September 19, 2015

20 years ago today: The Washington Post published the 35,000-word "Unabomber Manifesto."

The Washington Post has the story, with a photograph, at the top center of the home page: "How publishing a 35,000-word manifesto led to the Unabomber."
In more than 35,000 words spread over eight pages of a special section, an anonymous author laid out his complaint against the “industrial-technological system” and his desire to destroy it by sparking a revolution. The essay bumped and blundered through a forest of dark themes and discontent, from a lengthy lament about environmental destruction to a brief critique of golf and bowling.
The publication led to the identification and arrest of Kaczynski (because his sister-in-law and brother recognized his distinctive style of expression), but the reason for publishing the whole damned thing was to comply with Kaczynski's ultimatum: If it's published, he'll stop bombing, and if not, he'll "start building our [sic] next bomb."

WaPo puts the old story in the context of present-day concerns about terrorism:
[T]he episode also stands out as an early milestone in the current age of anxiety. The Unabomber’s manifesto appeared just as Washington was beginning its long preoccupation with terrorism and national security. As the news media and the public fixated on the Unabomber drama, a much bigger story was quietly dawning. That same year, in a classified National Intelligence Estimate, the CIA warned that Islamic extremists were intent on striking targets inside the United States.
The NYT — which coordinated with WaPo in responding to the ultimatum — ignores the anniversary. There's a mention on the day's "Today in History" feature, which comes from The Associated Press. It's in there along with other historical anniversaries like: "In 1970, the situation comedy 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' debuted on CBS-TV." And: "In 1915, vaudeville performer W.C. Fields made his movie debut as 'Pool Sharks,' a one-reel silent comedy, was released." And in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev got mad when he found out they weren't going to let him into Disneyland. In 1960, Fidel Castro came to New York City, didn't like his hotel, and "angrily checked out" and went to a different hotel.  Communists and comedians. Communists and comedians and Ted Kaczynski.

Ted had a lot to say about leftists in his manifesto. Let's look. It's worth reading if only to see how surprisingly similar it is to things you may be seeing every day on the internet:

When we speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types.... The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization.”....

11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms “negro,” “oriental,” “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy,” “dude” or “fellow.” The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word “pet” and insist on its replacement by “animal companion.” Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the world “primitive” by “nonliterate.” They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghetto- dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to upper-middle-class families.

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

16. Words like “self-confidence,” “self-reliance,” “initiative,” “enterprise,” “optimism,” etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone’s problems for them, satisfy everyone’s needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

18. Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly.

19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.

21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

45 comments:

campy said...

Obligatory link:

Al Gore or Unabomber?

Meade said...

"14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men."

The Unabomber is a regular Althouse blog commenter?

David said...

Shows you that a person can be right about many things but completely wrong on what the response should be to the correct perception.

Sebastian said...

"When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-estee"

Sorry, Ted. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. When someone interprets etc., or to generalize the premise: postures as victim, and as a a result receives specific benefits, in the form of attention and fame, special protections and preferences, commiseration and sympathy, money and subsidies, power and more power, we neo-Machiavellians conclude that such interpretations and posturing are effective moves in post-modern Progressive cultural politics.

David said...

It would get an A in a seminar at Harvard, methinks.

iowan2 said...

Loved the test. 7of 11

David is right. Identifying the problem is easy. the chosen action to correct is the nutty part. re the perception of income inequality. and the supposed solution.(govt picking winners and losers. Exactly how are proggressives proposing to level the field? I hear lots about the problem, zero specifics about actions.

rhhardin said...

The postman cometh
"Oh, boy! A package for me!"
Twisted hermit strikes.

Google unibomber haiku for thousands more.

Laslo Spatula said...

What would one think if -- in the era of the Unabomber -- they received in the mail Ahmed Mohamed's "circuit board and power supply connected to digital display"?

Just a thought.

I am Laslo.

David Begley said...

I skimmed it but didn't really see anything on global warming. I guess Ted missed that fad when he was living in Montana.

buwaya said...

Could have appeared at any time over the last three-four decades in any US conservative venue.

Laslo Spatula said...

Women: if you receive a package containing a ten-inch yellow polyurethane dildo in the mail know that the UnaLaslo has struck.

I am Laslo.

James Pawlak said...

Persons less intelligent than that "Crazy Criminal" have ready access to WMD as make firearms seem without threat. Some are available at any hardware store, ship chandler, LPG/gasoline station, agricultural centered retail outlet and many other places, Etc.

Ann Althouse said...

The WaPo article says the Manifesto talks about bowling, but I did a word search and found nothing. Is there some other word for bowling that I should have to search?Tenpins? Ninepins? Skittles? Kegling?!

Meade said...

Hey, even a stopped unabomber is right twice a day.

Ann Althouse said...

"You can’t have a united world without rapid transportation and communication, you can’t make all people love one another without sophisticated psychological techniques, you can’t have a “planned society” without the necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power."

Carol said...

Didn't his original lawyer want him to cop an insanity plea? I'm glad he didn't. Everything about him is sane, except...bombs...

madAsHell said...

Well.....at least I'm not a hermit living in Montana.

sane_voter said...

The Unabomber is in jail for life and Bill Ayers is a college professor for life and close friends with a sitting US president. Right vs Left in today's America.

Roughcoat said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chris N said...

Perhaps Althouse was particularly offended by reactions to recent post, as there's a certain anti-commentariat, coming-from-a-revenge-type-place feel to this one.

Birkel said...

Alternative headline:
WaPo helped catch Left-wing Environmentalist Academic who had the courage of his convictions

That headline deserves a good workout

m stone said...

I'm with Carol. His writings, for the most part are sane and prescient.

Uh oh. I used the word sane.

Bay Area Guy said...

The "Unabomber" name isn't quite right. It doesn't quite convey disgruntled university professor. "Unibomber" is a little better, but sounds the same. How ' bout the Crazy Professor Bomber or something like that? Need some help on this one.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

So we have the deep mystery of why someone who could write the above (all of which I pretty much agree with) would then go on and try to off David Gelerntner, of all people. There's a massive disconnect between Kaczynski's writings and his actions.

Phil 314 said...

And to prove the validity of my argument I will


BLOW YOU UP.

Phil 314 said...

Ted's favorite movie review site.

Mr. Colby said...

G K Chesterton — 'A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason'

Ann Althouse said...

"Perhaps Althouse was particularly offended by reactions to recent post, as there's a certain anti-commentariat, coming-from-a-revenge-type-place feel to this one."

This sounds like you're noticing something. I didn't say commenters. I just said I see this kind of opinion expressed on the internet. If you're narrowing it down to commenters on this blog, you should own what is your opinion, as Meade did.

William said...

I found his observations, as presented here, intelligent and worthwhile. I have also found many of Christ's observations in the Bible informative and worthwhile, but my agreement with those observations have not made me in any way Christ like.......If you spend too much time thinking about things other than sex, sports, food, and money, you tend to drive yourself crazy.

Freeman Hunt said...

The Wikipedia entry on him is very interesting. It includes this:

"He also participated in a personality assessment study conducted by Henry Murray, an expert on stress interviews.[16] These experiments may have been part of the controversial, top-secret CIA program that was later revealed as Project MKUltra.[citation needed] Students in Murray's study were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student.[17] Instead, they were subjected to a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment".[17] During the test, students were taken into a room and connected to electrodes that monitored their physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a one-way mirror. Each student had previously written an essay detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations: the essays were turned over to an anonymous attorney, who would enter the room and individually belittle each student based in part on the disclosures they had made. This was filmed, and students' expressions of impotent rage were played back to them several times later in the study. According to author Alston Chase, Kaczynski's records from that period suggest he was emotionally stable when the study began. Kaczynski's lawyers attributed some of his emotional instability and dislike of mind control techniques to his participation in this study.[17] Indeed, some have suggested that this experience may have been instrumental in Kaczynski's future actions.[18][19]"

Sheesh. That has to be one of the more ethically questionable studies I've heard of being conducted in the modern United States.

jr565 said...

He was totally right about lefties. Crazy people can hold one view that is totally correct, and still do crazy things in response.

Freeman Hunt said...

He wrote a lot more than the excerpt in this blog post. He goes off in a back to nature, anarchy direction and includes bits like this:

"183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have
a positive ideals well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as
well as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is
Nature. That is , WILD nature; those aspects of the functioning of the
Earth and its living things that are independent of human management
and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature we
include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the
functioning of the human individual that are not subject to regulation
by organized society but are products of chance, or free will, or God
(depending on your religious or philosophical opinions).

184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several
reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the
opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power
of the system). Most people will agree that nature is beautiful;
certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical
environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature and
opposes technology. [30] It is not necessary for the sake of nature to
set up some chimerical utopia or any new kind of social order. Nature
takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long
before any human society, and for countless centuries many different
kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an
excessive amount of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did
the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To
relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special
kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial
society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society
has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very
long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even pre-industrial
societies can do significant damage to nature. Nevertheless, getting
rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will
relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can
begin to heal. It will remove the capacity of organized society to
keep increasing its control over nature (including human nature).
Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial
system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature,
because in the absence of advanced technology there is not other way
that people CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants or
herdsmen or fishermen or hunter, etc., And, generally speaking, local
autonomy should tend to increase, because lack of advanced technology
and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments or
other large organizations to control local communities."

Wilbur said...

Blind squirrel.

Theranter said...

Other obligatory link:
Pope Francis or Unabomber?
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/colby-cosh-popes-encyclical-on-climate-change-reads-like-the-unabomber-manifesto

Birkel said...

Althouse tells commenters to own an opinion.

I, too, enjoy irony.

Chris N said...

Ok, I'll own my opinions:

I quite agree with many of Kaczynski's insights about ideology, and particularly, Leftist ideology. The ideologues love technology as a vehicle for their ideological ends, but the real scientists and lovers of knowledge are in it for quite different and various reasons. It is often their life's work, and usually much more beneficial that what ideologues offer.

There is much that is profound in that weird Manifesto, but, also there are chunks of clear craziness and techno-obsession shining through, where the logic starts to float free towards sudden, unrelated conclusions and statements of certainty where no proof is offered. The man went nuts, lonely and bitter hermit nuts, and he was probably nuts long before. He killed and terrorized people.

I've read a good deal in the anarchist tradition, mainly to be able to respond to libertarian anarchists and the profound arguments they wield, so it strikes some chords with me.

I get the impression that you actively troll some of your commenters, and I actively think many deserve such trolling (most of us some of the time, some of the belligerent fools nearly all of the time). You really do tolerate a lot, and live by a broad definition of free speech, which I quite admire.

On the other hand, on the gay marriage issue, and the issue of putting yourself and part of your life out there as fodder, you can expose you and Meade both to criticism both fair and unfair, and I would be surprised if that didn't alter your posting behavior, and your desire to troll from time to time.

So yes, I think I did notice something, and I can take a little trolling on matters of some importance to me. As always, caveat lector.

Nichevo said...

9/19/15, 11:21 AM
+1

AA, did he writes similarly about the right?

How do you feel about this devastating critique? See yourself in it much?

YoungHegelian said...

There's a lot of Heidegger in Kaczynski's Manifesto, as others have pointed out.

It's the spirit of Heidegger that allows Kaczynski to skirt between the politics of right & left. Heidegger, while personally extremely sympathetic to Nazism, at least during the lifetime of the regime, had the most philosophical influence on the post-war French Left. This is why the later revelations of the depth of Heidegger's Nazi sympathies by Farias & Ott caused such a ruckus in France: the French philosophical Left was heavily complicit in scrubbing his history.

A good place to start on Heidegger's critique of modern technology is called, not surprisingly, The Question Concerning Technology.

David said...

There's not enough "nature" around for the number of people on the globe to live "naturally." We last had that in places like North America, Australia, New Zealand and a few islands before the Europeans started arriving. Many must die to return to that stage.

Birkel said...

David,
Square that comment with the recent Althouse post about the estimated 3 trillion trees in the world, or over 400 per human.

YoungHegelian said...

@David,

Many must die to return to that stage.

They've already made plans for that.

@Birkel,

...the recent Althouse post about the estimated 3 trillion trees in the world

Most of those trees are in places, like the Amazonian or African rain forests or in the Siberian taiga, that are for all intents & purposes, uninhabitable.

cubanbob said...

YoungHegelian said...

@David,

Many must die to return to that stage.

They've already made plans for that."

Somehow they aren't part of the planned reduction. Nor are they willing to take one for the team.

Nichevo said...

That's great that the trees are inaccessible, then they will be left alone. It's not like a tree in your backyard is a necessity of life. As long as there are enough of them they will provide the oxygen, right? You would want there to be no trees where the people are going to live, so that they can all have room for their houses.

SGT Ted said...

The attempt to morally equate those stating the observable truth about leftist activism with the Unabomber is very Alinsky-like, Ann.

One can ignore the Unabomber and just quote actual leftists about how they intend to do things, as well as make observations about how actual leftists have governed in the past, to come to these same conclusions. Observable reality isn't invalidated simply because someone who is crazy also accurately observes the same things.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Old joke:
I was driving past the local asylum (ed. note: I suppose this was back in the days before enlightened policy put all these folks on the street...) when I got a flat. After I put the spare on, I couldn't find the lug nuts - they must have slid down the ditch into the roadside creek. I nervously eyed the guy watching me from behind the asylum's chainlink fence, and kept looking for the nuts.
Finally he spoke up. "Why don't you take one nut off the other three wheels, and use them? That'll hold you until you can get to a service station."
I said, a bit startled, "Thanks, bud. Say, you seem smart, what are you doing in there?"
"I'm CRAZY, not STUPID."