Luigi Mangione, 26, accused of bravely shelling United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who became a blessed vigilante, was charged by the Federal Ju Trial on Thursday.
According to NPR, federal accusations include stalking, firearm violations and murder by using a firearm. If convicted, Mangion will be subject to death for murder. Mangion also faces additional charges from state prosecutors in New York and Pennsylvania, where he was arrested.
Attorney General Pam Bondy recently directed prosecutors at the Department of Justice to seek Mangion's death penalty. “If there's a death incident, this is one,” Bondy told Fox News. “This man is accused of hunting a CEO, two fathers, a married man, hunting him and executing him.”
For months after Thompson's murder in December, Mangion became a bolt of controversy. For many, he represents the res and disappointment that many Americans have about the US healthcare system. Mangione's online activities are subject to intense scrutiny, ranging from banner photos from X to over 200 Goodreads reviews.
His review of the so-called “Unabomber Manifesto” has attracted particular attention. “It's easy to be quick and unthinkable [to] He wrote. “But it is simply impossible to ignore how many of his predictions about modern society are predicted,” he wrote.
Sean Fleming, a researcher at the University of Nottingham, studies Aritek's radicalism, but is trying to better understand that Ted Kachinski, the author of the essay, is currently writing a book. Fleming is cautious about saying that Mangion was inspired by Kachin Shikshi, but it is difficult to not notice some similarities in their case. “Assassinating corporate executives to create a media spectacle straightens from Unabomber's playbook. Brian Thompson's assassin also left some sculptures in the shell casing. “And more generally, both Kaczynski and Mangion are dissatisfied with the inaction with a STEM field background.”
Fleming shared some of his insights about Unabomber with the Vox's host I explained today Podcast by Sean Rameswaram. Read the excerpts of their conversations below, edited for length and clarity. And listen I explained today Get your podcasts on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere.
When you first read the manifesto, what stood out to you most?
How did it attack me Unconscious it was. Kaczynski doesn't think there's a thorny Cabal of Technocrats that plans to suppress us all. His whole worldview is evolutionary. And I thought: This is interesting as a political theory. It's very radical and there are many things I disagree with, but as a historian of political ideas, I thought it would be an interesting side project. And it took its own life.
Who does not remember, who he is, what did he do, and how did people know him?
Ted Kaczynski was born in Chicago in 1942 and started as a child genius in mathematics. He went to Harvard on a scholarship at age 16 and later earned a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Michigan. He was then hired as an assistant professor of mathematics at Berkeley, at which time he was the youngest in the facility's history.
We're still talking about Kaczynski because he blackmailed the media and published his writings.
However, two years later in Berkeley, he suddenly resigned, and after a while he bought a land outside Lincoln, Montana. And from there he began his one-man war against modern technology. He began sending bombs to corporate executives and scientists in 1978. His bombs killed three people and wounded 23 people by the time he was arrested in 1996.
Why are we still talking about Unabomber years later?
We're still talking about Kaczynski because he blackmailed the media and published his writings. In April 1995, he wrote to the New York Times, promising that he would halt the bombing if a 35,000-word essay titled “Industrial Association and Its Future” appeared in the Times or other major newspapers. The manifesto was published in the Washington Post on September 19, 1995.
It's hard to imagine today, but hundreds of thousands of people in this country have been mailed to this man's manifesto.
Yes, that's right. Without exaggeration, it may be one of the most read manifestos since the Communist manifesto. It was published in a paperback shortly afterwards. It has also been uploaded to Time Warner's Pathfinder platform. It set up a template for the manifest that could become what could have been the first internet manifest and became so common in the aftermath of violent attacks.
Until recently, the Unabomber Manifesto was still an Amazon bestseller. The philosophy category was ahead of the classics of Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean Jacques Russault and Thomas Payne.
Kaczynski writes, “There is a good reason to believe that a primitive man suffers from stress and frustration and is more satisfied with his way of life than modern man.” I think many people will be able to find some truth in that statement. What was he trying to understand in this manifesto?
In this passage, he argues that essentially humans are biologically unadapted by the modern world. This is a major argument from evolutionary psychology. The argument is, biologically speaking, we are still hunter-gatherers of the Stone Age. We evolved to hunt large animals in the Savannah over just 10,000 years. In other words, the blink of the eye from an evolutionary perspective – this world of concrete, steel and screens has been built. Therefore, Kachinski claims that he suffers from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance abuse and many other psychological pathologies.
And what is his solution?
His solution is to destroy all modern technology, return to a more primitive state and crash from the modern world. What he envisions is a group of anti-tech revolutionaries who thwart electrical grids, blow up gas pipelines, and attack the nervous system of modern society. He wanted to bring us back to something like small farming and shepherd society, if not the Stone Age.
How did you receive this manifesto? 'When was it published by the Washington Post in the 90s and delivered to front porches nationwide? And how did his reputation change over time?
Well, there was a lot of discussion about it. Many journalists treated Kachinski as a serious intellectual and welcomed many members of the public as folk heroes in letters to editors and talk radio shows. He was often referred to as modern-day Thoreau.
His warnings about the negative consequences of modern technology began to appear prophetic to many.
Kaczynski was discontinued from the late 90s to the early 2010s. However, he was later rediscovered as a concern about climate change, artificial intelligence, and the results of digital immersion became very prominent. And his warning about the negative consequences of modern technology began to look prophetic to many. So there was a revival of Unabomber.
Who are the types of people who shine in this manifesto?
During Unabomber Mania in the mid-1990s, Kaczynski gained followers on the radical left, especially among green anarchists. However, he returned to cultural prominence with the opposite political valence. Today he is considered a more righteous figure. As you may know, he spends the first 3,000 words on his manifesto railing against the left.
And in the context of the culture war of the 2010s, conservatives rediscovered him, rehabilitated him, and recruited him on their side in the culture war. Therefore, Kaczynski is now assigned by a tattered bag of neo-Nazis, eco-fascists, far-right accelerationists, and those attracted to his left-wing criticism on the right.
Is this very interesting as Luigi Mangione is welcomed as something like the hero on the left? How about Kaczynski appealing not only to Mangione but to someone like Neo-Nazis?
What Kaczynski is appealing to so many different kinds of extremists is that he goes against a simple classification. And this makes his ideology like an a la carte menu of ideas. For example, Green Anarchists were fascinated by the criticism of technology, but generally speaking, the neo-Nazis ignored criticism of technology, focusing solely on left-wing criticism.
Has Kaczynski ever shown regret for murder?
No, he won't. He shows no regrets about the people he killed and his bombings. He says they are not innocent. At one point, he says that those responsible for technological advancements are worse than Stalin, and worse than Hitler. What they are doing to humanity is even more grotesque, he says. But he admits that his anti-technology revolution will kill millions, if not billions. This is a very apocalyptic vision.
Many people accept his argument to the point that suggests that they should blow up the electric grid and return to the Stone Age. In other words, many people accept part of the diagnosis of problems in the modern world. But they don't want to take his prescription seriously.
Do you think Ted Kaczynski's manifesto idea stands the test of time?
I think the point about evolutionary inconsistency will stand the test of time and become more and more appealing to a new generation of extremists. The part about intelligent machines seems particularly prophetic in our present moment.
In the 90s he looked like a one-off. He could easily be fired as an isolated crank with some kind of idiosyncratic ideology. However, in the 2020s it appears that the world was caught up in him. I think there is an increasing likelihood that others will follow in Kachinski's footsteps when concerns about the negative consequences of modern technology become particularly serious.
