The Unabomber, Terrorism, and Performance
A Short Essay on the Transmission of Ideas

The Logical Crime

Albert Camus in his 1954 essay, The Rebel wrote, "There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined. We are living in an era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and they have a perfect alibi: philosophy."

With these words, Camus began his extraordinary investigation into the causes of the bloodshed and darkness of the twentieth century, and it is abundantly clear that they reach far beyond the specific circumstances of the Second World War. Rebellion in its purest form, Camus asserts, seeks the complete and utter destruction of one form of life for another. Which leads us, perhaps unwillingly, to the conclusion that real revolution is without compromise, that everyday life, as struck by a revolutionary impulse, would be shattered into its component parts and reassembled according to a new logic. Without a doubt, the Unabomber is one of Camus' dangerous logicians, an individual who makes use of violence to draw attention to himself and broadcast his ideas into a global sphere, but his techniques -- letters that threaten and cut deals with the media, epic manuscripts and untraceable mail bombs bring something else to the table -- the fact that terrorists, regardless of whatever specific ideology they promote, are engaged in the practice of theater.

In the case of the Unabomber, his work has begun to revolve around himself, an accelerated orbit of his own pop-culture character as he writes it -- the uncatchable man, the phantom, the regular guy who's giving it back to sophisticated law enforcement agencies. As part and parcel of the frenzied media attention on him, the speculation about his real name, former college professors and possible whereabouts have only cemented and transformed his relationship with his audience into a permanent institution. It seems that for as long as the Unabomber refrains from threatening large masses of people, as long as his violence is confined and restricted to those he disagrees with, he comes close to becoming, if he isn't already, an American folk hero.

Transfixed by the torrent of images radiating from the television, we see that those who demonstrate impassioned fluency with the symbolism and means of destruction, the terrorists themselves, seek to remake the world in their own political image, and also share this domain with artists who intend to create their own separate, visible revolutions.

Strange as it may seem, it is not a coincidence that the language of the two aspirants can be identical. In 1961, Guy Debord in a Situationist manifesto exhorts, "This culture and this politics are worn out and it is not without reason that most people take no interest in them. The revolutionary transformation of everyday life, which is not reserved for some vague future but is placed immediately before us by the development of capitalism and its unbearable demands -- the alternative being the reinforcement of modern slavery." Debord's artistic revolution, a symbolic rebellion against the spiritually deadening conveniences offered by modern life sputtered and went out -- but not before the massive student disturbances erupted in France in 1968. Onward flows the current of revolutionary language. Along similar lines, in the introduction to the manifesto the Washington Post and the New York Times printed under duress, the Unabomber writes, "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in 'advanced' countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world."

In any case, the first stage of rebellion is to carefully identify and isolate what to rebel against, and find the yoke that must be thrown off. The Unabomber, like the Situationists and a cast of hundreds dating back to the origin of the industrial revolution, chooses to target the machinery of the modern world -- what some would call its character. He adamantly refuses to accept that technology is the destiny and liberator of the human race, and instead views it in terms of the politics of resources, the death of the environment, and finally the migration of the human community toward greater and greater isolation. If it were possible to take a random telephone poll with ideas cribbed from Unabomber manuscripts, and people were asked to agree or disagree with his conclusions, probably fifty percent of those interviewed would mumble their agreement.

Despite the fact that the Unabomber expresses solidly Luddite sensibilities, he is a fairly astute critic of the social implications of technology and industry in his own right.

After examining the manuscript printed by the Washington Post it seems that the Unabomber uses bombs, extremely successfully, to create a vehicle for his ideas, and in this respect, the individual responsible for the attacks is somewhat unique as far as terrorists go. Unlike the Oklahoma City bombers (an act that he has stated he deplored), the Unabomber does not go after his victims in an indiscriminate fashion --there is a selectivity in his targets; he unflinchingly displays a penchant for picking and choosing victims which expresses his underlying philosophy. They are always people he believes represent the modern industrial system or people who promote it with measured zeal.

There is a compelling similarity between artists who use performance to promote a system of ideas, and terrorism, which relies on the psychological reaction to threats, both potential and real, on the delicate mechanisms of everyday life. Daily existence, the disheveled assortment of commonplace objects and mundane circumstances, happens to be the material for both the terrorist and the artist because extraordinary energies are released when something unexpected occurs. The Ordinary and its susceptibility to subversion is possibly the most tempting and slow-moving target of all  not unlike an undefended immune system, but perhaps even more vulnerable to sabotage because once aspects of everyday life have broken down, new structures can be created in their place, demanded by the vacuum. By way of example, Yahya Ayyash, the Palestinian known as "The Engineer" was assassinated recently by a bomb made to look like a cellular telephone that detonated when he brought it to his ear. According to press reports, he was also the bomb maker who pioneered the suicide explosives worn by Hamas members on buses in Israel. The ante goes up by degrees, from one horrific act to the next.

Relying on this exact principle (the capacity for shock) to find an audience for their stories and images, the television takes the work of both the artist and the terrorist and forges it into a commodity available for ready consumption. We come upon the phrase "terror-artist" for an individual or group who is creative (in a negative sense) with the emotions of fear, dread, and horror. But clearly, without the information technology at the disposal of the media, the terrorist would not have an occupation, having instead to rely on much different means for political coercion. One simple, although bitter, truth is that the media and the terrorist exist in a state of symbiosis. The role of one institution is amplified and reinforced by the other. Both the terrorist and the artist need "exposure," which is a curious term in and of itself, but "exposure" can only be supplied by elements of the media.

Like everything, media exposure has its own price, an internal, fluid value which is sometimes represented by cash (the cost per unit time of broadcast) and at others, by the magnitude of disaster. Since it can be bought and sold, optioned and traded on, media exposure is a kind of global currency that does not respond to political or national boundaries. Terrorist acts, perhaps more directly than we might hope for, sell products by the millions, and it is that same shock and impact, as reckoned by the news organizations which pays for the air time. Not surprisingly, both emotions, as measures of force on the individual, are quantities intimately known to anyone who has given thought to staging a theater production -- a conspiracy without conspirators. As a work of performance, it is the terrorist who transforms the simple act of boarding a bus into traversing a zone of fear. Reality for the passengers is tipped on its head -- whether a bomb detonates or not -- and through this mechanism of expectation, the work of the terror-artist establishes itself.

But the definition of the word Terrorism has its own history. It initially signified a campaign by a government to rule the population through fear. Drawing its first meaning from the Terror of the French Revolution, it has now come to mean something else entirely. Although fear is still an operant aspect of the word, a one hundred and eighty degree shift in meaning has taken place, because the practice of terrorism, at least from the point of view of the mainstream media, confines itself to groups or individuals opposed to a certain system of government -- the disaffected and poor in the population. This is a shift away from state terror against the individual. Terrorism has now become the ultimate medium of individuals reacting to oppression, imagined or real, a true poor man's weapon. If we are lacking a definition of the term we can turn to the Unabomber himself. In a letter to the New York Times last year, a person identifying himself as the person responsible for the attacks gave his own definition of the word, "We distinguish between terrorism and sabotage. By terrorism we mean actions motivated by a desire to influence the development of a society and intended to cause injury or death to human beings. By sabotage we mean similarly motivated actions intended to destroy property without injuring human beings."

Excessive Postage

The Unabomber, like many artists and those who strive to influence culture, seeks to broadcast his ideas on the widest scale possible. What is interesting about him is not precisely his drive for recognition and fame, but the simple fact that he is motivated to commit his crimes to achieve mainstream acceptance of his ideas. In a strange, ironic twist which can only happen in America, the Unabomber was one of the most popular Halloween costumes last year. Hooded sweatshirt, reflective glasses, neatly wrapped parcel -- unabombers abounded then and now. Anyone could be him -- he could be anyone. And it is more than likely that on the evening of October 31, 1995 the real, middle-aged Unabomber passed child-sized likenesses of himself as portrayed by an FBI artist years before.

In the way of a signature, the Unabomber always wraps his devices to the point of being meticulous and places excessive postage on the parcel to ensure that it will reach its destination. The packages are wrapped on all sides, packing tape covering each corner and seam of the box as neatly as possible. Every device the bomber makes has a crafted feel to it...

Bomb Chronology

Here is a brief summary of the Unabomber's actions: From 1978 to the present a series of sixteen bombings, all perpetrated by the same group or individual, have gone unsolved by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. His first known bombs targeted Northwestern University in Illinois on May 25, 1978 and May 9, 1979. The first was discovered in the Engineering department parking lot and exploded when a police officer opened the disguised parcel. The second bomb was placed in a common area in the University's Technological Institute, and injured a graduate student who opened it. A third bomb exploded in the cargo hold of an aircraft, causing the plane to make an emergency landing. Passengers suffered smoke inhalation. Other bombs, all made to look like parcels exploded in Chicago, on November 15 1979, and on June 10 1980. The president of United Airlines was the Unabomber's target in the second Chicago bombing, he was injured by the blast. Then came the incidents at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City 1981, Vanderbilt University, Nashville in Tennessee, May 5, 1982, the University of California, Berkeley, July 2 1982, the Boeing Fabrication Division in Auburn Washington, 1985, and the University of Michigan in 1985. Then, in Sacramento, California Hugh Scrutton was killed when he tried to remove a roadblock from the street in front of his computer rental store. On to Salt Lake City, 1987, and to Tiburon, California, 1993 (a package bomb sent to a well-known geneticist). Then at Yale University, a professor Gerstner, the author of a recent book about the evolution of technology, received a package bomb which severely injured him.

Despite the use of unlimited resources and sophisticated evidence gathering techniques and the presence of hundreds of leads, the FBI has been unsuccessful in apprehending the person or group responsible for the attacks. Two hundred agents are currently assigned to the case and a decidedly corpulent one million dollar reward has been offered for information leading the arrest of the perpetrator or perpetrators. The FBI, considerably embarrassed by their inability to get their man, have appealed to the public to provide clues to the Unabomber's whereabouts. Leads are fervently pursued but nothing surfaces.

The FBI dubbed the case UNABOM, a false acronym that refers to the bombers earlier targets: universities and airlines -- a construction that caused the popular press to ascribe the attacks to a "unabomber". although the perpetrator has consistently signed his numerous letters with the initials, FC. In letters he has written to various media sources, the Unabomber explained that the letters signified Freedom Club, the name of his organization. The bomber never refers to himself in the first person singular and instead makes extensive use of the collective "we." Over the Internet, the FBI has released a personality profile they believe fits the person responsible for the attacks, in which they state that the Unabomber is a solitary figure and that the organization FC probably only contains one member, the bomber himself. It is a profile that contains contradictions and is almost certainly flawed. Below is that description.

FBI Profile of Unabomber

A recluse, white man in his late 30's or 40's with at least a high school education. He is familiar with university life, too. He is a neat dresser with a meticulously organized life, probably likes to make lists, and is probably quiet and an ideal neighbor. He has low self-esteem, most likely has had problems dealing with women -- because of his physical flaws, either real or perceived. If he does have a relationship, it would be with a younger woman.

He fashions his bombs from makeshift material and scrap, and prides himself on the intricate construction of his bombs. He crafts and polishes parts by hand, even though they can be bought at a hardware store. He scratches "FC" on most of his bombs.

The Instantaneous Myth

The Unabomber acts according to certain patterns. He does not always act to kill his targets -- that is: not all of his victims are meant for destruction. Out of all the people who have received packages from him, only a few of them have been delivered bombs strong enough to kill them. They have only maimed and injured, which is by itself, frightening enough.

The chronology shows that the explosions are the punctuation of the Unabomber's arguments, the periods and commas, footnotes and reference. This particular feat has never been mentioned in the mainstream press to my knowledge, but is suggested by a fragment from one of his letters where he states how much he deplores the "indiscriminate" killing and death of the Oklahoma City bombing, a bombing that did not target specific individuals, but the entire institution of Government and whose victims were mostly children. The bomber here, apparently found fault with the motives and methods of his competition.

If early theater was meant to be played out over hours or even days, then the form practiced by terrorists is far more compressed. A resolution that comes down to fractions of seconds, the text and plot of which is conveyed by photographs and 3 second video clips. It sometimes happens that a bystander has a hand-held camera recording at the instant of an attack and the tape is almost always snapped up and broadcast by news agencies; this is how the sequence of events is transmitted, together with the ideas of the group responsible and the suffering of the victims. Our commentators are forbidden from analyzing the event in dramatic terms because they are part of the event themselves, so the domain where terrorism is practiced is without critics, people who are outside the events themselves who carefully mull over the particular (inverted) merits and symbolism of the act.

Real violence (the bullets in the gun aren't blanks anymore), when carried out for a global audience, dispenses with the illusionistic practice of the theater, a method which places large bets on its ability to suspend disbelief the traditional way -- before an audience, in a room. Terrorism is an unleashed and therefore an inevitable descendant of theater, the Greek tradition wrenched from its polite context, a natural but simultaneously modern force that is outside the realm of the stage, where it was once confined and protected.

Terrorist acts are always carefully constructed for maximum impact, and on some level the leaders of the terrorist cells are making what ultimately become aesthetic decisions, always conscious of symbols and dates that are rich with meaning for cultures where they work (The World Trade Center, the Brooklyn Bridge). They have methods for moving the audience this way or that, even some elementary stagecraft. At the end of the investigation we see that the warm, familiar terminology of theater -- staging, props, script, roles, expectation, and suspense -- falls perfectly in line with this new form of drama.

Endnote

In 1974, in the middle of the night, a bomb (pipe, gunpowder, or plastique) was placed on the doorstep of the South African Consul General's residence following riots in Soweto. The Consul General lived with his family on a residential street in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. The bomb detonated, blowing out the windows of all the houses for several blocks on Scott, Green and Vallejo streets, effectively subtracting a large part of the Consul general's front porch. A witness to the explosion said that the blast was not defined in time, not a burst like a shot from a gun, but more like a roaring which seemed to go on for thirty seconds or longer. The world shuddered. And when the roaring was over, the eyewitness, who was nine years old at the time, saw that the glass blown from the houses reflected the streetlights down the entire length of the street. It seemed to him that because of the glass, which reflected the lights from the street lights, the street resembled a river.

I was the witness.

P. Robertson is a contributing editor to P-Form who lives and writes in Chicago.