Who is Theodore Kaczynski?

Theodore Kaczynski was an intellectual born on May 22, 1942 in Chicago. A brilliant student and the son of workers, he was accepted into Harvard University at just 16 years old. With a PhD in mathematics, Kaczynski succeeded in proving Wedderburn's theorem and became the youngest professor in the history of Berkeley, which is one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Refusing to pursue a career in research, he taught there for two years before resigning in 1969 to live autonomously into the wild (“I’m tired of teaching engineers what will be used to destroy the environment”). From his cabin in the Montana wilderness, he helplessly witnessed the technological destruction of the surrounding forest. Long passionate about anthropology, particularly the work of the French anarchist Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society (whose analysis of the technological peril is a sociological classic), Kaczynski set out to write a more complete and accessible book. Through highly controversial methods*, the mathematician succeeded in having his manifesto published in the New York Times and the Washington Post on September 19, 1995—where it sold over a million copies.

In the United States, Theodore Kaczynski's ideas are attracting an increasing number of people from very diverse backgrounds, ranging from anarchists to environmentalists [1] as wel as conservatives [2]. Many teenagers also express their rebellion against modernity on TikTok. An article published in 2021 in The Baffler noted that the hashtags #tedpill, #tedk, and #tedkazcynski collectively have "millions of views [3]". Taking the "Ted pill" means rejecting modern technology and embracing a return to a pre-industrial way of life, much closer to nature.

Kaczynski’s thesis

The manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future quickly became a reference in social sciences.

Drawing on the concepts of over-socialization, power process, and surrogate activities, Ted Kaczynski lays out his core arguments with a strict materialist perspective:

‍
1) The technological system will inevitably lead us to an ecocidal disaster that will also destroy the freedom we currently cling to;

2) The technological system cannot be reformed in a manner that doesn’t suppress freedom, only its collapse can prevent this disaster;

3) Leftists are the first line of defense against the anti-tech revolution;

4) A revolutionary movement must be established and it should advocate for the total dismantling of the techno-industrial system (while taking measures to keep leftists at bay).

Critique of Leftism

Theodore Kaczynski offers a discerning analysis of the "psychology of modern leftism" (a movement heavily influenced by "post-structuralism"). Far from rejecting leftist ideas as a whole or defending ethno-nationalism (which he rejects in the letter “Ecofacism: An Ardent Branch of Leftism”), Kaczynski views leftism more as a psychological trait of the "over-socialized" (Western bourgeois intellectuals, false rebels who have internalized the system’s values). For him, leftism is 1) a synthesis of modern psychological suffering, and 2) harms revolutionary struggles by attacking the non-sensitive parts of the system (thus corrupting resistance movements with a cult of purity). Leftism, therefore, is both a symptom and an antibody for the system. In short, according to Kaczynski (who repeatedly claims, as an anarchist close to Lewis Mumford, not to be ideologically opposed to the freedoms of minorities), a leftist is someone who is strategically ineffective.

Oversocialization

‍Oversocialization refers to a person’s inability to deviate from the highly demanding moral code of our society without experiencing deep feelings of guilt, shame, and self-hatred. As Kaczynski puts it, "the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him." The leftist attempts to break free from this leash and rebel, but most of the time, their claims align with the moral values of the system. As a result, they appear as a force which fosters the adaptation of society to its material infrastructure —the technological system.

Power Process

For a human person to be happy, he or she needs to set achievable goals of moderate difficulty in order to fulfill the power process. In industrial society, this process is hindered. The available activities for satisfying our basic needs increasingly require minimal physical and mental efforts (though this is not true for all jobs, it represents a general trend in industrialized societies). When the power process is unfulfilled, surogate activities arise—artificial goals, with passive hedonism being their most recurring characteristic. This leads to perpetual frustration and dependence on the techno-industrial system.

Surogate Activities‍

According to Kaczynski, "When people do not have to exert themselves to satisfy their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for themselves". Modern society offers a prolific catalog of surrogate activities: "scientific work, athletic achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation, climbing the corporate ladder, money and material goods accumulation far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues that are not important for the activist himself, as in the case of white activists who work for the rights of coloured minorities". However, surrogate activities rarely succeed in fully replacing real goals and satisfying the power process. Modern humans are "never satisfied, never at rest," always wanting more. Frustration becomes their daily burden.

‍

Lies spread by the mass media

Claims about Kaczynski’s supposed madness

Theodore Kaczynski has, perhaps unwittingly, become the subject of Hollywood exploitation. A misunderstood precursor, thinker, and hermit, denounced by his brother, betrayed by his lawyers, and portrayed as insane by many, he has fueled false rumors about the so-called MK-Ultra project. His life inspired a feature film (Ted K) and two Netflix series. One of them, Manhunt: Unabomber, is a fictionalized retelling of part of his life, contributing to the spread of his ideas to a new audience.

MK-Ultra was the code name for a CIA project which aimed at developing mind control and programming techniques.

While the MK-Ultra project did exist, it also fueled the imaginations of conspiracy theorists. Some unscrupulous journalists, like Alston Chase with his 2000 article Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber in The Atlantic, helped spread rumors about Kaczynski's alleged involvement in MK-Ultra. Kaczynski himself denied being subjected to torture during the experiments conducted at Harvard by Professor Henry Murray. In a letter, he explained that he participated in interviews and personality tests that were far from being considered "torture."

The journalist from The Atlantic claims that the political ideas of the mathematician are partly the result of the treatments he supposedly underwent during Murray's experiments at Harvard. Kaczynski suddenly became "diabolical", a monster akin to the terrorists of the World Trade Center or Stalin. In writing his piece of paper, Alston Chase only demonstrates his ignorance about human psychology. As the prominent psychologist Philippe Rochat writes in his latest book, "inhuman monsters exist only in our heads", in our simplifying minds.

The mass media and the entertainment industry try to portray Kaczynski as insane probably because they fear the political impact of Theodore Kaczynski's ideas. Throughout history, we have seen this same defensive mechanism used by those in power against political dissidents. Labeling someone as mad allows ideas to be discredited and presented as illegitimate in the eyes of the masses. No one would bother to engage with the ideas of a madman, let alone read his writings. A similar reaction can be observed from those in power towards environmentalists in general, from Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson to Earth First! radical activists spiking trees to defend nature against industrial exploitation.

Ultimately, the simple act of reading Kaczynski's writings leads to the following conclusion: Ted Kaczynski is not insane. He is, in fact, quite lucid. A number of his predictions made in the 1990s in Industrial Society and Its Future have since been confirmed.

Is Theodore Kaczynski a fascist?

Kaczynski is also co-opted by the far-right due to his critique of "leftism." Adding a critique of the psychology of right-wing thought to his manifesto would certainly have prevented this appropriation. In a letter, the mathematician explicitly rejected any affiliation with the far-right and described himself as an "opponent" of eco-fascists. Like eco-socialists, eco-fascists nurture the Enlightenment-inspired utopia of a society planned through scientific rationality.

Both on the left and the right, there is a naïve dream of a "limited" and "wisely used" technology that would preserve the habitability of the planet. However, history has repeatedly taught us that it is impossible to rationally control the development of society. To conclude, Kaczynski adds that a "the true anti-tech movement rejects every form of racism or ethnocentrism" for purely strategic reasons, because such a movement must be international. Otherwise, the part of the world with the most powerful technology will eradicate or absorb other societies and ultimately make the planet uninhabitable.

‍

Theodore Kaczynski's Books

Industrial Society and Its Future

The first book by Theodore Kaczynski, published in the late 1990s, is a brief text of about a hundred pages that offers a new perspective on the techno-industrial system and its effects. While the environmental damage caused by industrialization is well-documented, the author focuses on the social consequences of technology: the loss of freedom, widespread alienation, constant humiliation, the growing mental suffering in the “developed” world, physical suffering in the “developing” world, and the increasing destruction of the planet's ability to support life. According to Kaczynski, all of these problems are caused by technological development. That’s why he advocates for a revolution that targets the "the economic and technological structure of the society".

Technological Slavery

In his recent book Technological Slavery, Ted Kaczynski compiles unpublished essays and key correspondences to demonstrate that advanced technology, being incompatible with the way our brains function (which has remained stable since the Paleolithic), imposes significant stress on humans. In order to "treat" individuals and serve the system, the technological system will aim to control our brains and genes — a condition that ATR views as degrading and dehumanizing.

Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How

Having learned from his past mistakes, Kaczynski urges his readers to organize strategically in his key work Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, published in 2016. Drawing on history and hard sciences, Kaczynski's evolutionary theory argues that the more complex a system becomes, the more unstable it gets. Just like with economic or weather predictions, "failure is the norm" when it comes to state planning. This inability to plan a society's long-term development will lead to the inevitable collapse of the technological system, which is the main threat to the system’s stability. In the last two chapters, Kaczynski examines past movements, pointing out the strategic mistakes to avoid, and sets out the rules a new revolutionary movement must follow to protect life on Earth.

Films and Documentaries

The Net - The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet

Das Netz is a German independent documentary directed by Lutz Dammbeck, released in 2005. Broadcast by Arte, a European cultural television network, and subtitled The Unabomber, LSD, and the Internet, this film helps to better understand the recent evolution of the global technological system. This system strengthened during the second half of the 20th century with the rise of a new science: cybernetics. This discipline gave birth to what some call the third industrial revolution – the development of new information and communication technologies (computers, networks, the internet, artificial intelligence, etc.) that emerged after World War II.

Lutz Dammbeck focuses on the intersection of the art world – particularly the counterculture of the 1960s – and the field of science and computing. He travels to the United States to interview influential figures such as John Brockman, David Gelernter, Robert Taylor, and Stewart Brand, all of whom played key roles in the rise of cybernetics and the spread of the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) pandemic. The film is interspersed with exchanges of letters between Theodore Kaczynski and Lutz Dammbeck.

Welcome to the Machine

Welcome to the Machine is a 2013 documentary directed by Avi Weider. Featuring interviews with technologists (Ray Kurzweil, Jaron Lanier, Rodney Brooks, David Gelernter, Kevin Kelly) and technocritics (David Skrbina, Shelly Turkle), the film explores how technology is transforming human beings and altering the very meaning of what it means to be human. The documentary highlights the blurring line between humans and machines, as technological development continuously reshapes individuals and society at large according to the model of the machine.

Unabomber : In His Own Words

Not to be confused with the fiction series Manhunt, this documentary series produced by Netflix traces the life of Theodore Kaczynski. While it is open to criticism on some points, particularly due to the inclusion of misleading details in the mathematician’s biography, the documentary does manage to set the record straight in certain areas. It gives a voice to Kaczynski himself, his Harvard peers, his prison guard, and technocritical philosopher David Skrbina.

Ted K

Ted K is a biopic about the hermit life led by Kaczynski in the forests of Montana. Over time, he witnesses the industrial blight ravaging his peaceful mountains (the spraying of pesticides to kill vegetation under power lines, helicopter drops of explosives to detect oil deposits, deforestation, low-altitude military aircraft flyovers, etc.). The film effectively conveys the sense of rage one might feel upon seeing an excavator violate an ancient forest.

⚠ Important Note ⚠

*In order to get his manifesto published and ensure it received maximum visibility, Theodore Kaczynski launched a mailbombing campaign, primarily targeting influential intellectuals who defended and/or actively participated in the development of the technological system.

While we share many of Unabomber's lucid analyses on the social implications of technological progress, we absolutely do not condone his actions. In this article, we have chosen to focus on Kaczynski's political ideas and anthropological analyses, which are far less known than his violent past. We would like to remind the reader that ATR is a legal and non-violent organization.*