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Ted Kaczynski has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#201

Post by api »

notacoward wrote: post #187
api wrote: post #137

I have never been able to accept any form of primitivism or reactionary ideology for many reasons. Chief among them is this: if everything was so great in this imagined past, why are we here and why if we did go back and revive this past would we not end up right back here “repeating the grade” so to speak? The second is that (as I hinted above) I am extremely skeptical of narratives that excessively glorify the past…

You've buried an assumption in there: that there is only one possible future. That we can only choose between that one future and the past. Since at least the original Luddites, the real tension has been between multiple futures enabled by technology. Kaczynski was in this tradition. It was an argument against inevitability, against the same glorification of one future that you condemn when it's about the one past. I…

If this is the case then these writers should be spending 95% of their words talking about how to go from here to a different better future, or even better rolling up their sleeves and attempting to live or create such a future here and now.

The only criticism you need is whatever it takes to frame the problem.

I’ve read Kaczynski and numerous other primitivists and reactionaries and that’s not the dominant theme. The emphasis is on a lost golden age (that I do not believe actually existed) and accusing modernity in a moralistic tone.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#202

Post by voisin »

No praise for his methods but reading his manifesto a few years ago I was surprised about how much I found to have been an accurate warning of what would happen.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#203

Post by timeon »

madballster wrote: post #166
hnuser847 wrote: post #52

It’s fun to drop verbatim quotes from his manifesto into random internet discussions without attribution. A lot of people agree with his ideas without realizing it.

That however is unfortunately true for quotes from many of history's dark figures, be it Hitler, Stalin or Nero.

Why unfortunately? Quotes are just fragments.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#204

Post by tenpies »

californiadreem wrote: post #32

Anyone who disagrees with Kaczynski's ideas because they came from a convicted terrorist should read the works of Jacques Ellul instead, of which Kaczynski's was largely a popular reduction. The Technological Society is the clearest influence on Kaczynski's manifesto, but Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes is possibly more pertinent in this day and age. Ellul was a professor, a pacifist, and a Christian ana…

His published works aside, it seems he was corresponding with people and answering letters until fairly recently. Many of these letters (or quite convincing forgeries) are archived in your favourite 4chan archive of choice.

Also worth mentioning what was essentially a partial autobiography by Kaczynsky: Truth Versus Lies[1]. I'm not sure it was ever completed and there are a couple versions floating around. He was still working on it well into the mid 2010s.

---

[1] One version: https://archive.org/details/TruthVersusLiesPart1

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#205

Post by molly0 »

danbolt wrote: post #163
hnuser847 wrote: post #52

It’s fun to drop verbatim quotes from his manifesto into random internet discussions without attribution. A lot of people agree with his ideas without realizing it.

I haven’t read the entirety of his manifesto, but his ideas always struck me as typical narratives that resonated with people’s anxieties about modernity. A bit of a bait and switch. Get attention with something shocking and violent, then appeal to worries through apocalyptic boogeymen. The solution, of course, is a sense of comforting tradition that the naturalness of the past is safe. A killer combo!

An interesting observation!

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#206

Post by robobro »

ldehaan wrote: post #136
znpy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one of the funniest things for me is the fact that many left-wing people add Kaczynski quotes without realizing that left-wing people are basically the first people to be criticized and almost mocked in Ted's main piece, "Industrial society and its future"

[flagged]

A lot of the "leftists" Ted K disagrees with in that work are not proper Marxists but SJW/radical liberals (what's called the American Left but has little relation to Marxist thought)

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#207

Post by ekaryotic »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #81
bigmattystyles wrote: post #11

No mention of MKUltra, it doesn’t excuse his behavior but does explain why he may have been pushed over the edge.

You'd have a point if other subjects of MK-Ultra allowed a similar trajectory as Kaczynski. Were there other cases of self-destruction? I don't even know how many people were subjected to these experiments.

[flagged]

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#208

Post by brvsft »

martythemaniak wrote: post #94

I find it very curious the fawning treatment this murderer's death is receiving here. The guy killed three innocent people and maimed a number of others because he went crazy and wanted to get back at the world. What is wrong with you people? You know there's plenty of people that are smarter than him, being able to produce more coherent, balanced and informed views of society, and also not murder people.

This moral argument doesn't really work on people from the US after about 20 years of global militarism, especially that whole stint in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hate murder as much as the next guy, but our political and military leaders constantly make decisions that result in needless deaths. You don't even know how upset I personally was after voting for Obama and seeing him continue using drones to target terrorists while also killing innocent civilians as collateral damage.

Please, grant me the luxury to like this one guy who killed three innocent people because I just think his manifesto was pretty good. My 'leaders' have already taught me that murder can be overlooked by the vast majority of the public, or at least one half of it, every 4-8 years. I think I'm allowed to like Uncle Ted.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#209

Post by Kye »

californiadreem wrote: post #32

Anyone who disagrees with Kaczynski's ideas because they came from a convicted terrorist should read the works of Jacques Ellul instead, of which Kaczynski's was largely a popular reduction. The Technological Society is the clearest influence on Kaczynski's manifesto, but Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes is possibly more pertinent in this day and age. Ellul was a professor, a pacifist, and a Christian ana…

You know how sometimes you'll see someone [dead] on here making salient points, then wonder why they're dead? Then you check them out, and every so often they go off on incoherent tirades.

That's Ted Kaczynski. He may have had two good ideas for every bad one, but he was still a piece of shit who deserved to be isolated from society where he couldn't hurt anyone, and there are better advocates for whatever good came out of his head.

Or to paraphrase the dril classic: you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them"

edit: to be clear, I think the dude was little more than an ecofascist and not worth taking seriously. But if you're going to, you ought to know he was the worst advocate for any position he held. You can do better than propping up a dead asshole.

Re: Ted Kaczynski has died

#210

Post by Sebguer »

timeon wrote: post #188
Sebguer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but they've bombed a lot more innocent people than TedK did. For one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Lawrence_Pope

How does this make Unabomber not terrorist?

I mean, Ted was definitely a terrorist, but the size of his crimes pales in comparison to the institution that experimented on him and continues to exist to this day.
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