Good Riddance

Over the weekend I learned that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, died in federal prison.

Good riddance.

Unfortunately, as the obituary makes apparent, the evil, nihilistic ideas that animated him are alive and well:

[P]olitical change and the passage of time caused some to see Mr. Kaczynski in a new light. His manifesto accorded centrality to a healthy environment without mentioning global warming; it warned about the dangers of people becoming "dependent" on technology while making scant reference to the internet. To young people afflicted by social media anomie and fearful of climate doom, Mr. Kaczynski seemed to wield a predictive power that outstripped the evidence available to him.

In 2017 and 2020, Netflix released documentaries about him. He maintained postal correspondence with thousands of people -- journalists, students and die-hard supporters. In 2018, Wired magazine announced "the Unabomber's odd and furious online revival," and New York magazine called him "an unlikely prophet to a new generation of acolytes."

These "acolytes," exemplified by the likes of Greta Thunberg, are working towards the same end, whether they admit it or not, of destroying Western civilization -- which depends on technology and reliable sources of energy, and will die without them.

Worse, there are armies of conventional people who, reading this, might think something like, He was evil, but he had a point. That is because the article -- like I imagine many others will -- does not connect or deliberately evades the causal connection between Theodore Kaczynski's ideas and his actions.

Toward that end, it is worth remembering the words of the late John Lewis regarding Kaczynski and his brothers-in-spirit:

Image by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Morally there is no difference between an environmentalist who bans DDT at the price of millions of malaria deaths, the Unabomber who selects his victims personally, the anarchist who smashes store windows and dreams of smashing structural steel, and a terrorist who rides a passenger plane into the World Trade Center. Each glories in destruction for its own sake, and each advocates death as the epitome of that destruction. It is no accident that they are all defined in terms of "anti-something." Nothing is the aim, and the goal, of all of them. They are brothers-in-arms. Now you see the scope of the battle that America faces.

It is no comfort that an evil man has finally expired when there are so many people ready to continue his work -- thanks to the widespread acceptance of the very conventional, incorrect, and evil attitudes about Western civilization Kaczynski held.

The only comfort is that there is a way to fight back -- by learning and advocating better ideas.

In a better age, we would not read an obituary speak approvingly of a barbaric murderer inspiring acolytes. Let us work for that better age now.

-- CAV