Comment by mcint
3 years ago
Points I would raise, from the article:
If Kaczynski did raise valid points, he says, it is because he took them from others, including the French sociologist Jacques Ellul, whose 1954 text, The Technological Society, electrified the bomber as a young man. “Few of his arguments are actually original,” Fleming says. “He borrowed most of his ideas from fairly mainstream academic authors who would never have condoned his violence.
And separation of ideas from the violence, counter to the premise of the article, which it mentions only once, late, in passing:
“I don’t think we should read Kaczynski as a theorist or philosopher, and try to separate his ideas from his violence,” he says. “He’s a self-described terrorist, and revolutionary, and this is how I read him.”
Well summarized elsewhere. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16850733
Kaczynski needs to be understood as much as a brilliant propagandist as a philosopher. Dismissing him as a philosopher because he drew his ideas from others misses the point. Regardless of what one thinks of the man, his ideas and actions (and I strongly disagree with many of his ideas and all of his violent actions), he has clearly been more influential than Ellul in the US by a wide margin.