Theodore Kaczynski

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Theodore "Ted" John Kaczynski (* 22. May 1942 in Chicago , Illinois ) is an American Terrorist , author and followers of a nature-centered anarchism and former mathematics - assistant professor . Between 1978 and 1995, he sent 16 letter bombs to various people in the United States , killing three people and injuring another 23.

Kaczynski was initially considered a mathematically gifted child prodigy . In 1969, however, he ended his previously successful academic career in order to pursue a simple life as a dropout in a self-built hut without electricity and running water . The progressive destruction of nature in the vicinity of his hut made it more and more difficult for him to live as a self-sufficient person . In 1978 he began his attacks on people who were connected to the then new technologies. According to Kaczynski, the attacks were extreme, but necessary to draw attention to the increasing erosion of freedom and dignity of people by the modern world. They should start a revolution that would bring the entire system down to prevent the greater suffering that the system would add to people.

Based on his manifesto published in 1995, he was recognized by his brother. He contacted the FBI, whereupon Kaczynski was arrested in 1996 and sentenced in 1998 to eight life imprisonment with no parole after a trial in which he pleaded guilty. He is serving this sentence to this day in the maximum security prison ADX Florence , which is considered the safest civil prison in the USA.

Before his identity became known, the designated FBI and then the press him as Unabomber (university and airline bomber), since its first bombs all university professors or airlines were aimed. The investigation into the manhunt for him, in which more than 150 employees were simultaneously employed full-time for many years, is still the longest and most expensive in the history of the FBI.

Life before the attacks

Childhood and youth

Kaczynski is the older son of Theodore Richard Kaczynski and Wanda Theresa Dombek Kaczynski, who were descended from Polish immigrants, and grew up in simple circumstances in Chicago for the first ten years of his life. His brother David was born in October 1949 .

His parents reportedly told his brother that Ted was a happy baby until severe hives forced him into isolation with little contact with others. After that, he showed little emotion for a few months. From first to fourth grade Kaczynski attended the Sherman Elementary School in Chicago, whose school administration described him as "healthy" and "well adjusted". In 1952, ten years after his birth, the family moved to the suburb of Evergreen Park , Illinois, where Kaczynski attended Evergreen Park Central Junior High School and, from 1955, Evergreen Park High School. After being tested for an IQ of 167, he skipped 6th grade. Kaczynski later described this as a decisive experience: before he had a circle of friends and even developed a certain leadership role, but now felt uncomfortable with the older children in the new class and was harassed by them. He graduated from school at the age of 16.

Academic education and career

Theodore Kaczynski as a young lecturer at the University of Berkeley , 1968

In the fall of 1958, at the age of only 16, he began a bachelor's degree in mathematics at Harvard University , for which he had received a scholarship . From the fall of 1959 to the spring of 1962, Kaczynski was one of 22 student subjects in a personality study led by Henry A. Murray called Multiform Assessments of Personality Development , in which he was exposed to great psychological stress for about an hour every week for a period of three years by being verbally humiliated in a kind of interrogation situation. The study was probably carried out as part of the MKULTRA project, led by the CIA , which had systematically conducted human experiments, including LSD , since the 1950s in order to optimize brainwashing methods . Whether Kaczynski was also given LSD is controversial. Various authors suggest that the experiments were the main trigger for Kaczynski's later attacks. He himself later described the experiments carried out on him as not particularly formative.

In June 1962 he graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree with moderate grades. In the same year he moved to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor , where he first completed a master's degree in mathematics and obtained his doctorate in 1967 . He was awarded the Sumner-Myers Prize for his dissertation entitled Boundary Functions . His specialty was function theory : "I would guess that about 10 to 12 people across the country understood or appreciated him," said Maxwell O. Reade, a member of Kaczynski's dissertation committee.

In Michigan, he taught students on a National Science Foundation scholarship for three years and published two articles related to his dissertation in math journals. After leaving Michigan, he published four more articles. In the fall of 1967 Kaczynski got an assistant professorship at the University of California at Berkeley . Despite attempts to persuade other institute members and his good future career prospects, Kaczynski resigned in 1969 without further explanation.

Retreat into the wilderness of Montana

Interior of Kaczynski's Log Cabin in the Newseum in Washington, DC

Kaczynski then lived in his parents' house in Lombard (Illinois) , a suburb of Chicago. In 1971 he moved to Great Falls , Montana . In the summer of the same year he began near Lincoln , a small town about 80 miles southwest of Great Falls, with the construction of a wooden cabin (cabin) in the wilderness, in which he led a hermit life from then on . Kaczynski set himself the goal of becoming self-sufficient and making ends meet with funds that were as sparse as possible, preferably available in the local area. With the help of sporadic temporary jobs and financial support from his family, he was finally able to acquire an almost 5,600 m² plot of land surrounding his settlement.

The cabin has been in the Newseum in Washington since 2008 after the FBI took it to Sacramento to investigate, where it was long in a warehouse. The ground floor is approximately 10 feet by 12 feet (3.05 meters by 3.65 meters). The hut has a gable roof , which was formerly used as a storage room and was additionally equipped with a gable opening for entering and leaving the hut when the snow closed the entrance door.

Assassinations

Replica of one of Kaczynski's explosive devices in the Newseum

In May 1978, the first letter bomb sent by Kaczynski was discovered in the parking lot of the University of Illinois at Chicago . The addressee was a materials science professor from Northwestern University . After the letter was served, he handed it to the police at a loss. When the letter was opened, the explosive device detonated and injured a police officer. As similar cases increased, the FBI formed a task force to investigate the Unabomber. In 1985, his eleventh letter bomb killed the owner of a computer shop in Sacramento for the first time. After seriously injuring another computer shop owner with his next letter bomb in early 1987, he did not commit any further attacks for six years. With his next bombs in June 1993, he seriously injured two renowned professors within two days. This was followed by his last two attacks in 1994 and 1995, both of which were fatal.

List of assassinations
date place Victim Injuries
May 25, 1978 Northwestern University , Evanston, Illinois Terry Marker, University Police Officer Minor cuts and burns
May 9, 1979 Northwestern University , Evanston, Illinois John Harris, student Minor cuts and burns
November 15, 1979 American Airlines Flight 444 from Chicago to Washington, DC, explosion in flight Twelve passengers Smoke inhalation
June 10, 1980 Lake Forest , Illinois Percy Wood, President of United Airlines Cuts and burns all over the body
October 8, 1981 University of Utah , Salt Lake City, Utah None, bomb defused no
May 5th 1982 Vanderbilt University , Nashville, Tennessee Janet Smith, university employee Serious burns on hands and splinter wounds on the body
2nd July 1982 University of California, Berkeley Diogenes Angelakos , professor of engineering Severe burns on the body and splinter wounds on the right hand and face
May 15, 1985 University of California, Berkeley John Hauser, student Loss of four fingers in the right hand, severed artery in the right arm, minor loss of vision in the left eye
June 13, 1985 Auburn, Washington None, bomb defused No
November 15, 1985 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor James V. McConnell , professor of psychology, and Nicklaus Suino, research assistant McConnell: temporary hearing loss; Suino: burns and splinter wounds
December 11, 1985 Sacramento, California Hugh Scrutton, computer store owner death
February 20, 1987 Salt Lake City, Utah Gary Wright, computer store owner Severe nerve damage to the left arm
June 22, 1993 Tiburon, California Charles J. Epstein , professor of genetics at the University of California Severe eardrum injuries and hearing loss in both ears, partial loss of three fingers
June 24, 1993 Yale University , New Haven, Connecticut David Gelernter , computer science professor Serious burns and splinter wounds, permanent damage to the right hand and right eye
December 10, 1994 North Caldwell, New Jersey Thomas J. Mosser, manager of the advertising agency Burson-Marsteller death
April 24, 1995 Sacramento, California Gilbert P. Murray, president of a California lumber industry lobby group death
Supporting documents:

manifest

In June 1995, Kaczynski anonymously mailed a 35,000-word manifest entitled Industrial Society and Its Future, also known as the Unabomber Manifesto, to The New York Times and The Washington Post , offering the bombings if they would publish the manifesto. On September 19, 1995, both newspapers printed the text after prosecutors and the FBI had spoken out in favor.

content

The central concept of his manifesto is “the industrial-technological system”. Kaczynski claims that the mechanization of our society as a result of the industrial revolution was disastrous for mankind, since it could have created a " system " with an inherent instinct for self-preservation , which has more and more influence on the individual. This leads to the erosion of freedom and dignity of the individual and to concrete psychological problems such as depression and burn-outs .

The erosion of freedom is a natural product of such a system, since it has to control human behavior as best it can for its own functioning. He explains the psychological problems as caused by an alienation of people from their natural living conditions, since they have to fall back on unsatisfactory "surrogate activities" due to the elimination of the daily struggle for survival. Examples of such alternative activities include scientific research, artistic creation, all forms of entertainment (e.g. supporting a sports team) and political engagement. His criticism of the political left in particular runs through the entire manifesto. In his opinion, these already socially recognized moral principles, such as equality , would represent political goals and thus support the system rather than rebel against it. But he thinks even less of conservatives , whom he called “fools” who “whine about the decline of traditional values, but at the same time support technological progress and economic growth with full enthusiasm”.

Kaczynski concludes his manifesto with the conclusion that a revolution with the aim of the collapse of the system as soon as possible is necessary. This would cause a lot of suffering itself, but would prevent even greater suffering overall, which would be caused by the continued existence of this system and further technological advances. Modern technology should only be used to accelerate the breakdown of the system.

publication

At the suggestion of the filmmaker Lutz Dammbeck , Theodore Kaczynski later created an authorized version of the manifesto, the German translation of which was published in 2005.

A German translation of the reviewed and expanded edition of "Industrial Society and Its Future" from the first volume of "Technological Slavery" (2019) has been available since December 21, 2019.

Relationship to anarchism and primitivism

Kaczynski describes himself as an anarchist. At the same time he criticized the primitivist movement as being too reformist in parts. Some primitivist writers like John Zerzan and John Moore defended him despite distant views on his ideas and actions.

Investigation and arrest

The identikit of the FBI

In the early years, two different perpetrator profiles competed within the investigating UNABOM Task Force : apart from the above-average intelligent man from the academic environment of the "hard sciences" (English-language term for mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and similar subjects), a simple alternative was also used Aircraft mechanic from the working class suspected. In 1993, when there was already consensus that he was an intellectual, the task force set up a 1-800 hotline and offered a $ 1,000,000 reward for information that led to the identification and capture of the Unabomber would.

After the manifesto was printed in the newspaper, Ted's younger brother David recognized his brother based on the ideas represented in it, his writing style and the public profile of the perpetrator, and informed the authorities after his own investigations. Ted Kaczynski was arrested by the FBI on April 3, 1996 at his cabin in Lincoln. The investigation into this case had cost a total of around 50 million US dollars and caused about a million man hours, the largest effort ever made in the USA to catch a perpetrator.

Sentencing and imprisonment

Kaczynski after his arrest

On May 4, 1998, Kaczynski was sentenced to eight times life imprisonment with no parole after prior consultation by defense attorneys (including Judy Clarke ) and the prosecution . Kaczynski's defense, supported by statements made by his brother, assumed that he suffered from a serious mental disorder and that his guilty responsibility had to be questioned and therefore chose the defense strategy of portraying him as mentally ill in order to avoid a possible death penalty. Kaczynski himself opposed this strategy of his lawyers and insisted on representing himself. This denied him, however, Judge Garland Ellis Burrell Jr. , whereupon he tried on January 9, 1998 to hang himself.

An expert examination by the psychiatrist Sally Johnson, which he tolerated, came to the conclusion that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia . This diagnosis is extremely controversial as it was based primarily on Kaczynski's view of the world and lifestyle, which was regarded as extraordinary. It is also considered to be distorted by the portrayal of Kaczynski as "sick" by the media and by his family (especially his brother), who may have just wanted to save him from the death penalty. It was predicted by himself in his diary before he started his bomb attacks. He described his branding as “mentally ill” as a mechanism of the “system” (see section “ Content ” under “Manifesto”) to maintain itself by discrediting its ideas in this way. He sticks to this view to this day. These mechanisms described by him are comparable with the explanations of Michel Foucault in Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft and those of other representatives of antipsychiatry .

Pressured by the psychiatric report and fearing that the trial might fail, the public prosecutor's office offered Kaczynski and his defense an understanding in the sense of life imprisonment. Kaczynski agreed. He is serving his sentence in ADX Florence , a high-security prison in Florence ( Colorado ).

Kaczynski's name was also associated with the Zodiac killer . He was briefly considered a suspect, as various features coincidentally matched that of the wanted perpetrator. This is how he was living in the Bay Area at the time the murders occurred. However, in five cases, Kaczynski was not in California at the time of the crime. The fingerprints Kaczynski not coincide with those of the unknown perpetrator.

While in custody, Kaczynski wrote and corresponded with around 400 people, including some in German, which he speaks fluently since he became a member of Harvard's German working group. His documents are kept in the Labadie Collection of the University of Michigan Library. The names of many correspondents will not be published until 2049. In 2010, Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski, aka "The Unabomber", an anthology of previously unpublished essays related to Kaczynski's technology criticism and letters, appeared in 2016 Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (second edition: 2020), a comprehensive historical analysis of the effects of technology on society with a proposal for those who wish to organize against it.

Reception in pop culture

films and series

  • The US miniseries Manhunt: Unabomber tells the backstory of the FBI's investigation into the case. US Premiere: August 1, 2017. Ted Kaczynski is portrayed by Paul Bettany .
  • In the film Good Will Hunting , psychologist Sean Maguire mentions Ted Kaczynski as a negative example of what geniuses can be capable of.
  • In the series Criminal Minds , an episode is based on the incidents.
  • The series Unabomber: In His Own Words from 2020 depicts the FBI investigation, supplemented by voice recordings from an interview with Kaczynski in custody.

music

  • The Norwegian band Combichrist mentions Kaczynski in their track God Bless .
  • Excerpts from the Unabomber Manifesto are used in Kirlian Cameras Kaczynski Code and Citizen Una .
  • The Swiss musician Guz wrote a song called Ted Kaczynski was a friend of mine .
  • The Swedish rock band Mando Diao released a song entitled Killer Kaczynski on their album Ode to Ochrasy .
  • Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers released a song called Montana / Autumn / 78, the lyrics of which revolved around Kaczynski, as the B-side of their single If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next .
  • The American band Macabre released an EP called Unabomber in 1999 . The unabomber's phantom image served as the cover.
  • The American band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum has released the song FC: The Freedom Club on their album Of Natural History , in which the band deals with the Unabomber. According to the band, the album is part of the "debate between two contradictory pillars of 20th C. Anti-Humanism: The Futurists versus the Unabomber".
  • The American metalcore band The Acacia Strain released a song entitled Unabomber on their album Wormwood , which is about humanity's dependence on technology.
  • The American rapper Ill Bill released the song “Exploding Octopus” in 2013, including a music video, which deals thematically with Theodore Kaczynski.

literature

  • In the thriller Enter from Karl Olsberg the manifesto Kaczynski plays a central role.
  • In the thriller Alert by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, an interview with Theodore Kaczynski is described on pages 286-293, during which he gives warnings about the consequences of modern technology.
  • The novel Munk by the Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia is based on the story of Kaczynski.

Using his name as an allonym

  • The US wrestler Glenn Jacobs briefly used the ring name "Unabomb", which was based on Unabomber.
  • The poker player Phil Laak was nicknamed Unabomber because he always wears a hood and sunglasses when playing poker.

Movie

literature

  • Alston Chase: A Mind for Murder: The Education of the Unabomber and the Origins of Modern Terrorism. WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 2004, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 .
  • Lutz Dammbeck : THE NETZ - The construction of the Unabomber & The "Unabomber Manifesto": The industrial society and its future. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-86438-001-3 .
  • Gerd Fischer : The Unabomber . In: Communications of the German Mathematicians Association. Volume 4, Issue 4, 1996, ISSN  0942-5977 , pp. 60-63 ( degruyter.com PDF).
  • Jim Freeman, Terry D. Turchie, Donald Max Noel: UNABOMBER: How the FBI Broke Its Own Rules to Capture the Terrorist Ted Kaczynski. History Publishing Company, Palisades, NY 2014, ISBN 978-1-940773-06-3 .
  • David Kaczynski: Every Last Tie. The Story of the Unabomber and His Family. Duke University Press, Durham, NC 2016, ISBN 978-0-8223-5980-7 .
  • Theodore J. Kaczynski: Writings from prison . Packpapier Verlag, Osnabrück 2010, 124 pp. ( Anarchistischeebibliothek.org ).
  • Stefan Preis: Traces of something invisible. The Kaczynski case viewed as a library phenomenon. Scientific publishing house, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86573-848-6 .
  • Stefan Preis, Julian Knop: The Kaczynski Case - Terrorism as Communication. Empirical research report. Scientific publishing house, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86573-899-8 .

Web links

Commons : Theodore Kaczynski  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20170810173231/http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/5/21/ted-kaczynski-unabomber-math/
  2. ^ A b Roger Lane: Murder in America - a history. Ohio State University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8142-0732-4 , pp. 314-315 ( kb.osu.edu PDF).
  3. ↑ Alston Chase: Harvard and the Unabomber. WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 2003, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 , pp. 21, 373.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Alston Chase: Harvard and the Unabomber. WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 2003, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 , p. 373.
  5. ↑ McFadden, Robert D .: Prisoner of Rage - A special report .; From a Child of Promise to the Unabom Suspect . In: The New York Times , May 26, 1996. Archived from the original on August 9, 2017. Retrieved February 4, 2009. 
  6. ^ The Kaczynski brothers and neighbors . Archived from the original on August 17, 2017.
  7. ↑ Chase, Alston: A Mind for Murder - The Education of The Unabomber and the Origins of Modern Terrorism , published 2004 in New York, pp. 107-108. ISBN = 978-0-393-32556-0. Retrieved June 15, 2017 here on web.archive.org
  8. ↑ Redford University: Serial Killer Information Center: Serial Killer IQ
  9. ↑ Alston Chase: Harvard and the Unabomber. WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 2003, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 , p. 18.
  10. ^ Alston Chase: Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist. Norton, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 , a former philosophy professor's book, is an extension of an article in The Atlantic, June 2000. It also covers Murray's experiment. Chase also writes that he could not find any evidence of drug use in the Harvard experiments.
  11. ↑ Alston Chase: Harvard and the Unabomber. WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 2003, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 , pp. 18-19
  12. ↑ a b c Alston Chase: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber In: The Atlantic, published: June 2000, pp. 41-65
  13. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20100908003140/http://www.radiolab.org/2010/jun/28/
  14. ↑ Jeffrey St. Clair & Alexander Cockburn: CIA Shrinks & LSD , published Oct. 18, 1999 on counterpunch.org
  15. ^ Das Netz (2004) , a documentary by Lutz Dammbeck about the development of the Internet and the Unabomber
  16. ^ A b Alston Chase: Harvard and the Unabomber. WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 2003, ISBN 0-393-02002-9 , p. 20.
  17. ↑ The Unabomber's Targets: An Interactive Map , CNN. Archived from the original on June 13, 2008. Retrieved February 4, 2009. 
  18. ↑ Lardner, George; Adams, Lorraine: To Unabomb Victims, a Deeper Mystery . In: The Washington Post , April 14, 1996, p. A01. Retrieved February 4, 2009. 
  19. ↑ Sharon LaFraniere and Pierre Thomas: Unabomber Special Report. In: washingtonpost.com. June 1, 1995, accessed January 19, 2015 .
  20. ^ Theodore Kaczynski: Industrial Society and Its Future. In: The Washington Post
  21. ^ Donald E. Graham, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr .: Statement by Papers' Publishers. In: washingtonpost.com. September 19, 1995, accessed January 19, 2015 .
  22. ^ Didion, Joan: Varieties of Madness. In: The New York Review of Books
  23. ^ Theodore Kaczynski: Industrial Society and its Future. In: Heracles Concept. Lutz Dammbeck, May 31, 2003, archived from the original on September 30, 2019 ; accessed on September 28, 2019 (English).
  24. ↑ Lutz Dammbeck: The network - the construction of the Unabomber. In the appendix: The industrial society and its future (Unabomber Manifesto) by FC . Edition Nautilus, 2005, ISBN 3-89401-453-9 .
  25. ^ Theodore John Kaczynski (author), Georg Marr (translator): The industrial society and its future: reviewed and expanded edition 2019. In: Amazon. Amazon.com, Inc., December 21, 2019, accessed February 2, 2020 .
  26. ↑ ... claimed to be from the anarchist group calling ourselves FC . Retrieved June 2, 2012.
  27. ↑ … Kaczynski was a disenchanted mathematics professor turned anarchist . Retrieved June 2, 2012.
  28. ↑ Sue Mahan, Pamala L. Griset: Terrorism in Perspective . Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, ca. 2007, ISBN 978-1-4129-5015-2 , pp. 222 ( books.google.com - excerpt, restricted view).
  29. ^ John Moore: Beyond the Fragments - A reaction to the Industrial Society and Its Future. Archived from the original on September 27, 2009. In: Green Anarchist . # 51, No. Spring 1998, August.
  30. ↑ Whose Unabomber? In: green-anarchy.wikidot.com .
  31. ↑ The Unabomber: A Hero For Our Time. In: crimethinc.com. Retrieved April 10, 2010 .
  32. ↑ Labaton, Stephen: Clue and $ 1 million Reward In Case of the serial bomber. In: The New York Times. October 7, 1993, accessed February 4, 2009 .
  33. ↑ a b Unabomber: In His Own Words (TV Mini-Series 2020) (on IMDb), episode 4, from minute 10:10. In: imdb.com. Retrieved April 23, 2020 .
  34. ^ Booth, William: Kaczynski Resists the Insanity Defense. In: The Washington Post. December 26, 1997, accessed January 31, 2014 .
  35. ^ Adam K. Magid: The Unabomber Revisited: Reexamining the Use of Mental Disorder Diagnoses as Evidence of the Mental Condition of Criminal Defendants. In: Indiana Law Journal Supplement, Volume 84, No. 1 ( ilj.law.indiana.edu PDF; 475 kB).
  36. ^ Labadie Manuscripts. University of Michigan Library, accessed August 27, 2013 .
  37. ^ Theodore J. Kaczynski: Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski, aka “The Unabomber” . Feral House. 2010. Archived from the original on April 29, 2013.
  38. ^ Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How. Fitch & Madison Publishers, archived from the original on April 23, 2020 ; accessed on April 23, 2020 .
  39. ↑ Unabomber: In His Own Words (TV Mini-Series 2020) - IMDb. In: imdb.com. Retrieved April 23, 2020 .
  40. ↑ Ill Bill - Exploding Octopus on YouTube.
personal data
SURNAME Kaczynski, Theodore
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kaczynski, Theodore John (full name); Kaczynski, Ted (nickname); Unabomber
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician and bomber
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois