The name of the archive is The Ted K Archive. It was set up mainly for people to be able to research the threat of fascism and reactionaries, with a tonne of critiques of Ted Kaczynski‘s philosophy included (the anti-tech terrorist from the 90s), as Kaczynski was a reactionary, and he has a lot of eco-fascist fans.
We also worked on archiving a lot of analyses of fascist circles that then get copied over to the anarchist library like this book:
Ideally, anarchist and leftist community centers, squats, book publishers, and online archives would avoid platforming and promoting Ted K’s texts, so as not to associate anarchism with anti-tech vanguardism. Most anarchists would agree that hosting the complete works of Mao under the banner of The Anarchist Library—simply because he was once an anarchist—would be an unjustifiably embarrassing endorsement of those ideas, just as prominently displaying Mao’s collected works in the window of an anarchist bookstore would be. So, I think it’d be good for those texts be left to anti-fascist research archives like ours. We are a distinct research project that hosts his writings alongside extensive critiques of both his ideas and those of his supporters.
This post is party a way to seek suggestions for renaming the archive and rewriting the main page & about page to help clarify all this.
I’m 90% sure I’d prefer to keep the short domain name we have currently — The Ted K Archive — as it’s similar to the ‘Ted Kaczynski Papers’, which is a special collections archive at the Uni. of Michigan, and ‘The Definitive UNABOM Page’, which was an old online archive in the 90s. However, it’d be interesting to see what other names people can come up with.
We picked a short domain name that we thought would draw in people like liberal true crime fans and academic political violence researchers. One of the main goals of the website is to use interest in the story of Ted’s life to recommend lots of left-anarchist critiques of Ted’s philosophy that might draw a few people over to the various left-anarchist potential remedies offered in such texts.
If I did go ahead with changing it, it would just involve redirecting people to a new domain name for a few months until everyone remembered the new name, then letting the old domain go dead.
Or, I could keep the two domains going for as long as anyone wanted to donate to specifically keep the old domain going in some form. Maybe after a while I could stop redirecting right away, and instead have the old one’s main page be a whole different pitch for what’s on the website, and just say that it would redirect to a new domain after people click on any of the links.
I think many liberals who dislike Ted’s essays — as well as die-hard anti-tech critics who object to the many texts critiquing Ted — would prefer the website to have a name like “The Ted K Stinks Archive,” making it unmistakably clear that it is an anti-Ted K project. However, a name like that feels too churlish for a serious research subject. I want to remain respectful of Ted as a human being, someone whose brother is still alive and loved him, and also of the bombing victims and their families, who would reasonably expect a serious academic research archive. I also recognize that Ted popularized some valuable critiques of technology use, even though I’m still glad of new scientific and technological advancements.
It’s kind of like if anarcho-primitivists happened to be the first people with the energy to archive a bunch of Abdullah Ocalan’s writings, along with a pile of critiques. They might enjoy arguing about naturalist philosophy, but they’d probably get tired fast of people assuming that running the archive meant endorsing the terrorist violence Ocalan’s group carried out in the 1980s. At that point, they’d have a branding problem: how do you make it clear you’re hosting material for debate, not cheering it on?
That’s basically the same issue here in reverse. How should pro-tech, lefty anarchists rebrand an archive about Ted K to signal engagement without endorsement?
One reason I like the simplicity of the current name is; even if we changed the name I think people would still refer to it in shorthand as ‘the ted k archive’, like someone might ask ‘what archive are you talking about?’ And it would feel natural to reply ‘the Ted K archive’. Even anti-tech people who don’t like that we archive a lot of critiques of their ideology refer to it as ‘the unofficial ted k archive’.
We could rename it “Critiques of Kaczynski”, though I would kinda like it to be clear in the name that it’s a big online archive of some sort like ‘The _______ Library/Archive/Papers/Page’. The critique part is really important, as I wouldn’t want to platform Ted’s writings without disclaimers at the top of many of his writings and lots of critique texts on the website. But yeah, I wouldn’t want to signal that it’s solely critiques also, as the archive is currently split into eight main categories: Introductory Texts, Original Texts, Primary Source Documents on Ted K, The Collected Works of Ted K, Analyses of Ted’s Ideas & Actions, Suggested Reading, Broader Topics & The Criminal Justice System.
We could rename it “The Beyond Kaczynski Archive”. Although it might still be related as a ‘post-Kaczynskist, fairly positive about his ideology, archive’, like the way a ‘post-Trotskyist’ might be interpreted.
I think we offer well-written disclaimers on the main page, but I’m open to arguments it should be more detailed in various ways:
One goal of this project has been to help clarify the distinction between Ted’s ideas and actually anarchist philosophy in the hopes that it will help encourage more people to positively re-evaluate anarchist philosophy.
We recognize Ted had some good critiques of technology and the psychology of many people on the left and right. So, we do value living a more tech minimalist lifestyle and forming small groups with different objectives to your average left-winger. However, we still see the value in small far-left groups helping draw people over to a radically different world over a long period of time by agitating from the radical fringe. So, making centre-left policies look more reasonable in comparison to centrist politics, then the tried and tested policies of the future, then far-left, then far-left and anarchist projects the majority global reality.
Although the people Ted targeted held a wide range of views on many issues, I found it reassuring to read this request — quoted below — from William Dennison, the final person Ted sent a mail bomb to. Understanding one’s adversaries is important, and anti-tech vanguardists and eco-fascists are certainly adversaries of anarchists and progressives.
I respectfully urge the court, Your Honor, to open all the Kaczynski materials, including the decoded journals, to public scrutiny in the expectation that valuable public safety information may be obtained and used to save many lives. Academician analysts will certainly be able to draw a more accurate picture of the mind of a killer and the connections to eco-terrorism if the original materials are in their hands.
Similarly with the about page, I think there’s enough well-written disclaimers for people to get a sense of what the online archive is about:
We, everyone who has contributed, have archived:
A ton of primary source documents on Ted’s life and ideas.
Documents analyzing the effect he had on the public’s understanding of radical environmentalists, anarchists, terrorists, criminals, the mentally ill & simple mental neurodivergence.
Lots of great suggested reading on anarchism & other issues.
We, the archivists who bought the website domain, are pro-tech anarchists, but we just find his life story and impact really interesting.
So, we’re hoping the website will continue to draw people in with similar politics to him and similar mental health issues frankly. Then for the cold hard reality of the primary source reading material, the epic-ness of the suggested reading material and the inviting discussion spaces connected to the website, to all have a deprogramming effect and be a mental health support.
For example, a popular text on the website for a while was simply a book on how to Unfuck Your Friendships and the associated discord server plays host to discussions between people encouraging each other to think rationally about their depression diagnosis.
Also, there are fans of Ted K who literally glorify the Khmer Rouge’s genocide and burning down of cities, so having books about that genocide on the archive to hopefully, yes deprogram, simple dogmatic reasoning, holding people back from compassionately relating to how fucked up a policy that was is we think a good thing.
The reason we’re saying all this is simply to promote transparency. We think due to the undesirability of anti-tech philosophy, opening all its rarer arguments up to scrutiny is likely going to have a positive outcome in drawing in more critical analysis and leading more people to reject the ideas.
This archive aims to serve a similar role to the existence of other archives dedicated to tragic events like 9/11. Ideally, a 9/11 memorial archive would include documents on (1) the terrible harm to families and firefighters as the long-term victims of that attack, as well as (2) documents explaining the grievance narratives of the perpetrators, such as documents on imperialist wars, intelligence agency tricks, extractive corporations, etc. Plus, (3) documents on actions that could be pursued going forward, to try to reduce the likelihood of similar tragic events happening again.
So, with regards to Ted, we see part of the solution to reducing the emergence of similarly alienated people like Ted as; agitating for rewilding at least 50% of the world, boycotting animal agriculture and living a minimum viable use tech lifestyle to partly provide this incentive, plus forming housing and worker co-ops for kids general well being growing up. For further reading on the general politics of archivists, see Clay’s contributions to these two texts: