Anti-Tech Revolution — Book Discussion Event

In 2023 a man condemned for several life sentences died in a “Federal Medical Center” in North Carolina. His attempted “suicide” was exacerbated by prison guards’ “chest compressions” which “cracked ribs” and “produced severe internal bleeding”.

That man was Theodore Kaczynski, an “anti-tech revolutionary” who undertook a prolonged campaign of individual attack against men and structures he deemed to be responsible for the dangerous and liberticidal progress of the techno-industrial system. His ideas and choices were vindicated in hundreds of pages of his writing, in works like Industrial Society and its Future which have been circulated widely.

His activity triggered a lot of critique and counter-critique among subversives, as well as achieving notoriety in the mass media and culture of the wider society. Without hagiography or excommunication (reactions befitting only churches and political parties), we want to meet to present, discuss and critique his ideas. We are convinced that a revolutionary struggle today must not only recognise the necessity of an uncompromising destruction of the world which has been reduced to an artificial process—but also that it must confront the multiplication of enemies of that world who do not share our ethics and ideas, but are motivated by a thirst for individual freedom or revenge with their own points of reference.

Therefore, giving consideration to this individual expression to the social conflict against the profiteers and managers of disaster is an opportunity to sharpen our own perspectives—so that in the face of much uncertainty, rather than retreating, unifying, or disintegrating, these perspectives can contribute to the clash going all the way, fully and freely.

“As far as I know, almost the only thinking people who remain enthusiastic about technology are those who stand to profit from it in some way, such as scientists, engineers, corporate executives and military men. A much larger number of people are cynical about modern society and have lost faith in its institutions. They no longer respect a political system in which the most despicable candidates can be successfully sold to the public through sophisticated propaganda techniques. They are contemptuous of an electronic entertainment industry that feeds us garbage. They know that school-children are being drugged (with Ritalin, etc.) to keep them docile in the classroom, they know that species are becoming extinct at an abnormal rate, that environmental catastrophe is a very real possibility, and that technology is driving us all into the unknown at reckless speed, with consequences that may be utterly disastrous. ...

But at the same time there are growing numbers of people, especially young people, who are willing to face squarely the appalling character of what the technoindustrial system is doing to the world. They are prepared to reject the values of the technoindustrial system and replace them with opposing values. They are willing to dispense with the physical security and comfort, the Disney-like toys, and the easy solutions to all problems that technology provides ... they are capable of opting for courage and independence in place of modern man’s cowardly servitude; and above all they are prepared to discard the technological ideal of human control over nature and replace it with reverence for the totality of all life on Earth—free and wild as it was created through hundreds of millions of years of evolution.”