Anti-tech radicalismBig techSurveillanceTerrorismTheodore KaczynskiUnabomber

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Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, is still alive. He was a maths prodigy who abandoned academia in 1969. He moved to a remote cabin in the Montana woodlands, there to return to a more primitive life. In horror, he watched as his personal Eden was invaded by developers and tourists.

He began a terrorist campaign. Bombs, increasingly sophisticated, in parcels and letters that were sent to airline headquarters, university labs, computer stores. Three people were murdered, others were maimed. Like any academic he had big ideas and he wrote a manifesto — Industrial Society and Its Future. He posted it to newspaper editors: publish this or more people will die. In 1995 the Washington Post published the entire thing. Kaczynski’s brother recognised the tone, and the FBI found the Unabomber with his help.

The Unabomber, committed to eight life sentences, has become a pop cultural icon, in the way only infamous American killers can be. There have been movies and documentaries; the ideas of Industrial Society and Its Future have found a home among communities of anarchists, primitivists, neo-Luddites, and ecofascists.

Now the first extensive study of Kaczynski’s ideology has been undertaken by the University of Cambridge’s Sean Fleming. The study is full of revelations. Fleming demonstrates that Kaczynski’s ideas have been misunderstood by his green anarchist and neo-Luddite followers on the Left, and fans on the far-Right, like the Norwegian Anders Brevik and the fascist party Golden Dawn, which translated Industrial Society into Greek in 2018.  According to Fleming:

Kaczynski has a Nietzsche-like quality: because he defies easy categorisation, he is a magnet for radicals of different stripes. But Kaczynski is more than a source of ideas for pre-existing radical groups. He has also created his own strand of radicalism and inspired an array of anti-tech radical groups. The most prominent of these is the Mexican terrorist group Individualidades Tendiendo a lo Salvaje (ITS – roughly, Individualists Tending towards the Wild), which picked up where Kaczynski left off and began sending bombs to scientists in April 2011. ITS and its offshoots have since claimed responsibility for attacks in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Greece, as well as many more in Mexico. Kaczynski’s own bombing campaign was a harbinger of things to come — and ITS may be only the beginning.
- Sean Fleming, University of Cambridge

Fleming argues that Kaczynski’s ideas are drawn from three well-known academics: French philosopher Jacques Ellul, British zoologist Desmond Morris, and American psychologist Martin Seligman. Industrial Society and Its Future makes the following arguments:

(1) Modern technology constitutes an indivisible, self-perpetuating ‘system’ that is not under human control; (2) human beings are biologically and psychologically maladapted to life in a technological society; (3) the continued development of the technological system will inevitably lead to catastrophe (i.e. the destruction of humanity or its total subordination to the system); (4) since the technological system cannot be controlled, and hence cannot be reformed, a revolutionary overthrow of the system is necessary to avert catastrophe; and (5) leftist activism is a form of pseudo-rebellion that serves to distract attention from the problem of technology
- Sean Fleming, University of Cambridge

The spread of these ideas, for Fleming, makes Kaczynski more than another lone wolf terrorist. He has become “the leader of a pack”:

Just as he had hoped, his Manifesto has spawned an ideology – a public discourse of anti-tech – and inspired a cluster of anti-tech radical groups. Kaczynski is not just an extreme example of an anti-tech radical, but also the founder and lodestar of a new form of anti-tech radicalism.
- Sean Fleming, University of Cambridge

Fleming believes that the novel ‘anti-tech radicalism’ that Kaczynski inspired will continue to grow and spread in the future. Fears about biotechnology, automation, mass surveillance, artificial intelligence, climate change, and nanotechnology will lead some radicals back to Kaczynski’s manifesto.

There are terrorism scholars and futurists who’ve already predicted a wave of ‘technophobic’ terrorism in this century. Fleming warns that:

As today’s most infamous anti-tech radical, and as the one with the most detailed blueprint for a revolution, Kaczynski may well become the ‘Marx’ of anti-tech.
- Sean Fleming, University of Cambridge