I don't see the point. The Unabomber manifesto had nothing to do with bombs. It is a commentary on the state of technology in society and a commentary on leftism.
You can't say it had nothing to do with them. At a minimum, the manifesto directly motivated them.
Im not a Kaczynski scholar, so maybe it is possible to embrace the philosophy and come to sperate conclusions, but that is rarely the case for manifestos. They usually make strong positive claims about the necessity and justification of the author's actions.
The objective of the killings was to get the manifesto published in mainstream media. If you actually read it, which I'm guessing you didn't, then you'd see that Ted K did not really advocate random killings. He was concerned about taking down industrial civlization entirely.
1) I dont think you are engaging in good faith. Good faith discussions dont include cynical asides, but I will give it one last chance.
2) There is a contraction in saying the manifesto has nothing to do with the killings, while its pulication is the primary motivation for the killings.
3) Kaczynski started bombing in 78 and mailed the manifesto to the news in 95. Kaczynski has similar essays before bombing, but at no time between 78 and 95 tried to leverage killings for exposure.
I'm not the person you originally replied to, but I tend to agree with them in the sense of the writings not having much to do with the bombings.
There can exist a corpus of ideas, and there can be actions people take due to their beliefs in those ideas, but if those actions don't particularly have much to do with the actual ideas, we can say one doesn't have much to do with the other. I'd give the New Testament as another example where the idea corpus and actions taken in its name tend to diverge.
The philosophy could be separated in concept. My point was that, in reality, it absolutely was not.
The claim "The Unabomber manifesto had nothing to do with bombs" is one of fact and easily refuted by history.
In a parallel universe, someone else could have penned similar ideas and not conducted the bombings. In this universe, the bombings were entirely motivated by the ideas stated in the manifesto.
Okay, that's a reasonable distinction. I agree with you.
I think the reason this discussion is frequently had, is that people will read the manifesto, recognize that it discusses some interesting issues in a self-consistent way, and want to discuss those ideas without simultaneously heading off semi-veiled accusations of "are you going to blow stuff up now too?".
In fact, I would argue that considering that the Unabomber manifesto has been inspiration to at least two very intelligent people as they commit targeted murder against strangers, there is something interesting and unusual about that corpus of ideas compared to other writings by other figures.
I'm unaware of any highly educated people who have become similarly radicalized after reading Mein Kampf. Something is uniquely appealing about Kaczynski's writings.
