OP-ED: WAS THE UNABOMBER RIGHT ABOUT LIBERALS?

By Paul F. Petrick

In the early days of the internet, there was an online quiz that juxtaposed passages from Industrial Society and Its Future (1995) aka the Unabomber Manifesto by Ted Kaczynski, the eponymous “Unabomber,” and Earth in the Balance (1992) by Al Gore. Quiz-takers were invited to guess the authorship of each passage. It was an easy quiz if you could anticipate that the most extreme, alarmist rhetoric would always be attributable to Gore. Thirty years later, Gore’s book is not worth remembering. The same cannot be said for Kaczynski’s tract.

Published as an eight-page supplement to the September 19, 1995 edition of the Washington Post, the Unabomber Manifesto is 35,000 words of concentrated neo-Luddism. Over the course of 232 numbered paragraphs, Kaczynski waxes philosophically about how the Industrial Revolution and its ongoing permutations have robbed human beings of the survivalist activities innate to human nature and necessary for human happiness. It echoes some similar themes in Gore’s book, albeit with less emphasis on the ecological consequences of mankind’s socioeconomic trajectory.  About 90% of Kaczynski’s Manifesto is discardable. But a small portion remains quite pertinent.

Ancillary to his main thesis, Kaczynski devotes 27 paragraphs to analyzing the psychology of modern political leftism. “Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society,” Kaczynski begins. “One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness in our world is leftism . . .” Kaczynski explains that in the latter half of the 20^th Century, political leftism substituted class solidarity for a collection of activist identity groups. Careful to say that “not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist . . .” he believes “leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types.” According to Kaczynski, leftism is caused by two psychological phenomena: 1) feelings of inferiority; and 2) oversocialization.

Do you suffer from low self-esteem, depressive tendencies, guilt, or self-hatred? If so, you might be a leftist according to Kaczynski. This might seem incongruous to the air of superiority wafting from the port side of the political spectrum, but Kaczynski contends, the outward holier-than-thou attitude betrays an inward insecurity.

As evidence for the inferiority complex he detects among leftists, Kaczynski cites their hypersensitivity to politically incorrect terminology and anything that could be construed as placing a negative value judgment on non-Western civilizations. He points out that those most likely to hold these attitudes are not the average member of any marginalized societal subset, but only the most politically leftist, i.e. college professors. Kaczynski’s explanation for this is deep down leftists really do believe marginalized groups and non-Western civilizations are inferior. Because leftists themselves suffer from feelings of inferiority, they identify with these groups and civilizations.

But what if leftism is just the result of compassion for others? Kaczynski is not buying it. The leftist is quick to indict America as racist, sexist, imperialistic, etc., but downplays the same traits in communist or non-Western countries. Instead, Kaczynski argues that leftism is motivated by hostility toward the strong and successful triggered by feelings of inferiority. This also explains the leftist inclination towards collectivism, as feelings of inadequateness make leftists doubt their ability to thrive as individuals.

Leftists seeking to justify their hostility for the strong and successful as compassion for the weak and struggling are what Kaczynski describes as “oversocialized.” Socialization is the process by which people are conditioned to think, feel, and act as society demands. Kaczynski refers to people who have been socialized to such a degree that even minor transgressions are accompanied by intense feelings of guilt and shame as oversocialized. If his self-hatred is strong enough, the oversocialized person will try to break free of his psychological restraints by rebelling against society, often by accusing society of violating its purported tenets such as freedom or equality. These are attempts to fabricate a moral impetus for satisfying the merely psychological need to alleviate self-hatred.

Kaczynski qualifies his analysis of leftist psychology as a generalization. It does not apply to every leftist and may apply to non-leftists. But it does comport with a theory I have developed over a lifetime of observation–maladjusted people tend to become liberal and well-adjusted people tend to become conservative or apolitical. Exceptions exist of course, but studies do show that conservatives are happier than liberals. The challenge for the well-adjusted is that family breakdown and the decline of organized religion have created conditions where there are probably more maladjusted people than ever before even if Kaczynski is no longer among them. The Unabomber’s last victim was himself.

 Paul F. Petrick is an attorney in Cleveland, Ohio.