Luigi Mangione, the 26 -year -old man accused of firing blatantly for the CEO of Unitedhealthcare, Brian Thompson, became a famous vigilant, was accused by a federal grand jury on Thursday.
Federal charges include harassment, a crime of firearms and murder by using a firearm, according to NPR. If it is convicted, the murder position makes Mangione eligible for the death penalty. Mangione also faces additional positions from state prosecutors in New York and Pennsylvania, where he was arrested.
Attorney General PAM Bondi recently ordered prosecutors of the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty for Mangione. “If there was ever a case of death, this is one,” Bondi told Fox News. “This guy is accused of hunting a CEO, a father of two children, a married man, hunting and executing him.”
In the months after the murder of Thompson in December, Mangione has become a slice of controversy. For many, they represent the resentment and disappointment that many Americans house about the United States medical care system. Mangione’s online activity has also become the theme of intense scrutiny, from his Banner photos in X to his more than 200 Good criticism.
His review of the so -called “Unabomber Manifesto” has attracted special attention. “It is easy quickly and irreflecting [to] Write this as the manifesto of a lunatic, to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems that identifies: “Hello.” But it is simply impossible to ignore how prophetic many of their predictions on modern society were. “
Sean Fleming, a member of the University of Nottingham who studies the radicalism of ants, has been trying to better understand the author of that essay, Ted Kaczynski, who is currently writing a book. Although Fleming is cautious about saying that Mangione was inspired by Kaczynksi, it is difficult not to notice some parallels in his cases. “Killing corporate executives to create a media show is directly from Unabomber’s plays. Brian Thompson’s murderer also left some engravings on the housing housings, which reminds me of the engravings that Kaczynski left in the components”, Flems “, tell me in the components”, Flems in the components. “And in general, Kaczyskyskyskys, and Mangionsky and Mangionskys, both Mangionsky, and Mangionskys and Mangionskys. The superprods spells discontent with funds in the voice fields.”
Fleming shared some of his ideas about Unabomber with the large amount of Vox’s Today, explained Podcast, be Rameswaram. Read an extract of your conversation, edited by length and clarity, then. And listen Today, explained In Apple’s podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.
What highlighted you more when you read for the first time the manifesto?
What caught my attention is like not inspiring Was. Kaczynski is not an evil clique of technocrats that conspire to oppress everyone. All its worldview is evolutionary. And then I thought: this is interesting as political theory. It is extremely radical and with much I do not agree, but as a historian of political ideas, I thought it would be an interesting parallel project. And then he spent his own life.
For those who do not remember, who was it? Hey, what did he do and how people met him?
Ted Kaczynski was born in Chicago in 1942, and began as a child prodigy in mathematics. He went to Harvard with a scholarship at the age of 16, and then made a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Michigan. And then he was hired as an assistant professor in Mathematics in Berkeley, and at that time he was the young man in the history of the institution.
The reason we are still talking about Kaczynski is that he managed to blackmail the media to publish his writings.
But after two years in Berkeley in the abruptly resigned, and after a while, a piece or a country was bought on the outskirts of Lincoln, Montana, where he built a cabin of a room that did not have 10 feet of electricity. And from there, he released his single man war against modern technology. He was the shipping bomb to corporate executives and scientists in 1978. And his bombs killed three people and wounded another 23 at the time he was arrested in 1996.
Why do we keep talking about Unabomber all these years later?
The reason we are still talking about Kaczynski is that he managed to blackmail the media to publish his writings. In April 1995, he sent a letter to the New York Times promising that he would stop bombarding whether his 35,000 words essay entitled “Industrial Society and his future” were published in The Times or in some other important newspaper. The Manifesto was published in the Washington Post on September 19, 1995.
What I believe is difficult to imagine today, but hundreds of thousands of people in this country were sent by mail the manifesto of this type.
Yes, that is correct. Without exaggeration, it could be one of the most read manifests from the communist manifesto. Shortly after, it was published in rustic. He also climbed to Time Warner’s Pathfinder platform. It became what could be the first Internet manifesto, and established the template of the manifestos that have become too common after violent attacks.
Not long ago, the Unabomber manifesto was still a sales success at Amazon. In the philosophy category, it was ahead of Friedrich Nietzsche’s classics and Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine.
Kaczynski writes that “there are good reasons to believe that primitive man suffered less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man.” I think many people could find some real statement. What was trying to convey with this manifesto?
In the passage, he has just cited, what he is arguing is basically that human beings are biologically deflaced to the modern world. This is a great claim of evolutionary psychology. The argument is that, biological speaking, we are still hunter stone hunters. We evolve hunting large animals in the savanna and within only 10,000 years, the flickering of an eye in evolutionary terms, we have built this world of concrete, steel and screens. Then, Kaczynski argues that because we suffer from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance abuse and so many other psychological pathologies that human beings of the so -called stems do not.
And what is your solution?
Its solution is to destroy all modern technology and return perse to a more primitive condition, to get out of the modern world. What he foresees is a group of anti-technology revolutionaries sabotaging the electricity grid, exploiting gas pipes and attacking the nervous system, so to speak, of modern society. Hey, I wanted to become again, if not in the stone age, then something like small -scale agriculture and a pastor society.
How was this manifesto in the ‘90 When was it published by the Washington Post and delivered to the front porches throughout the country? And how has your reputation changed over time?
Well, there was a lot of debate about it. Many journalists treated Kaczynski as a serious intellectual, and many members of the public, in letters to the editor and in the conversation radio programs, acclaimed him as a popular hero. It was or described as a modern Thoreau.
His warnings on the negative consequences of modern technology were the prophetic for many people.
Kaczynski fashionable from the late 90s to the beginning of 2010. But then it was rediscovered as groups on climate change, artificial intelligence and the consequences of much more outstanding digital immersion. And his warnings on the negative consequences of modern technology were to look prophetic with many people. So there is a leg a revival of Unabomber.
Who are the types of people who are crying to this manifesto?
Duration Unabomber mania in the mid -1990s, Kaczynski won followers on the radical left, especially among green anarchists. But he has returned to cultural prominence with the opposite political valence. Today it has been seen more as a figure on the right. As you have noticed, it passes the first 3000 words of your manifesto with the railing against leftism.
And in the context of the Cultural War in the 2010, conservatives rediscovered and rehabilitated it and co -opted it on their side in the cultural war. Then, Kaczynski has now appropriated the neo -Nazis, ecos forgas, extreme right accelerators, a bag of people to the right that are attracted to their criticism or leftism.
What is very interesting because Luigi Mangione has accused as something or a hero on the left, right? How does Kaczynski attract a figure like Mangione but also neo -Nazis?
What makes Kaczynski attractive to so many different types of radicals is that hefities are easy for categorization. And this makes my ideology a menu or ideas to the letter. For example, green anarchists were captivated with their criticism of technology, while neo -Nazis, in general, ignore the criticism of technology and focus only on the criticism of leftism.
Does Kaczynski show any remorse for the murder?
No, he doesn’t. He shows no regret for the people he killed and his bombings. He says they are not innocent. At one time, he says that the people responsible for the advancement of technology are worse than Stalin, worse than Hitler. What they are doing to humanity is equally more grotesque, he says. But he recognizes that his anti-technology revolution would kill millions if not billions of people. This is an extremely apocalyptic vision.
Many people accept their argument to the point where they suggest that we must fly the electricity and return to the stone age. In other words, many people accept parts of their diagnosis of problems with the modern world. But they are not willing to take their recipe seriously.
Do you think that ideas in the Ted Kaczynski manifesto will resist the test of time?
I believe that the points about evolutionary mismatch will resist the test of time and become increasingly attractive to a new generation of radicals. The parts on smart machines are especially prophetic at our current time.
In the 90s, it seemed only one. It could be easily fired as an isolated crank, with a kind of idiosyncratic ideology. But in the 2020s, it seems that the world caught him. As concerns about the negative consequences of modern technology become especially acute, I think it will be increasingly likely that others will continue in Kaczynski’s footsteps.
]