Shortly following the death of Theodore John Kaczynski on June 10, 2023, Kieron Monks, a journalist from iNews reached out to me with a few questions relating to Kaczynski’s influence and legacy. My responses were never directly quoted in the article (likely due to my late response to Mr.Monk’s emails), so I decided to publish them here. The interview was conducted via email and has not been altered.

Kieron Monks: How did you first become aware of Ted Kaczynski and what interested/attracted you to his work/ideas?

Kazimir: Firstly, for some context: I think that I’ve agreed with Ted on many points even before I knew about him – what he and other similar thinkers like John Zerzan did for me was that they helped articulate these thoughts I had. Ever since I was a kid I loved wild nature, I prefered nature documentaries over cartoons, I spent a lot of my time climbing trees, observing plants and animals, foraging, building shelters, catching fish with my hands, etc. But the happy days didn’t last long; increased pollution and “development” ruined most of these places beyond recognition, which made me very sad to say the least; I also learned about what sort of future school was preparing me for, something completely unlike the life I’ve seen exist in wilderness, and it made me go through my later childhood with an ever present sense of impending doom. I did not idealise or romanticise life in the wild, I never imagined it to be all sunshine and rainbows and knew that there is a far greater risk of death involved in it than in for example, a (supposedly) cozy office job. What made a wild life the better option for me was the autonomy and full agency over their actions that a wild creature enjoys, compared to the civilised human who is deeply entrenched in a complex net of hierarchies and ordered around by forces he has no control over – he can not claim in good faith that his life is truly his own. In the wild one can be killed, sure, but not enslaved (if we ignore the very few examples in the insect world).

As I entered my teenage years and began to explore the political landscape I was motivated primarily by a desire to protect the wilderness, which presented to me the last bastion of my ideals against the onslaught of life-ruining, suffocating technological progress. At 11 or 12 I became a huge admirer of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society that I found out about through the Whale Wars TV show, and aspired to one day join them (I also tried unsuccessfully to get my parents to donate large sums of money to them). I also allied myself more with the political left, since they were the ones who seemed to care most about environmental issues, compared to predominantly climate change-denying rightwingers. Due to my hatred for authority I was driven more to the anarchist side of the left – the USSR disgust(ed) me – and through it eventually to Ted.

It might come as a surprise to many, but I found Kaczynski’s works through exploring radical leftist political theory. I’ve alway been bothered by the left’s emphasis on development and tech that seemed to me to be insepparately linked with the ongoing ecocide. Their anthropocentrism did not fly with me, too, as I found the continued existence of all species as equally important. After observing other beings (in real life and on film) for probably hundreds of hours I just couldn’t bring myself to see humans as more valuable than any other being, especially since humans were the ones who brought about the hellworld and the ecological disaster I wanted to fight against. I think the moment I found out about Ted was when I read some text by a leftist (maybe Murray Bookchin, I’m not sure) who was complaining about the biocentric crowd of environmentalists who rejected humanism and uncompromisingly resisted technology in the name of saving the wild – among these Ted Kaczynski was mentioned. The name sounded familiar, as if I’d heard of him before, so I looked him up on Google where I heard about the Industrial Society and its Future – his manifesto.

I was reluctant at first, mostly because of the way he is portrayed as a disturbed lunatic in the media, but decided to give it a try for fun. When I started reading I almost put it down after he opened it with what seemed to be a generic American anti-leftist rant – yes, it hurt my feelings a bit -, but since it wasn’t a long text I decided to push on, knowing he had some vaguely similar views on technology as I did. Having finished, I realised that I wasn’t the only one who cared about wilderness and personal autonomy to such an extent or in this particular way, and I wanted to read more. I did read more – nearly all of his works.

What I ultimately like about his thought is that we agree on putting the continued existence of wilderness first, all the while we see it not as a flawless utopia, yet still as the best possible place for humans to dwell. That we see the technological system as something fundamentally at odds with freedom, and that its destruction is a necessity. Though technology has been conceptualised in about the same manner by other thinkers (Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, Martin Heidegger, Samuel Butler, Friedrich Georg Juenger) far earlier, it was this picture of it as a system with its own inertia, outside human control, that I found most deeply compelling. Since reading him I’ve totally dropped the idea that changing the people ‘in charge’ of the system can make meaningful change, because the very existence of the system is predicated on the destruction of what we’re trying to save. The bombings are an unfortunate turn of events, and something I don’t find attractive or admirable about him, and also not as the way to go about doing things, though I can certainly appreciate the seriousness and dedication in the more abstract sense – he’s truly committed to his beliefs and it shows through his actions and his work. There’s a soberness and groundedness about him that I think we need, I’ve seen far too many people turn their environmentalism into personal consumerist or spiritual practice that’s more about them than about saving the wild from the ravages of this culture.

KM: What would you say have been his most significant contributions from his writing and work, that have had the greatest impact?

K: I have to emphasise that Ted is not exactly the most original thinker, something he even admits. His biggest influence that is often discussed in tandem with him is French anarchist philosopher Jacques Ellul, another one that is seldom mentioned is British zoologist Desmond Morris. His thought is a fusion of Ellul’s insights about the nature of the technological system and Morris’ theory of a mismatch between the artificial environment of civilised mass society and the circumstances human mind-and-body ‘expect’ to encounter. His biggest contributions and also aspects that make him appealing would have to be that he managed to make fairly complex ideas of Ellul very accessible to the average reader, and explain the plights of many people stuck in modernity with a great degree of accuracy, while suggesting thorough change outside of politics which many are fed up with. There are people who talk of these exact same issues, like John Zerzan or late writer Daniel Quinn, but simply don’t inspire people the same way – the former’s writing is much harder to understand, and the latter is not nearly as militant.

His actions during the bombing campaign certainly contributed to these issues having been brought to light. On one hand he attracted more people to the cause of resisting civilisation/technological system, though he also gave the milieu some bad reputation, but hopefully the stigma will soon fade away. I think a lot of people can see that while it’s not exactly nice that a timber lobbyist and a few others got blown up, the situation we’re in is hurting and will hurt far more people (and non-humans) who deserve it far less in ways that are far worse, if something is not done about this crisis.

Kaczynski also, unlike many others, actually worked on providing a theoretical basis for a hypothetical course of action against the technological system. I can’t say that it’s the greatest strategic work ever, but he certainly did more than anyone else to promote the idea that a global revolution (or rather devolution) against the system is necessary. If we tried to draw analogies between the historic far-left and this milieu, Kaczynski would be more of a Lenin than a Marx.

KM: How do you see the strength and scope of his following? It seems he has developed a massive following that runs across different ideologies of the political spectrum. 

K: Kaczynski has many followers/admirers on various ends of the political spectrum, but unfortunately most have very little understanding of him, especially the right and the far right. Ted is the kind of person who, despite all his controversies, appeals to a lot of people, he’s like a strange personified reflection of the 80’s Earth First! movement. EF! was very diverse and included everyone from conservative Republicans to anarchists and socialists, because everyone found it appealing for this or that reason. Ted’s critique of “leftism,” which for him is not merely believing in left-wing causes, it’s more of a psychological archetype, appeals to the mainstream right; his use of extreme violence appeals to the far right who often glorify violence just for its own sake; conspiracy theorists like him because he warns against scary things, and all they do is think about and make up scary things; his desire for personal autonomy appeals to many anarchists and even some right-wing libertarians; his extreme love for wild nature appeals to more or less any serious environmentalist at least to some degree. He’s least appealing to the center-left liberal types, most likely because they’re the ones most content with the status quo (or so they imagine). I suppose socialists are also not fond of Ted for his opposition to technological progress and his belief that human society can not be subject to rational and intentional development. He remains most influential in the contemporary anarchist milieu, though he regularly receives harsh criticisms from the same crowd.

That said, Ted himself was aggressively apolitical, and cared exclusively about the wilderness-technology war, in many ways resembling the also recently deceased EF! co-founder Dave Foreman, who left the Earth First movement in response to the presence of many Earth Firsters who cared about social justice issues seemingly more than about the wild. Kaczynski always said that politicisation of his movement would ruin it, and this is what we see: people like to cherrypick, which is why I can’t exactly say he has a massive following, because most of the people who publicly endorse him don’t really follow him with the same zeal that e.g. Marxists follow Marx’s word. He’s a powerful and polarising figure and many simply want him to be a piece of decorum on their ideology.

KM: Why does he remain so influential to this day? Are we in a new era of tech-skepticism as a reaction to tech proliferation?

K: I think it’s because the situation worsens on nearly all levels. A climate scientist burned himself alive last year in a desperate act of protest against the fact that none of the world’s governments are willing to do even the minimal necessary things to avoid and/or mitigate the approaching climate apocalypse. Life is becoming empty and meaningless for millions. In the “Third World” people are feeling the catastrophic consequences of “First World’s” technological opulence. Microplastics and toxic chemicals are everywhere. The companies promising so-called green or sustainable energy solutions don’t have any convincingly real solutions. Artificial intelligence is not only getting scarier, but threatens millions of jobs worldwide. The surveillance and curtailing of individual freedoms are getting unbearable in most “developed countries”. The system of technology is tightening its grip, and it is inevitable that people will have adverse reactions to it, first only to the particulars and eventually to the totality of it. When you see that voting doesn’t work, that doing things within the framework of the system is fruitless, any sane person begins to question the system, and the system we live under itself is technology.

KM: How do you see his legacy developing – will his following keep growing, and will they become stronger and more influential?

K: As stated in the answer to the previous question, I can only see his influence expanding due to societal and ecological conditions. That said, I don’t see him gaining a following as a person, it’s more that I can see the anti-tech and anti-civilization views proliferating and his views together with them, at most being an entry point due to his high publicity. Honestly, I don’t like the prospect of a future personality cult around him, because that only brings in people who are uncritical worshippers and lack the capability to think on their own. I don’t think of myself as his follower, more as someone who recognises the value of his contributions more than the value of him as a person, and from experience in talking with likeminded people can confirm this is how most of us look at him. If a personality cult ever emerges it will be from the right.