'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski found dead in his prison cell
NBCJun 08, 2023
The Facts
Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, often referred to as the "Unabomber," died on Saturday at 81 reportedly from suicide. Kaczynski admitted to committing 16 bombings between 1978 and 1995, killing three people and injuring 23.
As an adolescent and young man, Kaczynski was a gifted student, particularly in mathematics, attending Harvard at age 16 and publishing papers in prestigious academic journals. His promising career, however, abruptly ended in the 1970s, with Kaczynski becoming increasingly reclusive.
The Spin
Narrative A
Ted Kaczynski has had an unfortunate cultural impact on the US, with many young people espousing support for him on social media in recent years. His deadly campaign was a travesty motivated by a deep desire for revenge. Kaczynski's legacy will live on in infamy.
Narrative B
The media has somewhat neglected a key component of the Unabomber's story: the fact that Ted Kaczynski was a subject in the CIA's secretive MK-Ultra mind control experiments. Harvard psychologist Henry A. Murray ran a number of experiments on Kaczynski that deeply demoralized him, eventually leading to his deadly bombing campaign.
Narrative C
Ultimately, Kaczynski's campaign of terror should be viewed as a foreshadowing of the wave of domestic terrorism that has affected the US since the 1990s. Though Kaczynski was not Timothy McVeigh, who committed the Oklahoma City bombing, one can see the similarities in the extremists. Though his ideology has become increasingly popular with some in recent years, it should not be forgotten how rotten Kaczynski's worldview truly was.