Kishkumen wrote:Droopy wrote:Secondly, Kaczynski is one of you; he's a leftist who's bizarre ravings cannot, without prior knowledge, be disentangled from the beliefs of Al Gore, much of the mainstream environmental movement, many in the Democratic party, and not a few in here.
Ha! Boy, you are a complete ignoramus.
Kaczynski Manifesto wrote:7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century
leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today
the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be
called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in
mind mainly socialists, collectivists, "politically correct" types,
feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and
the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these
movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing
leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological
type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by
"leftism" will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of
leftist psychology (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)
8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less
clear than we would wish, but there doesn't seem to be any remedy for
this. All we are trying to do is indicate in a rough and approximate
way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main
driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling
the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is
meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of
the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of
the 19th and early 20th century.
9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we
call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of
inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while
oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of
modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.
That's about as close to Droopy one can hope to get without being Droopy.
Droopy, you lose yet again. You are a petty, ignorant bigot with a tenuous grasp on sanity. Ted is your closest fellow traveler. Get help.
Question: is the real human being who is the anonymous Internet coward "Kishkumen" really this dim? Is he really this ignorant? Is he really this unread, uneducated, and uninformed? Is he really this intellectually self-sabotaged?
Well...yes.
This is the same ignorant,
self-serving, poorly educated and poorly read mistake generations of leftists have made when comparing Marxism, Nazism, and fascism. They fight amongst themselves and criticize each other, and therefore they must be
opposite philosophies in fundamental ideological conflict.
Kaczynski was a neo-primitivist environmental fundamentalist, and a believer in the most estreme fringes of the environmental movement. When his cabin was searched in 1996, after his arrest, FBI agents found issues of the
Earth First Journal and a publication called
Live Wild or Die, which itself was funded by Earth First's co-founder Mike Roselle. For years after his arrest, Earth First expressed support and solidarity with Kaczynski in print.
Secondly, as Rush Limbaugh pointed out at the time with a little test he gave for weeks on his radio show, the average person could not tell the difference between the stated positions of Kaczynski on environmental issues and those of Al Gore. If you've read
Earth in the Balance, you have already encountered substantial portions of Kaczynski.
If you had a modicum of intellectual honesty below your veneer of pious, smug intellectual snobbery, then instead of quoting incontextual criticisms of the Left as he understands it (Marx and Engles criticized the Left too, Squish), you might have bothered to quote more extensive doctrinal sections of
The Unabomber Manifesto. Text, for example, such as:
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world.
So far, standard leftist neo-primitivist environmental extemism/eco-Marxism. Classic Green assumptions and premises thus far.
The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.
Hmmm. This could be a book or fundraising letter from Earth First, Friends of the Earth, the WWF, NRDC, RAN, the Ruckus Society, PETA, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Greenpeace, and countless other similar groups on the Left. Indeed, James Hansen calling for Nuremberg-like trials against coal and petroleum company executives who disagree with AGW for "high crimes against humanity" are not all all far from the ideas and sentiments expressed here.
We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.
Sounds pretty left-wingish to me, squish. I have here on my disk a bevy of quotations from leading evnironemntalists going back quite a few years, and most of its sounds very much like, well, Ted Kaczinski (not William F. Buckley or Rush Limbaugh).
More, Squish?
We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing the sphere of human freedom. But because "freedom" is a word that can be interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what kind of freedom we are concerned with.
This could be any number of traditional Marxists, cultural Marxists, leftists, and postmodernists talking about western and American style "freedom" (in scare quotes) or of "formal" or "Bourgeoisie" or "negative" freedom as over against their own understanding of it. What does Ted mean?
It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of government.
Hmmm...where have I heard that before.
There's a great deal more to mine here, but its ultimately a waste of time...