened by many things against which he is helpless: nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food, increasing taxes.”
2/ In the past, there was a ceiling to how much a society could bend a person against his will: “When the limit of human endurance has been passed, things start going wrong: crime, corruption, evasion of work, depression, an elevated death rate…the society breaks down.”
3/ But today, antidepressants DILUTE our (rightful) frustration at the modern world, people’s attention spans destroyed via screens, and the surveillance state crushes any rebellion that does burst out into the streets. Uncle Ted wrote the window of rebellion is shrinking...
4/ Ted Kaczynski’s dystopia: “Individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with super-technology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating people, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion.”
5/ Kaczynski lays out 3 future dystopias Dystopia 1: Machines become smart enough to run civilization; humans turn complacent The danger: the human race gets so dependent on the machines that “it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions"
6/ Second dystopian possibility: A tiny elite controls tech and goes Brave New World on everyone else. Kaczynski: “Life will be so purposeless that people will…be biologically or psychologically engineered to make them sublimate their drive for power into some HARMLESS hobby”
7/ Third dystopian possibility: Most people become jobless and live off welfare because they can’t “acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful” The cognitive elite will also need to become “reliable, conforming and docile” to stay employed
8/ The alternative to this civilization is nature NOT some doomed utopia: “It’s not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or a new kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before humans."
9/ Kaczynski’s on how our bodies and brains aren’t built for this era: “We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved.”
I'm creating a "Critics of Modernity" reading list 2 min intros to great thinkers : • Nietzsche on Master-Slave Morality • Chesterton on Learning • Burnham on Power • Huxley on Modern Pleasures • Evola's Revolt Against The Modern World Dig in:
Explore @jashdholani favorite ideas, collected on Memo'd
Thank you for reading this thread! I appreciate your time fren Please RT, and share Uncle Ted's warning More people need to encounter his ideas
We've lost a lot of good anti-system people as of late. Dr. Peat, JStark, Dr. Kaczynski. Peace be upon them.
Word has reached me that Volume 2 of Ted Kaczynski's Technological Slavery is under way and will be published sooner or later. Great to hear at least some good news, considering what happened.
"It would be extremely difficult psychologically for people to recognize that the only way to get off the road to disaster that we are now on would be through a total collapse of organized society and therefore a descent into chaos." - TJK
We Lost legend today, miss you Ted Kazcynski, rest in peace
Ted Kaczynski (1942-2023)'s high time may have passed a while ago, but because of him millions are against the progressive globalist combine that seeks to mush this beautiful world into a grey-brown paste of consumerism May his spirit not rest in peace but take revenge swiftly
Ted K was a real American, a freedom fighter, a brilliant writer, and a defender of all that is natural and beautiful. May his memory live on forever in the forests below and the skies above. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
“The technoindustrial system is growing more and more to resemble a single, centralized, worldwide organism in which every part is dependent on the functioning of the whole. In other words, the system increasingly resembles a complex, easy-to-kill organism” — Ted Kaczynski
“An attempt to eliminate capitalism, globalization, bureaucracy, big intrusive governments, environmental recklessness, gross economic inequality or any other subordinate evil can only distract attention from the need to eliminate the entire technological system.” — Ted K.
We are all under constant assault from the technological system. Kaczynski, like many of us, despised it. A man of direct action. In his later years, he wrote a framework for the Anti-Tech Revolution. RIP.
Just saw the Ted news. So this is your periodic reminder to read Jacques Ellul
Rest in piss chud
“BREAKING: Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, has died in prison at age 81, Federal Bureau of Prisons says”
Your friendly reminder that Ted K was deeply racist, misogynistic, and homophobic.
Kaczynski was an unoriginal reactionary doofus beloved by hundreds of thousands of fascists worldwide. He vociferously rejected anticiv anarchism, arguing against Zerzan that hunter gatherers were hierarchical and that that was a good thing. His grave is a gender neutral toilet.
Some folks have a weird historical revisionism whereby Kaczynski originated or was notable either in his critique of industrial civilization or his support for violent action. Nothing could be further from the truth. He got his politics from his professors at Harvard.
From aristocratic classics professors whining about modern society eroding traditional values to 80s decentralized resistance nazis screaming about political correctness, Ted's influences were not on our team and his fans are OVERWHELMINGLY, by the numbers, our explicit enemies.
Ted Kaczynski was a murderer and an idiot and I'm glad he died. I will also block anyone I see mourning his death or saying something like "He had a point though ..."
There's a certain type of anarchist who comes to believe that the most radical thing you can do is mail bombs to low level beaucrats and it's just utterly baffling to me, like this isn't even about Ted Kaczynski, who's not an anarchist, it's Moreover, ICE must be destroyed multiple times across multiple countries and I just do not understand it. Like why? What do you think this going to accomplish? It's not even like assassinating a king or whatever it's just random bureaucts. Totally incomprehensible Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
I don't understand people celebrating life of Ted Kaczynski this days. The guy bombed a civilian air plane, injured often innocent people and killed a computer salesman... Can somebody explain what I'm missing that makes him a great person? #TedKaczynski #Anarchism
Tonight is the night if godawful tributes to Ted Kaczynski There are a lot of other civ-critical theorists out there, Kaczynski wasn't as deep as you think he is, you just can't name them off the top of your head because they didn't willfully blow up civvies with IEDs
En hårlös björn i en ofrivärld
Kropotkin was a class traitor. Bakunin was called out by anarchists in his own life time. Ted K just wasn't an anarchist and reading his texts makes that clear because not only was he a transphobe, he also repeatedly expressed admiration for white nationalist groups
[Deleted Tweet: 'Kropotkin was a prince.
Bakunin was an anti-semite.
Therefore we shouldn't dismiss Ted K for one bad take.']
degeneration and essentialism that centers how men are not real men due to industrialisation. He repeatedlt defended spousal abuse as good discipline. He also hated anarchism. He wrote many many works criticising all forms of
Anarchism for being too politically correct and woke because it wanted to abolish hierarchies which ted K saw as natural phenomenas. He just simply wasn't an anarchist even if you find his life fascinating.
Ted K actually blames left wing politics for most societys issues. It is quite fascinating because whilst his narrative is one of anti-technology, it is a narrative that does not center capitalism or the state as problems but leftists and cuddling of people as the main issue.
so now that ted kaczynski has become compost, it's time for the usual debunking. he wasn't a based defender of the environment. by his own admission he wanted to destroy technological civilization because it allowed too many gay and black people to walk around.
I_Am_CyberSmith
He was the only one who might have been able to stop what's coming. Now who can stand against the machine? For better or worse, the old world died in that prison cell.
kaczynski sent mail bombs to random university students and computer store owners. that's ineffective and just plain amoral praxis
Rightwingers love to mention kaczynski as a "left"-terrorist. Fact is he was an anti-left eco-fascist.
According to take Kaczynski you are a leftist.
Replying to @OneRadChee
The only thing I have to say about that guy is one time I forgot the name of the guy who created Ren and Stimpy and said publicly with all the confidence in the world that Ted Kaczynski created Ren and Stimpy and proceeded to get roasted for the rest of the week about that
so now that ted kaczynski has become compost, it's time for the usual debunking. he wasn't a based defender of the environment. by his own admission he wanted to destroy technological civilization because it allowed too many gay and black people to walk around.
Kaczynski’s role in radical politics is complicated. The most extreme environmentalists mostly denounced him (tho quite a few privately sympathized - except the murder thing). Only a tiny handful (esp Zerzan) openly embraced him. And more recently he’s b/c a darling of eco-fash.
for more on Ted and the eco-fash, see this piece by @macklin_gd
Ted Kaczynski, Anti-Technology Radicalism and Eco-Fascism
Drop Dead Ted.
Above all else, Ted was a wretchedly terrible assassin.
Anarchists should spend more time stanning ELF and less time stanning Ted K. He sucked, and you're stupid for liking him.
Twitter is no place for nuance which is why Kaczynski discourse is one of the worst
Craft-made handgun found in Ted Kaczynski's (Unabomber) cabin when he was apprehended by the FBI.
From the
archives, we talked about Kaczynski’s Unabomber Manifesto with
back in 2019.
Manifesto!: Episode 17: The Unabomber and OK Computer on Apple Podcasts
RIP to anarchy’s weird uncle. Whether you love him or hate him, his tactics and analysis will continue to provoke debates and incite direct action against the industrial death machine. And that’s just a fact
Really not a fan of the dude. He’s dead, and the fact of his continued influence is indisputable. We don’t distribute his work, and whenever some teen comes up to the table and asks about him we recommend something actually anarchist. Chill with your hot take of the day 🙄
I dOnT cALl rACisTs “UnClE” yea but you have a racist uncle. Congrats, you missed the decades old joke
deleted your tweet, sorry “let me try to be nuanced about a dead guy” admin. You failed, we’re moving on
Old enough to remember when David Kaczynski realized brother Ted was the Unabomber & did the right thing, DOJ & FBI promised to protect David's identity, get Ted psychiatric help & not seek the death penalty. DOJ & FBI broke every promise. Rotten to the core, for decades
Rest in Peace to Ted K. He spoke for the Trees. Below is a letter from him to his brother who had betrayed his fraternal bond over petty disagreements of personal politics. Always remember, the bond between brothers (in oath or by blood) is the most inviolable. It was Dave's… Show more
My thoughts on Ted K: He was a murderer, but life in prison and solitary confinement is a form of torture, and a waste of taxpayer resources. If someone deserves that, just say they dont deserve to live at all. So get it over with quick, and send them to God.
Ted Kaczynski spent the last ~15 years of his life responding to unbelievably braindead fan mail from people who never actually read anything he wrote. More or less the exact fate he deserved, really.
BREAKING: Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, was found dead in his prison cell, according to a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson. https://trib.al/LxuhQGK
this is pretty much my stance on uncle ted. not really a fan of him but his work has influenced a lot of green anarchist and eco-extremist thought. https://twitter.com/PghAutonomy/status/1667593055010971654
here's my politics and pronouns shift over the past 10 years :3
good morning
RIP Ted Kacynski. We would be living in a stone age paradise right now if your scumbag brother hadn't betrayed you.
“Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost.”~ Ted Kaczynski
Primitivism
·
Rest in Peace, Theodore John Kaczynski.
Think what you want about his actions, his character and some of the things he said and wrote - this man's writing has put me on the path I'm still traveling on today, and I'm forever thankful for that. I wouldn't be where I am today without him. His essay/manifesto, "Industrial Society and Its Future," was exactly what a frustrated, alienated, fed-up white middle-class kid from Europe needed to break free from this society's madness, to run off to live in the woods, strive for self-sufficiency, make up demigods and Nature spirits like he did during his time in Montana's mountains, and try to achieve as much freedom as is still possible in today's world.
For the record: I don't endorse his bombing campaign (which I have on occasion called "the Kaczynski Newsletter"), nor do I condemn it. I can truly empathize with the feelings that led him to commit those acts, and while I think that there are better outlets for said feelings, I also won't shed a tear over some timber company lobbyist, advertising executive, geneticist or techie.
He wasn't some psychopath, some mentally ill maniac, but a shy genius, someone who longed for a life that this society has made all but impossible, a life that all humans secretly long for. He was a loner, which I always thought was the most tragic thing about his story. What he would have needed is a committed group of friends, a tribe so to speak, which was virtually impossible at the time he started seeing modern society for what it is, since everyone else was having the time of their lives consuming without any restraint and toiling away for the system - he saw where this lifestyle would lead, he felt compassion for the natural world when nobody else did, when people merrily went about destroying the environment without as much as a second thought. He was ahead of his time in his criticism of industrial society, technology, and the way this society runs counter to our most basic instincts and Human Nature.
True, much of his criticism of technology was influenced by earlier thinkers, but I can say the same for my own writing - there are preciously little "original" ideas. But he rephrased and summarized those concepts and made them accessible to regular people with no prior knowledge, who would have otherwise never thought to pick up some dusty old philosophy book.
If you don't believe me or are shocked by the above obituary, I urge you to read his collective writings, published as a book titled "Technological Slavery." He doesn't mince his words, and you'll likely feel offended here and there (as I did when I first read his criticism of Leftism, or later, when I read his critique of Anarcho-Primitivism), but push beyond this initial feeling and try to see the matter from an outside perspective - and you'll see that there is some truth in his criticism - he usually has a pretty good point. It's important to re-examine our beliefs and view them critically, so that we don't become entrenched in dogma.
Like Gloria Steinem famously said: "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!"
Thank you, Uncle Ted, and farewell. May you find the freedom you've always longed for in the world beyond.
Kaczynski Luddposting
Ian Madewell · ·
The average person twenty years ago only knew of Ted Kaczynski as a gifted but disturbed terrorist, and few were really digesting his criticism of the world as it was and what it may become, outside of the fringe.
In the two decades since, he has the rare honor among criminals, terrorists and the brilliant to have their ideas and contributions far outshine their actions or themselves as individuals. In the decades since his campaign, many of his most pointed critiques of the modern mechanized and technological society as a concept have been given flesh and blood in real time, and we get to test his theories firsthand. He was a modern Cassandra, someone with the grim gift of foresight.
However, I think it is important to distinguish his own limits. We already are familiar with the moral implications of being Ted-adjacent by his personal notoriety, so this is mostly on the basis of his criticisms. People who think that just mimicking Ted or pursuing unrealistic fantasies of hiding from the future in the woods need to understand that Ted's ideas should form a base for more complex and constructive ideologies. Ted was a fantastic social critic that has been repeatedly vindicated in his predictions, but ultimately even his mind failed to account for things like the popularization of the internet and social media just a short time after his incarceration, which would've made the publicity-intended campaign wholly unnecessary.
We live in a world that echos the worst of and most egregious of his critiques and predictions, and simply put; critique is not enough. We KNOW how bad things are, and fear how bad they may get. Ted helped many of us articulate and vocalize the sensation of wrongness or dread that seems so prevalent now, at least here in the States. But with that framework he helped build; the possibilities to work toward, ideas to be pursued, and otherwise what can be accomplished going forward into this terrifying new age has an established ideological father and shared root, despite the divergent paths we inevitably will take.
No matter what comes, history will vindicate Ted Kaczynski. His impact on history is far from finished.
Rest in Power, Uncle K.
Anti-Tech Revolution Now
Dont mourn Ted, organise for the revolution he desired!
From France we are lauching a new movement based on "Anti Tech Revolution" book, we hope it to become international, we need help, we need serious people. We need dismantle technological system to be the only objective. We need strategy to guide us in collective organisation. If you agree, contact us : https://antitechresistance.org/
As explained in ATR, we are a legal movement, we are not interesting in doing illegal stuff - see our security tab
r/tedkaczysnki
Posted by u/mkultravictims
Rest In Peace Theodore John Kaczynski.
He was only a man, flawed as we all are. He showed that the system can be challenged and is not beyond attacks, and that Technology must be our enemy above all other concerns, and that was great work we can appreciate.
But the movement to build a global anti-tech revolutionary force and liberate humanity and Nature is bigger than one man, and that is where we need to focus our efforts.
Don't mourn, organize!
Lol jfc
RIP ted
Rest in peace
We shall follow in his footsteps.
[deleted] · 25 days ago
Expected since he was dying of cancer but still devastating all the same. Rest In Peace, Ted
The man might die but his beliefs carry on. Rest in peace Ted
Can you elaborate on his beliefs? I’m behind on what his motivations were. As an outsider to this community.
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences.
read this https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm
[deleted] · 24 days ago
Their beliefs are killing 3 people with bombs
weak bait
The end of an era
Primary_Interesting · 25 days ago
start of a new era
The Unabombers Saga
And so it begins…
Comprehensive_Main · 25 days ago
RIP TO A LEGEND
Proper_Telephone_781 · 25 days ago
QUICK EDIT HIM INTO THE HARAMBE HEAVEN PICTURE
While I firmly disagree with his methods of gaining publication, there are valuable things to learn from his philosophy. RIP Ted.
He tried to warn us
Rest easy
I’m worried we won’t have another activist that makes the impact he does. Our begging, protests, petitions, donations, treaties, and laws won’t do anything.
E-fuckin-xactly.
This is how a system can make fuel for the fire. That all those means haven't done anything means other like Ted will become inevitable. There is a very real chance that TK will merely be the first of many too come. Pushed into the wall and ready to back lash.
As ghoulish as this may be, I have been working on an article about TK for a while now as a sort of obituary. It is such a difficult thing to pull together, looks like I am going to have to move quick on this.
Hopefully this time the perpetrator directs threats towards the source.
RIP Theodore
GoldenSamurai444 · 25 days ago
rest in power king
Dude…
He died before the system broke him, Rest in Power
RIP Ted.
RIP, thanks for the insights.
i just hope he died with hope for the revolution
Entire-Reveal-7523 · 25 days ago
[*] Your teaching will not be forgotten. Industrial revolution and its consequences were a disaster to the human kind. Rest in peace.
i am so upset. i never got to tell him that i planted a tree in his name
downsendromlumaymun · 25 days ago
Rest in peace Professor you will never be forgotten... 🕊️
Does anybody know where his funeral gonna take place? There's 0% chance I'll travel to the US overnight, but I'm curious...
i don't think there will be a funeral service as he is an incarcerated person.
nahh no way he was still a human
*designate a loved one to receive their remains and conduct a funeral * got it off google so yeah, it's apparently up to the family. i would def go
RIP (*)
R.I.P Ted!
in my heart😓
Rip 😞😞
One_Zookeepergame182 · 25 days ago
RIP
Rest easy, Uncle Ted, thanks for your contributions to humankind.
damn
Rest in Peace🌻🏕
LeftInTheDesert_ · 25 days ago
Damn, rest in peace man, he's living in the forest in the sky now
SleepInHeavenlyPeas · 25 days ago
Does anyone know what kind of cancer he had?
winter_solctice_0 · 24 days ago
Lung cancer I think.
SleepInHeavenlyPeas · 24 days ago
I was thinking pancreatic because of how fast he went but who knows if we will ever know. Just curious.
SleepInHeavenlyPeas · 24 days ago
News just said suicide :(
You are joking right?
OP·25 days ago
Sadly this is not a joke
I'm just speechless..
You dropped this - 👑
we lost our father...
OH YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME
i have to believe that his suicide was the way HE could remain in control as death drew near . I believe he turned his back on decline & vulnerability. WTG Ted . Your Manifesto sits on my nightstand still . I will NOT be subsumed by the techno industrial monster of capitalism. i will not waste my life in surrogate goal seeking.
[deleted] · 25 days ago
I prefer to think of it as him finishing his first life sentence.
Tall_Abbreviations11 · 25 days ago
Rip Ted. God bless
Rest my man❤️
Rest in peace, king
Jonathan_Nut_Muncher · 25 days ago
rest in peace, uncle Ted
DivingStation777 · 25 days ago
So fucking weird. I was looking up how to write a letter to him two days ago
rest in peace ted kaczynski
winter_solctice_0 · 24 days ago
Rest in peace...
Rest in power king. 👑
FUCKING DAMMIT FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKKKKK
rip uncle teddy
Suspicious-Bobcat-38 · 25 days ago
Noooooo
Rip 😕
ConsistentAd2153 · 24 days ago
I think foul play was involved. When I visited him last week he seemed perfectly fine.
RIP Ted . I have learned so much from you.
Good news. I hope death was painful af
Expensive-Actuary-91 · 24 days ago
The true hero in our world going for the right cause toeing the line between right and wrong actoins
TheFaintOfHeart42 · 24 days ago
NOO! Omg I just found out!! Holy shit!! RIP to a legend man
sorry to see him go, one of the few people out there who could see behind the curtain and had the strength to act on his beliefs.
Eastern_Vacation2363 · 23 days ago
Damn this terribly sad rest easy
The people in this sub/comments are brain damaged
He murdered innocent ppl. Ted Kaczynski is nit an environmentalist and certainly no hero.
No one condones his crimes, it's his philosophy
PhilosophusFuturum · 25 days ago
Check your mail
You too
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CuriousConfusion3987 · 24 days ago
I admire him because of his ideology; but the murders were horrible. There are ways to protest and fight, murder is not one of them.
Good riddance, rest in shit, scum
check your mailbox
Lmao as if you sad losers would actually do anything
sad losers
mf you have reddit premium
xTechDeath · 25 days ago·edited 25 days ago
And?
Y’all in here joking about a bomb in my mailbox lol cause I hurt your fee fees
canceling my premium on Monday
Aww, it's alright, no need to report to us when you will or will not cancel your preminum. No one gives a shit about you or your premium. Just be sure to keep on consuming
No one gives a shit about you or your premium. Just be sure to keep on consuming
It’s seems the sub does care since it’s the basis for the implication that I’m a loser for paying for it and then your little line about consuming that you thought sounded cool lol.
I guess people who idolize a terrorist are so stupid they can’t even comprehend what they type
We're "idolising" him because.. you said so? Or there's some other reason?
And if I recall correctly someone already told you that no one condones his crimes or anything, but only interested in his philosophy, so you're in no position to tell me anything about comprehension.
OP·25 days ago
let the dead rest.
r/antitechrevolution
Posted by u/KingAvailable1612
24 days ago
Kaczynski was one of the few men in our day and age who walked his talked. He was fed up with civilization and did his best to remain free from its clutches. Called both genius and insane by detractors and even some supporters Kaczynski's work still remains largely misunderstood or unknown to a majority of people. I have spent 3 years on and off studying Kaczynskis work and his personal life, the amount of disinformation and misunderstanding about this man is endemic from his worldview to what did or did not occur in his life. In one of his correspondence letters in the last years of his life he asked the individual to plant a tree on in his memory.
A happily married man does not does not daydream about romantic love. Similarly, a man does not romanticize frontier freedoms unless he is suffering from the lack of personal autonomy
https://www.thetedkarchive.com/category/topic/the-various-ted-k-archives
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/ted-kaczynski?sort=pubdate_desc&rows=50
Thats really too bad. I was hoping to write him before he passed. While his methods werent the best I think he was quite brilliant
All men must die; he made his mark, a warning to humanity about the threat known as Technology.
He's free from the cage, and we have work to do.
· make the AT ideology known
· organize among capable and worthy people
· engage in practical actions
· connect with wild Nature
Raddle
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski found dead in prison cell
Submitted by GoddamnedVoodooMagic 24 days ago in anticiv
Found dead in the woods woulda been a better ending. I'm sure we'll hear from opportunistic leftists and their war against post-left ecofash primmies, I'll sit this one out.
yea close r/@ early lol
Leftists are a bane to any notions of freedom.
I went over there so you wouldn't have to. https://archive.vn/8EXEP
Hopefully this will also spell the end to Ted's weird hold on (some) anglo anarchists.
If they still clung to him when he publicly denounced anarchy, his death probably won't change anything.
i think this will just make it worse, "oh poor ted died in a high facility prison"
Definitely not the be all, end all of anticiv thought.
Ted wasn't anti-civ, he was anti-industry/technology. There's some overlap between these two, but they are not the same.
No, I'm well aware, but a lot of anticiv folks are inspired by Ted, and if you take his ideas to the full conclusion, then you get there. My apologies, should've clarified that he's not the be all, end all of anticiv adjacent thought.
Well. If you are interest the Raddle dark Cabal sacrificed him to achieve green unity and defeat the arch demonic entity Leviathan and their greyface army. It was a clean operation and the results from the akasha were so expensive that the ripple of magnetic waves chilled down from the astral light through the reddit userbase
He had a good run.
Despite being anti-civ, I don't know how I feel about this guy. Admittedly I'm critical of primitivism, because from my understanding primitivists want to go back to a society before civilization but don't account for civilization forming out of these societes again so I'd rather have a new society that prevents civilization from forming after civilization gets destroyed locally. When it comes to Ted Kaczynski, maybe I'm misinterpreting some stuff, but he seemed like a bit of a chud. Admittedly some early anarchists could have some bigoted views and we understand those were flaws, but I don't think Ted considered himself an anarchist on top of that. Just to inform myself, what specific new ideas did he bring that had an influence on anti-civ critique and post-left ideas in general? If he was the first to bring up these ideas and there were built upon by anarchists, that is one thing, but if there were anarchists that had similar ideas prior to him, what makes us specifically bring Kaczynski up as an important figure?
I don't think Ted considered himself an anarchist
Yeah he repeatedly denounced anarchists
Yeah, do you have any idea how he got somewhat popular in anti-civ spaces? Maybe he isn't as popular as I'm perceiving him to be, but it is just what I notice. Is it a situation where he had some good ideas, but the figure themselves is more popular than they should be, or did he just say some things that were previously already said?
My best guesses in regards to how: He got millions of people to read about ideas that (in agreement or disagreement) didn't at all fit into any of the usual left-center-right categories — at a time when economists declared the end of history: democracy and capitalism for everyone and forever. Leftists failed to reposition themselves in response to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they were (or still are) holding on to Cold War assumptions. Kaczynski's image was in all the newspapers, made public enemy #1 — perfect material to weaponize, and lots of memetic potential. Unabomber for President and all that.
In short, he was the Elvis Presley of anti tech thought. No, he didn't invent it, or add anything new, but he got it out into the hearts and minds of those who otherwise would've not known.
I'd go even as far as to call him the 'redditor' of the anti tech thought.
because he mentioned anarchism in his manifesto and most people are very surface level with politics and don't read further than the basics. he later admitted he didn't know anything about anarchy at the time and was just using the word because it had street cred or whatever. when he learned about anarchy, he decided he didn't like it and denounced it in favor of a revolutionary vanguard similar to Maoism, but the baby anprims aren't going to read beyond his old manifesto
The vanguardism is one of my biggest criticisms of Ted, along with his humanism and natalism.
Moreso that he put it into action, not necessarily that he reinvented the wheel or whatever. Which, not every thinker needs to advance "the field", I think. Much like how not every musician needs to be original.
Ted, among others like Thoreau, Emerson, Wilde, Nietzsche, Novatore, Abbey, Stirner, Crowley, the ALF, etc., radicalized me quite a lot, and as a result, my early understanding of anarchy, which is my current understanding of anarchy but expanded a lot more. Individualistic, and pro Nature. I had no leftist/communist phase. So, while I have a lot to criticize Ted for, I also took a bunch of influence from him.
I had no leftist/communist phase.
This is something we don't talk about much, but it needs to be stressed every once in a while. The story about how everyone goes liberal/socdem to socialist to ancom, through this or that pipeline, it is fairly useless for anything other than breadtube content. Not sure what the way out of this is, but we would probably do us some favors with a baseline uncertainty about where and how becoming anarchist actually takes place.
I'd say the best way to avoid it is to just introduce dolks to shit that isn't Marx, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Malatesta, etc. That's what happened to me. Didn't read those until I was 18 or 19, two or three years after I had gotten into anarchist thought. Which is why I cannot relate to or even be sympathetic towards a lot of leftist stuff, nor lay off on it one bit. Because that was never me. I was always turned off by communism, and given my intro to anarchy, thought it to be completely and utterly antithetical to my ideas of it.
I always tell people that I never came up through leftism, and thus, it's alien to me. Many posties still have communist residue sticking to them, from being unable to criticize Marx or socialism or unions, to finding value in populism or democracy. Luckily, I bypassed that route altogether.
I turned anarchist in my mid/late 20s. Had a ~decade of being opposed to democracy, was disillusioned by IWW type organizing, got bored with Marx's Kapital, long before I read my first anarchist texts. Was a real coming home moment for me.
I'm sure I have some commie residue sticking to me, I'm fine with it. Bonanno and gang are a cool bunch.
Well, tbf, Bonnano is wayyy cooler than the average commie
I actually started out with breadtube, but while I was on Reddit and I saw the various arguments between left anarchists and post-left/anti-civ arguments, I was thinking "This seems very unnecessary and unproductive" and I was feeling sympathetic to post-leftists and such, even if I didn't consider myself post-left at the time. I looked into stuff and started developing a proper grasp of these ideas, and now I'm here.
Damn...