Manifestos: Ted Kaczynski: Man Of His Own Principles, Dead At 81

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Kaczynski's typescript sent to The Washington Post
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Industrial Society and Its Future, generally known as the Unabomber
Manifesto, is a 1995 anti-technology essay by Ted Kaczynski, the
"Unabomber". The manifesto contends that the Industrial Revolution
began a harmful process of natural destruction brought about by
technology, while forcing humans to adapt to machinery, creating a
sociopolitical order that suppresses human freedom and potential. The
35,000-word manifesto formed the ideological foundation of Kaczynski's
1978–1995 mail bomb campaign, designed to protect wilderness by
hastening the collapse of industrial society.

It was printed in a supplement to The Washington Post after Kaczynski
offered to end his bombing campaign for national exposure.[1] Attorney
General Janet Reno authorized the printing to help the FBI identify
the author. The printings and publicity around them eclipsed the
bombings in notoriety, and led to Kaczynski's identification by his
brother, David Kaczynski.

The manifesto argues against accepting individual technological
advancements as purely positive without accounting for their overall
effect, which includes the fall of small-scale living, and the rise of
uninhabitable cities. While originally regarded as a thoughtful
critique of modern society, with roots in the work of academic authors
such as Jacques Ellul, Desmond Morris, and Martin Seligman,[2]
Kaczynski's 1996 trial polarized public opinion around the essay, as
his court-appointed lawyers tried to justify their insanity defense
around characterizing the manifesto as the work of a madman, and the
prosecution lawyers rested their case on it being produced by a lucid
mind.

While Kaczynski's actions were generally condemned, his manifesto
expressed ideas that continue to be generally shared among the
American public.[3] A 2017 Rolling Stone article stated that Kaczynski
was an early adopter of the concept that:

        "We give up a piece of ourselves whenever we adjust to conform
to society's standards. That, and we're too plugged in. We're letting
technology take over our lives, willingly."[4]

The Labadie Collection of the University of Michigan houses a copy of
Industrial Society and its Future, which has been translated into
French, remains on college reading lists, and was updated in
Kaczynski's 2016 Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, which defends his
political philosophy in greater depth.
Background and publication
The handwritten draft of the manifesto
Kaczynski's typewriter

Between 1978 and 1995, Ted Kaczynski engaged in a mail bomb
campaign[5] against people involved with modern technology.[6] His
initial targets were universities and airlines, which the FBI
shortened as UNABOM. In June 1995, Kaczynski offered to end his
campaign if one of several publications (the Washington Post, New York
Times, or Penthouse) would publish his critique of technology, titled
Industrial Society and Its Future, which became widely known as the
"Unabomber Manifesto".[7]

Kaczynski believed that his violence, as direct action when words were
insufficient, would draw others to pay attention to his critique.[8]
He wanted his ideas to be taken seriously.[9] The media debated the
ethics of publishing the manifesto under duress.[10][7] The United
States Attorney General Janet Reno advocated for the essay to be
shared so that a reader could potentially recognize its author.[7]

During that summer, the FBI worked with literature scholars to compare
the Unabomber's oeuvre against the works of Joseph Conrad, including
The Secret Agent, based on their shared themes.[11][12]

The Washington Post published the manifesto in full within a
supplement on September 19, 1995, splitting the cost with The New York
Times. According to a statement, the Post had the "mechanical ability
to distribute a separate section in all copies of its daily
newspaper."[13][14] A Berkeley-based chess book publisher began
publishing copies in paperback the next month, without Kaczynski's
consent.[15]

Kaczynski had drafted an essay of the ideas that would become the
manifesto in 1971, which declared that technological progress would
extinguish individual liberty and that proselytizing libertarian
philosophy would be insufficient without direct action.[9] The
original, handwritten manifesto sold for $20,053 in a 2011 auction of
Kaczynski's assets, along with typewritten editions and their
typewriters, to raise restitution for his victims.[16][17]
Contents
Ted Kaczynski after his 1996 arrest

At 35,000 words, Industrial Society and Its Future lays very detailed
blame on technology for destroying human-scale communities.[7]
Kaczynski contends that the Industrial Revolution harmed the human
race by developing into a sociopolitical order that subjugates human
needs beneath its own. This system, he wrote, destroys nature and
suppresses individual freedom. In short, humans adapt to machines
rather than vice versa, resulting in a society hostile to human
potential.[9]

Kaczynski indicts technological progress for its destruction of small
human communities and the rise of uninhabitable cities controlled by
an unaccountable state. He contends that this relentless technological
progress will not dissipate on its own, because individual
technological advancements are seen as good despite the sum effects of
this progress. Kaczynski describes modern society as defending against
dissent an order in which individuals are "adjusted" to fit the system
and those outside the system are seen as "bad".[9]

This tendency, he says, gives rise to expansive police powers,
mind-numbing mass media, and indiscriminate promotion of drugs.[9] He
criticizes both big government and big business as the inevitable
result of industrialization,[7] and holds scientists and
"technophiles" responsible for recklessly pursuing power through
technological advancements.[9]

He argues that this industrialized system's collapse will be
devastating and that quickening the collapse—before industrialization
further progresses—will mitigate the devastation's impact. He
justifies the trade-offs that come with losing industrial society as
being worth the cost.[9] Kaczynski's ideal revolution seeks not to
overthrow government, but rather, the economic and technological
foundation of modern society.[18] He seeks to destroy existing society
and protect the wilderness, the antithesis of technology.[9]
Influences

Industrial Society and Its Future echoed contemporary critics of
technology and industrialization such as John Zerzan, Jacques
Ellul,[19] Rachel Carson, Lewis Mumford, and E. F. Schumacher.[20] Its
idea of the "disruption of the power process" similarly echoed social
critics who emphasize that the lack of meaningful work is a primary
cause of social problems, including Mumford, Paul Goodman, and Eric
Hoffer.[20] Aldous Huxley addressed its general theme in Brave New
World, to which Kaczynski refers in his text. Kaczynski's ideas of
"oversocialization" and "surrogate activities" recall Sigmund Freud's
Civilization and Its Discontents and its theories of rationalization
and sublimation (a term which Kaczynski uses three times to describe
"surrogate activities").[21]

However, a 2021 study by Sean Fleming shows that many of these
similarities are coincidental.[22] Kaczynski had not read Lewis
Mumford, Paul Goodman, or John Zerzan until after he submitted
Industrial Society and Its Future to The New York Times and The
Washington Post. There is no evidence that he read Freud, Carson, or
Schumacher. Instead, Fleming argues, Industrial Society and Its Future
"is a synthesis of ideas from [...] French philosopher Jacques Ellul,
British zoologist Desmond Morris, and American psychologist Martin
Seligman."[22]

Kaczynski's understanding of technology, his idea of maladaptation,
and his critique of leftism are largely derived from Ellul's 1954
book, The Technological Society. Kaczynski's concept of "surrogate
activities" comes from Desmond Morris's concept of
"survival-substitute activities", while his concept of "the power
process" combines Morris's concept of "the Stimulus Struggle" with
Seligman's concept of learned helplessness. Fleming's study relies on
archival material from the Labadie Collection at the University of
Michigan, including a "secret" set of footnotes that Kaczynski did not
include in the Washington Post version of Industrial Society and Its
Future.[22]

The scholar George Michael of Vanderbilt University Press accused
Kaczynski of "collecting philosophical and environmental clichés to
reinforce common American concerns".[7]
Aftermath

Kaczynski had intended for his mail bombing campaign to raise
awareness for the message in Industrial Society and Its Future, which
he wanted to be seriously regarded.[9] With its initial publication in
1995, the manifesto was received as intellectually deep and sane.
Writers described the manifesto's sentiment as familiar.

To Kirkpatrick Sale, the Unabomber was "a rational man" with
reasonable beliefs about technology. He recommended the manifesto's
opening sentence for the forefront of American politics. Cynthia Ozick
likened the work to an American Raskolnikov (of Dostoevsky's Crime and
Punishment), as a "philosophical criminal of exceptional intelligence
and humanitarian purpose ... driven to commit murder out of an
uncompromising idealism".[9] Numerous websites engaging with the
manifesto's message appeared online.[9]

While Kaczynski's effort to publish his manifesto, more so than the
bombings themselves, brought him into the American news,[23] and the
manifesto was widely spread via newspapers, book reprints, and the
Internet, ultimately, the ideas in the manifesto were eclipsed by
reaction to the violence of the bombings, and did not spark the
serious public consideration he was looking for.[23][24]

Reading the manifesto, Linda Patrik, David Kaczynski's wife, suspected
her husband's brother authorship due to his linguistic mannerisms, and
commented such information to her husband. At first, he disbelieved
that his own brother could be the author of the manifesto, but upon
comparing the previous letters that they shared, he found the
irrefutable proof; one of Ted's mannerisms was found in one of the
letters that they exchanged, just as it was written on the manifesto.
Upon this discovery, David Kaczynski notified the FBI.[9]
Effect of the trial

After Ted Kaczynski's April 1996 arrest, he wanted to use the trial to
disseminate his views,[7] but the judge denied him permission to
represent himself. Instead, his court-appointed lawyers planned an
insanity defense that would discredit Industrial Society and Its
Future against his will. The prosecution's psychiatrists counter-cited
the manifesto as evidence of the Unabomber's lucidity, and Kaczynski's
sanity was tried in court and in the media. Kaczynski responded by
taking a plea bargain for life imprisonment without parole in May
1998.

Kaczynski's biographer argued that the public should look beyond this
"genius-or-madman debate", and view the manifesto as reflecting
normal, common, unexceptional ideas shared by Americans, sharing their
distrust over the direction of civilization. While most Americans
abhorred his violence, adherents to his anti-technology message have
celebrated his call to question technology and preserve wilderness.[9]
>From his Colorado maximum security prison,[9] he continued to clarify
his philosophy with other writers through correspondence, until his
death in 2023.[7]
Legacy

Part of Kaczynski's manifesto was cited by the inventor and author
Raymond Kurzweil in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, and then
mentioned in the article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" by computer
scientist Bill Joy. In the autumn of 1998, Joy recalls, "Ray and I
were both speakers at George Gilder's Telecosm conference, and I
encountered him by chance in the bar of the hotel after both our
sessions were over. I was sitting with John Searle, a Berkeley
philosopher who studies consciousness. While we were talking, Ray
approached and a conversation began, the subject of which haunts me to
this day."

As of 2000, Industrial Society and Its Future remained on college
reading lists and the green anarchist and eco-extremist movements came
to hold Kaczynski's writing in high regard, with the manifesto finding
a niche audience among critics of technology, such as the speculative
science fiction and anarcho-primitivist communities.[25][9][26] It has
since been translated into French by Jean-Marie Apostolidès.[27]

Since 2000, the Labadie Collection houses a copy of the manifesto,
along with the Unabomber's other writings, letters and papers, after
he officially designated the University of Michigan to receive them.
They have since become one of the most popular archives in their
special collections.[28]

In 2017, an article in Rolling Stone stated that Kaczynski was an
early adopter of the idea that:

        "We give up a piece of ourselves whenever we adjust to conform
to society's standards. That, and we're too plugged in. We're letting
technology take over our lives, willingly."[4]

In 2018, New York magazine stated that the manifesto generated later
interest from neoconservatives, environmentalists, and
anarcho-primitivists.[29]

In December 2020, a man who was arrested at Charleston International
Airport on a charge of "conveying false information regarding
attempted use of a destructive device" after he falsely threatened
that he had a bomb was found to have been carrying the Unabomber
manifesto.[30][31]
Reprints and further work

Feral House republished the manifesto in Kaczynski's first book, the
2010 Technological Slavery, alongside correspondence and an
interview.[32][33] Kaczynski was unsatisfied with the book and his
lack of control in its publication.[34] Kaczynski's 2016 Anti-Tech
Revolution: Why and How updates his 1995 manifesto with more relevant
references and defends his political philosophy in greater
depth.[34][35]
See also

    Accelerationism
    Anarchism and violence
    Anarcho-primitivism
    Criticism of technology
    Declinism
    Eco-terrorism
    Green anarchism
    Neo-Luddism
    Propaganda of the deed
    How to Blow Up a Pipeline

References

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    Diamond, Jason (August 17, 2017). "Flashback: Unabomber Publishes
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    Graham, Donald E.; Sulzberger Jr., Arthur O. (September 19, 1995).
"Statement by Papers' Publishers". The Washington Post. p. A07.
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    "Post, Times publish Unabomber manifesto". CNN. September 19,
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    "Unabomber Manifesto Published in Paperback; 3,000 Copies Sold".
Los Angeles Daily News. Associated Press. October 14, 1995. p. 10.
ProQuest 281557917.
    "Unabomber auction nets $190,000". NBC News. Associated Press.
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February 15, 2021.
    "Feds to auction Unabomber's manifesto". NBC News. May 13, 2011.
Archived from the original on April 18, 2021. Retrieved February 15,
2021.
    Kelman 2017, p. fn1.
    Kaczynski, Ted. "Progress vs. Liberty (aka '1971 Essay')". Wild
Will Project. Archived from the original on January 17, 2018.
Retrieved May 29, 2018.
    Sale, Kirkpatrick (September 25, 1995). "Unabomber's Secret
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on May 2, 2009. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
    Wright, Robert (August 28, 1995). "The Evolution of Despair".
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6, 2008.
    Fleming 2021.
    Simmons 1999, p. 675.
    Richardson, Chris (2020). Violence in American Society: An
Encyclopedia of Trends, Problems, and Perspectives. ABC-CLIO. p. 502.
ISBN 978-1-4408-5468-2. Archived from the original on February 16,
2022. Retrieved January 23, 2021.
    Tan & Snow 2015, p. 521.
    John H. Richardson (December 11, 2018). "Children of Ted Two
decades after his last deadly act of ecoterrorism, the Unabomber has
become an unlikely prophet to a new generation of acolytes". NYMAG.
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The Document Helped End The 'Manhunt' For Ted Kaczynski". Bustle.
Archived from the original on April 22, 2021. Retrieved February 15,
2021.
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    Richardson, John H. (December 11, 2018). "The Unlikely New
Generation of Unabomber Acolytes". Intelligencer. Archived from the
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    Renaud, Tim (December 9, 2020). "Man charged in airport bomb scare
had razor blade in his shoe, Unabomber manifesto". Wayback Machine.
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Bibliography

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Unabomber". The Atlantic. ISSN 1072-7825. Archived from the original
on August 21, 2014. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
    Kelman, David (2017). "Politics in a Small Room: Subterranean
Babel in Piglia's El camino de Ida". The Yearbook of Comparative
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S2CID 220494877. Project MUSE 758028.
    Kovaleski, Serge F. (July 9, 1996). "1907 Conrad Novel May Have
Inspired Unabomb Suspect". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286.
    McHugh, Paul (November 2003). "The making of a killer". First
Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (137): 58+. ISSN
1047-5141. Gale A110263474.
    Michael, George (2012). "Ecoextremism and the Radical Animal
Liberation Movement". Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless
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978-0-8265-1857-6.
    Moen, Ole Martin (February 2019). "The Unabomber's ethics".
Bioethics. 33 (2): 223–229. doi:10.1111/bioe.12494. hdl:10852/76721.
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Generation of Unabomber Acolytes". New York. Archived from the
original on February 9, 2021. Retrieved February 15, 2021.
    Simmons, Ryan (1999). "What is a Terrorist? Contemporary
Authorship, the Unabomber, and Mao II". MFS Modern Fiction Studies. 45
(3): 675–695. doi:10.1353/mfs.1999.0056. ISSN 1080-658X. S2CID
162235453. Project MUSE 21412.
    Tan, Anna E.; Snow, David (2015). "Cultural Conflicts and Social
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doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199678402.013.5. ISBN 978-0199678402.

Further reading

    Chase, Alston (2004). A Mind for Murder: The Education of the
Unabomber and the Origins of Modern Terrorism. W. W. Norton & Company.
ISBN 978-0-393-32556-0.
    Didion, Joan (April 23, 1998). "Varieties of Madness". The New
York Review of Books. ISSN 0028-7504. Archived from the original on
August 13, 2017. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
    Finnegan, William (May 20, 2011). "The Unabomber Returns". The New
Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on April 28, 2017.
Retrieved August 22, 2017.
    Hough, Andrew (July 24, 2011). "Norway shooting: Anders Behring
Breivik plagiarised 'Unabomber'". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235.
Archived from the original on July 24, 2011. Retrieved August 22,
2017.
    Katz, Jon (April 17, 1998). "The Unabomber's Legacy, Part I".
Wired. Archived from the original on August 13, 2017. Retrieved August
22, 2017.
    Kravets, David (September 20, 2015). "Unabomber's anti-technology
manifesto published 20 years ago". Ars Technica. Archived from the
original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved February 15, 2021.
    Rubin, Mike (June 4, 1996). "An explosive bestseller". Village
Voice. 41 (23): 8. ISSN 0042-6180. EBSCOhost 9606174925.
    Sale, Kirkpatrick (September 25, 1995). "Unabomber's Secret
Treatise: Is There Method in His Madness?". The Nation. Archived from
the original on August 31, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
    Sikorski, Wade (1997). "On Mad Bombers". Theory & Event. 1 (1).
doi:10.1353/tae.1991.0012. ISSN 1092-311X. S2CID 144440330. Project
MUSE 32449.

External links

    Full manifesto from the Washington Post
    Mobile-friendly version of the full manifesto

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    This page was last edited on 11 June 2023, at 02:52 (UTC).