"Victims, aren't we all?"

Thoughts on Ted Kaczynski (1942-2023)

As you probably know, Ted Kaczynski, known to the media as the Unabomber and to a new generation of online fans as 'Uncle Ted', was found dead in his prison cell on the 10^th of June. The death was reported as a 'possible suicide'.

I'm sure that, in time, plenty of speculation will emerge about what may have been left out of the official story of his death. In any case, the 21^st century has seen a remarkable shift in his reputation – for instance, he's been quoted by Tucker Carlson, who described him as a “bad person, but [with a] smart analysis of the way systems work”, suggesting the cultural winds have been moving increasingly in his favour. Bear in mind this was Carlson before his ejection from Fox News – back in 1995, could anyone have predicted Kaczynski being quoted with (admittedly qualified) approval on a mainstream news channel? Even more bizarrely, he has been embraced by elements of the TikTok generation, who proclaim themselves to be ‘Ted-pilled’ and use the platform to promote his ideas.

Despite this, it doesn't look as though Kaczynski's stated goal of inspiring revolutionary cadres of anti-tech insurrectionists to take down the industrial system by violent sabotage is much closer to fruition than it was when 'Industrial Society and its Future' was published in the mid-90s. Perhaps some of the 'Ted-pilled' influencers will be inspired to go build a cabin in the woods and fill-in-the-blank, but it seems as though most of them just, well, make more edgy videos with phonk soundtracks, and upload them on TikTok in the endless hunt for likes.

While Kaczynski's writing is fascinating and very much worth reading, it goes without saying that his assumption that the destructive trajectory of industrial civilization is more-or-less unstoppable without resorting to drastic and violent tactics is its primary and fatal flaw – as it was in Kaczynski's personal life. In ISAIF, he tentatively acknowledged that a gradual decline was possible, but later recanted that view in 2016; his rage and despair had already prevented him from taking the option to just wait it all out, and let the gradual depletion of fossil-fuel reserves bring the machine to a trundling halt.

Ironically, Kaczynski may have had a bit too much faith in the awesome power of industrial technology; an apocalyptic techno-pessimist is just the flipside of a naïve techno-optimist, as the recent unexpected agreement between Paul Kingsnorth and Eliezer Yudkowsky shows. In his own way, he was as much of a product of modern society as any of us, a true Faustian man; even his calculated rejection of modernity, and subsequent actions as a revolutionary terrorist, have something of the extremity and stubborn ambition that Spengler highlighted as characteristic of our civilization. His loneliness, alienation, and caustic anger form an exemplary case study in the psychological fragmentation of modernity; is it any surprise that he has become an idol for a new generation of lonely, alienated, and terminally online young men?

Wherever he is now, I hope he is able to learn what he needs to learn, and find his own peace; I would like to think that he might eventually be reconciled with those that he hurt, and with those who hurt him. As Brandon Lee said in The Crow: “victims, aren't we all?”