What the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski wrote about Leftist Psychology

His insights were ahead of their time, and so accurate they're scary.

The Woke Mind is a series of articles that seeks to explain, in plain English, how you can expect the woke left to behave and why they do what they do. If we don’t understand this, we can’t defeat them.

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Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber, was obviously not a perfect person. But he was a genius. And his manifesto - Industrial Society and Its Future - is a must-read document.

I believe that so stronger that I’m currently creating an audio version of it for my Inner Circle Podcast if you’d like me to read it for you. Part 1 is available to listen to now.

In an era before the internet, when he was in a cabin in the middle of the woods, Kaczynski nailed the psychology of the woke left. There are many portions of his manifesto that are so dead on regarding what drives the modern left that are even more accurate today than when he wrote it.

In this article, I will pick out some highlights that will (hopefully) whet your appetite to read the full document. Or listen to my audio version of it, whichever works best for you!

Kaczynski’s manifesto is a series of numbered paragraphs. I’ll note which paragraph each passage comes from for you to reference later.

Early on in the manifesto, he defines leftism, and discusses its psychology.

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.

Kaczynski identified two drivers of leftism:

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.

Kaczynski defined feelings of inferiority as:

10. …low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

And he defined oversocialization as…

25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe such people.

Kaczynski correctly identified that wealthy white liberals are core drivers of the woke left ideology (though in his time it was the men doing it, not the women):

12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to upper-middle-class families.

27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most left-wing segment.

Kaczynski also correctly identified that leftists tend to be more racist/sexist/etc because they view groups they consider to be oppressed in need of their protection:

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)

This next section got me thinking about trans women in women’s sports. Could it be that the left wanted so desperately to prove that women are no different than men that they created the ultimate scenario to do that, by forcing biological women to compete against biological men?

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

I’ve often said that the reason the woke left does what it does is because they lack self-esteem. They don’t feel like they have value to give the world and so they just destroy it instead.

Kaczynski was more overt:

16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative," "enterprise," "optimism," etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's problems for them, satisfy everyone's needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

He also notes that their tactics reflect self-hatred:

20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.

He also notes that if the left doesn’t have problems to exploit, they will simply create them:

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

220. Suppose you asked leftists to make a list of ALL the things that were wrong with society, and then suppose you instituted EVERY social change that they demanded. It is safe to say that within a couple of years the majority of leftists would find something new to complain about, some new social "evil" to correct because, once again, the leftist is motivated less by distress at society's ills than by the need to satisfy his drive for power by imposing his solutions on society.

He correctly identifies that leftist movements attract people seeking to satisfy their need for power:

83. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying themselves with a powerful organization or mass movement. An individual lacking goals or power joins a movement or an organization, adopts its goals as his own, then works toward those goals…In particular, leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy their need for power.

Later in the manifesto, he moves into discussing the dangers of leftism.

He argues that some activist movements don’t initially start out as leftist movements. But rather, leftists are attracted to these types of movements to gain more power, and thus the movements become co-opted and the goals change.

213. Because of their need for rebellion and for membership in a movement, leftists or persons of similar psychological type often are unattracted to a rebellious or activist movement whose goals and membership are not initially leftist. The resulting influx of leftish types can easily turn a non-leftist movement into a leftist one, so that leftist goals replace or distort the original goals of the movement.

This is a point that is very worthy of consideration, and something I plan to think deeper on.

He recommends that activist organizations take vigilence to project themselves from such a takeover, again discussing the left’s drive for power:

214. To avoid this, a movement that exalts nature and opposes technology must take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must avoid all collaboration with leftists…Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power.

He also identified the left as a religion:

218. Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because leftist doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural being. But, for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role much like that which religion plays for some people. The leftist NEEDS to believe in leftism; it plays a vital role in his psychological economy. His beliefs are not easily modified by logic or facts. He has a deep conviction that leftism is morally Right with a capital R, and that he has not only a right but a duty to impose leftist morality on everyone.

He predicted that the woke left would move on from demanding equality in the spirit of Martin Luther King (equality of opportunity) and graduate to demanding equity (equality of outcomes):

219. Leftism is a totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position of power it tends to invade every private corner and force every thought into a leftist mold. In part this is because of the quasi-religious character of leftism; everything contrary to leftist beliefs represents Sin. More importantly, leftism is a totalitarian force because of the leftists' drive for power…Consequently the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has already attained; his need for the power process leads him always to pursue some new goal. The leftist wants equal opportunities for minorities. When that is attained he insists on statistical equality of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone harbors in some corner of his mind a negative attitude toward some minority, the leftist has to re-educated him.

Ted Kaczynski had a better grasp of the psychology of the left in 1995 than most people do today:

229. The leftist is oriented toward large-scale collectivism. He emphasizes the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. He has a negative attitude toward individualism. He often takes a moralistic tone. He tends to be for gun control, for sex education and other psychologically "enlightened" educational methods, for social planning, for affirmative action, for multiculturalism. He tends to identify with victims. He tends to be against competition and against violence, but he often finds excuses for those leftists who do commit violence. He is fond of using the common catch-phrases of the left, like "racism," "sexism," "homophobia," "capitalism," "imperialism," "neocolonialism," "genocide," "social change," "social justice," "social responsibility." Maybe the best diagnostic trait of the leftist is his tendency to sympathize with the following movements: feminism, gay rights, ethnic rights, disability rights, animal rights, political correctness. Anyone who strongly sympathizes with ALL of these movements is almost certainly a leftist.

The entire manifesto is well worth your time to read (or listen to) based on his analysis of the woke left alone.

Ted Kaczynski was insane, a person who was turned into a monster by the adults that he trusted as a part of the MKUltra experiment while he was a student at Harvard. He was a man who committed horrific acts because he believed that he had to in order for his manifesto to be published and read. Perhaps he was right - would it have the notoriety it does if he hadn’t done what he did? I’m not suggesting anyone copy his tactics and certainly don’t endorse them…but he’s probably correct that his ideas would have been overlooked by society at large if they didn’t want a glimpse inside the mind of a madman.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear your reaction to all of this in the comments. Leave me a note and tell me how you think Uncle Ted did in his analysis.

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