Kaczynski’s manifesto outlines his cognitive reasons for doing this, but there’s another element as well. Generally speaking, people with a beef against how technology is used in society don’t live in a shack in the woods, shit in a hole, and become serial killers. They just post angry rants about it on Facebook. To do what Kaczynski did requires something else, generally something traumatic.
And that’s where the story gets really, really, really, really, really weird. I mean like super weird. Twilight-Zone-episode weird.
In fact, if it hadn’t been extensively documented, a lot of folks probably wouldn’t believe what happened to Kaczynski, it’s that weird.
In 1958, he enrolled at Harvard.
In 1959, he was approached by a dude named Henry Murray, a psychologist and researcher at Harvard.
During WWII, Murray worked at the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. After the war, he became a professor at Harvard, but he retained his government contacts.
Starting in 1959, Murray engaged in a bunch of extremely unethical research experiments on Harvard students at the behest of the US government. The government was investigating ways to traumatize people to the point of breaking their personalities, with an eye toward developing interrogation techniques that would break the will of suspected spies or enemy agents.
Harvard and the Making of the UnabomberIn the fall of 1958 Theodore Kaczynski, a brilliant but vulnerable boy of sixteen, entered Harvard College. There he encountered a prevailing intellectual atmosphere of anti-technological despair. There, also, he was deceived into subjecting himself to a series of purposely brutalizing psychological experiments—experiments that may have confirmed his still-forming belief in the evil of science. Was the Unabomber born at Harvard? A look inside the files
Murray experimented on many Harvard students, one of them being Kaczynski.
One of the experiments he performed on Kaczynski involved having him write down all the things he considered his weaknesses and personality flaws…then brutally attacking him and abusing him using what he’d written as ammunition. Kaczynski was repeatedly abused and attacked by multiple people, all of them Harvard employees, using the material he himself had supplied about his own personal weaknesses, and then—I’m dead serious, you can’t make this shit up—forced to watch footage of himself being attacked and abused.
Over and over.
Henry Murray was never called to account for doing this, though modern academics tend to quietly not talk about his research.
Did Ted Kaczynski’s Transformation Into the Unabomber Start at Harvard?Kaczynski was subjected to a controversial and disturbing psychological experiment as a young student at the Ivy League school.https://www.history.com/news/what-happened-to-the-unabomber-at-harvardIt’s not hard to draw a line between what happened at Harvard and Kaczynski targeting academic institutions in particular.
Would he still have been a terrorist if this hadn’t happened to him? Hard to say. Some folks claim his behavior shows the signs of schizophrenia, though some of the psychologists and psychiatrists who examined him after his arrest say he isn’t schizophrenic. There’s no way to wind back the clock and see what would’ve happened if he hadn’t been used in traumatic human experiments at Harvard.
But it’s really hard to look at that, look at the fact he specifically targeted universities (that’s the “u” in “unabom”), and say “nah, couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”
Harvard has sealed the results of Murray’s experiments on Kaczynski and refuses to reveal what Murray wrote about him, so who knows?
Exclusive: Body Cam Shows Cop Planting Gun on Innocent Man
Body cam footage obtained by the Police Accountability Report shows how a Baltimore police officer was caught lying about what he saw when he testified in court that a man possessed a gun.
An Off-Duty Cop Pulled a Gun on Teen Waiting for a Bus, How Will the City Respond?
The nearly deadly encounter between an unarmed teen and an off-duty Baltimore police officer still haunts the family, but the recent controversy involving the city’s civilian review board may leave them with nowhere to turn
A cop tried to keep him from recording a traffic stop, but now he’s fighting back to change the law
The battle over the right to record police is far from over. That’s because a case pending over a routine traffic stop in Lakewood, Colorado, where police interfered with a citizen journalist recording, could have a huge impact on a controversial legal precedent which shields cops from legal liability.
End Qulified Immunity Protections, & Civil Asset Forfeiture. Hold Cops Accountable.
Cops who break the law must be held accountable for their illegal actions !!!
This is also why you need to tell the cop that he is about to violate your rights and will lose his qualified immunity. Otherwise he can claim he didn’t know that law or right and use the qualified immunity as a defense.
Get it right in your heads people. “To protect and serve” means themselves.
Qualified immunity isn’t a matter that will be addressed by police reform. It’s part of the holding accountable of elected officials.
If cops didn’t break the law. These people who record them would not need to record the cops
In “this day and age…” Why do cops NOT know the law?
That cop who try to obstruct them from recording definitely has more issues under the radar and he’s a ticking bomb.
this is America cops should lose their pensions three strikes and they’re out!!😎
That would be three justice systems.
One for police, one for the wealthy, one for the rest of us.And PlEASE leave a comment for copwatcher Abade aka Liberty Freak, his law suit may become case law that protects your right to record the police! So make sure to give him some kindness and support as he will be turning himself into law enforcement and will be incarcerated for a few months. So this is your chance to share your thoughts with him before he goes inside. Thank you! -taya
What an incredible episode!!! I especially love it when you break things down and illustrate clearly how our system has “run amuck” and been abused to undermine & sabotage itself.
“Qualified Impunity” is such a clever, creative and accurate play on words. I would love to see that term widely adopted because I would hope that this shift might become a catalyst for reform by bringing a better understanding of just how broken our system is; and how close we may be to losing our democracy itself! It is being attacked and undermined in so many ways right now from so many sides…
If ignorance of the law is no excuse for civilians ignorance of our rights should be no excuse for the law!
Since this video was from Colorado it would make sense to mention that, at the time of this report, a new police accountability law was about to go into effect. Since then several cops, notably Loveland PD, have been held accountable with this law. As for my opinion I would like to say, no one has done more to end qualified immunity than corrupt cops all over the US.
If cleaning up neighborhoods changes the culture by changing the way people feel, then cities have an interest in leaving them neglected to justify dumping more money into police presence. It’s business as usual.
There are three types of versions of laws, the one for the poor aka the “criminal class” and then the one for government officials/LEOs, and finally the one for the elites/the rich who line the pockets of said govt officials & LEOs
I think we now know why the police are no longer required to learn the law before claiming to “enforce the law”.
Not knowing the law lets the police officers claim “I didn’t know the law” and the courts say it was an “honest mistake” and let them off with a warning to do better.Oh and…….”qualified immunity” sounds like a “Jim Crow” law. It’s sickening that such a perversion of our Constitutional Rights is allowed!
Something to keep in mind. Until privatized, for profit, publicly traded prisons are done away with none of this tyranny will end.
I’ve always said that one of the main goals of 1st Amendment auditor’s is to remove the sovereign from the state 👍💯👍
Driver: I’m just defending myself here. You really have nothing to fear from me. I’m not out to get you. So can you kindly just cite or warn me and we can go on our way?
Wait, qualified immunity gets it’s power by proving that the law enforcement officer was ignorant of the law? Make it make sense somebody please.