Edward Tenner: Bloody-Minded Philosophers
[Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian's Lemelson Center and holds a Ph.D in European history.]
Is the 1995 decision of the Department of Justice, the Washington Post, and the New York Times to publish the Unabomber Manifesto coming home to roost? Yes, it may have saved lives by prompting Theodore Kaczynski's brother to investigate similar quirks of style and identify him to the FBI as a possible suspect. But it also set a dangerous precedent. Terrorism gets attention. When a mentally disturbed man, allegedly James J. Lee, tried to take hostages with threats of explosions at the Discovery Channel headquarters in suburban Maryland, only the gunman was killed, by a police sniper.
Of course the cases are different. Lee was anything but stealthy, announcing his protest to the world apparently peacefully before going over the edge. Theodore Kaczynski never published a rationale for his decades-long undercover terror campaign until 1995, when he unleashed a crisis in air transportation with new threats, resentful that the Oklahoma City bombing had upstaged him.
Most initial academic and popular reaction to the manifesto ranged from condescension to scorn. It seemed to be a mediocre imitation of radical environmental philosophers like the Norwegian Arne Naess, with some Frankfurt School pop psychology thrown in, a caricature of the self-hating academia. But it was easier to imprison Kacynski than to ignore his work. David Gelernter, seriously injured by one of his mail bombs and leading critic of media presentation of the Unabomber, castigated the media at the time, but to little avail....
Read entire article at The Atlantic
Is the 1995 decision of the Department of Justice, the Washington Post, and the New York Times to publish the Unabomber Manifesto coming home to roost? Yes, it may have saved lives by prompting Theodore Kaczynski's brother to investigate similar quirks of style and identify him to the FBI as a possible suspect. But it also set a dangerous precedent. Terrorism gets attention. When a mentally disturbed man, allegedly James J. Lee, tried to take hostages with threats of explosions at the Discovery Channel headquarters in suburban Maryland, only the gunman was killed, by a police sniper.
Of course the cases are different. Lee was anything but stealthy, announcing his protest to the world apparently peacefully before going over the edge. Theodore Kaczynski never published a rationale for his decades-long undercover terror campaign until 1995, when he unleashed a crisis in air transportation with new threats, resentful that the Oklahoma City bombing had upstaged him.
Most initial academic and popular reaction to the manifesto ranged from condescension to scorn. It seemed to be a mediocre imitation of radical environmental philosophers like the Norwegian Arne Naess, with some Frankfurt School pop psychology thrown in, a caricature of the self-hating academia. But it was easier to imprison Kacynski than to ignore his work. David Gelernter, seriously injured by one of his mail bombs and leading critic of media presentation of the Unabomber, castigated the media at the time, but to little avail....