Ted Kaczynski: Leftist Psychology (TK1)
Analysing the Unabomber Manifesto
The full text of ‘Industrial Society and its Future’ can be found here.
Preface
I’ve been fascinated by Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto ever since my first read of it around three years ago. I’m no eco-zealot, and it should go without saying that I disavow his terrorism, but his scathing critique of the Industrial Revolution and the globalised capitalist system which has resulted from it had a profound impact on my thought. It was a part of the reason I discovered that, actually, we need to look outside of the modern political paradigm which has been presented to us. We can argue about tax policy all we like, but there are far deeper problems than that - problems inherent to the techno-industrial system itself. Apart from the obvious anti-industrial message which I find very persuasive, I also think it’s interesting that Ted chose to book-end the essay with two brilliantly effective attacks on Leftists, delving into their psychology to reveal what makes them the way they are.
In this series of essays, we shall read through Kaczynski’s manifesto together chronologically to see what can be gained from it, and I will interject at points to give my thoughts. In this first part we will look at the chapters ‘Psychology of Modern Leftism’ and ‘Oversocialisation’.
Without further ado, let us begin.
Introduction
1. 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. 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.
2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.
3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.
4. 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.
5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.
I have lots of thoughts about the industrial system and its detrimental effects on humanity, and plenty to say on the topic of the potential eventual collapse of the system as it grows ever larger and the consequences for us as we become ever more dependent on it for survival. But I’ll save these thoughts for part two when we explore that topic more fully. For now I’ll just say that “the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race,” is a fantastic first line.
The Psychology of Modern Leftism
6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.
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.
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 here 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 centuries.
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.
Feelings of Inferiority
10. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits; 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.
11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms “negro”, “oriental”, “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy”, “dude” or “fellow”. The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word “pet” and insist on its replacement by “animal companion”. Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the word “primitive” by “non-literate”. They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that primitive cultures are inferior to ours. We merely point out the hyper sensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)
So our two main concepts have been introduced which Kaczynski will use to look at Leftists: feelings of inferiority and oversocialisation. We will explore these in detail as the essay continues.
Here, Ted raises a point relating to the Leftist subversion of language which has taken place over the decades. A debate can be had about the extent to which the ever-shifting use of terminology is a tactic used intentionally to destabilise discourse, or a form of purity spiraling wherein those who are up-to-date on today’s currently acceptable terms simply feel the need to denigrate those who have fallen behind. It is presumably both to an extent, depending on the specific Leftist in question. Such purity spiraling is a common feature of a culture in which Leftists hold the power; during the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France, it was not uncommon for an individual who had held the ‘correct opinion’ last week to find the sands of ideology had shifted radically under his feet in the meantime - to find himself being condemned as a “counter-revolutionary” by his former comrades and marched to meet his fate with Madame La Guillotine.
As Leftists’ goal is to destabilise society in order to enact sweeping change, the intentional creation of new terms and casting other common terms as outmoded is one method by which activists can ensure that those who are not fanatically involved in political and cultural discourse (and who are likely non-Leftists) are hindered from contributing to the conversation. It is an effective means of creating an environment in which the ordinary person can never be certain about where he stands - what is acceptable to say or think - producing a chilling effect which instills fear and demoralisation in the populace. And of course it has the added bonus that it can be used as a stick with which to beat conservatives in debates. “You aren’t using the new term we just invented, therefore you’re a bigot and we don’t have to take you seriously.” And if you do take the precaution to ensure you’re using up-to-date terms when debating them, you’re ceding the linguistic territory, putting yourself at a disadvantage from the get-go. Leftist subversion of language has been a fantastic tool for them for advancing the dialectic.
Theodore Dalrymple once said, “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse, when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
Language is incredibly important for the Left, and they have become very adept at weaponising and abusing it to further their causes. Effectively countering the Leftist subversion of language is one task to which an answer must urgently be found.
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.
Interestingly, the typical example of the ardent enforcers of political correctness today is actually middle-class white women, not middle-class white men as Ted states here. Perhaps this change stems from the constant denigration of white men in recent years, which presumably leads many who had previously subscribed to Leftist dogma to fall away from it, or to instinctively avoid it in the first place, or to simply shut their mouths. It could also be due to the massive influx of women into university faculty positions in the 30 years since the manifesto was written, and the widespread feminisation of educational institutions that has arisen as a result. The cultural gatekeeper of acceptable terminology today is the archetypal longhouse den-mother consistently ‘correcting’ others’ use of language, henpecking, with a demeanour as though dealing with naughty children using naughty words.
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.)
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.
A few good points here. Leftists, due to their internalised feelings of inferiority, find themselves identifying with groups whom they perceive as ‘inferior’, downtrodden, et cetera. This goes a way to explaining the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ which the Left holds for “oppressed” groups. They actually do - subconsciously - view these groups as, in some sense, inferior, and thus feel that it is unfair for these people to be held to the same standards as those in “oppressor” groups. Simultaneously, though, standards are arbitrary and created by oppressors solely to maintain their cultural standing and power. So are the standards unfair because they are set up to only be achievable by certain groups, therefore unfairly privileging them compared to other groups? But we are also all equal, aren’t we? In that case, it is either culture which is to blame, or it is the product of conscious bias against these groups which continues their subjugation. Naturally, Leftists will preach the latter. But this presents a conundrum: if it is not the standards themselves that are the problem, but the obstacles placed in the way by a bigoted society, why do they constantly attack the standards themselves? Something doesn’t add up here; what Kaczynski claims - that they identify with these groups because they subconsciously perceive them as inferior - seems to resolve that contradiction.
Also, Kaczynski doesn’t mention it here, but while feminists claim to fight against the idea that men are superior to women, their idea of the liberation of women essentially is to make women into men (women should do all the things that men do and avoid activities, roles, and behaviours typically associated with femininity). A proper response to a perceived societal lack of respect for women would be to raise the amount of respect given to womanhood, motherhood, feminine attributes and strengths, not to denigrate the category of woman entirely by attempting to erase gender differences. Ironically, the feminists’ conception of womens’ liberation is a good deal more ‘misogynistic’ than the “outdated gender roles” for which people like myself would advocate.
15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They say they hate the West because it is war-like, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he grudgingly admits that they exist; whereas he enthusiastically points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.
Kaczynski points out the worryingly popular idea that things or people which are good or strong or beautiful are somehow oppressive by virtue of being good, strong, or beautiful. This is presumably because these attributes set a standard which the Leftist feels unable to live up to.
It seems the ‘oppression’ they think is imposed by such standards really comes from the fact that it is unfair to judge inferior groups or people based on criteria which they are unable to reach. Hence why, in the mind of the Leftist, equality of outcome has to be imposed top-down; they view equality of opportunity as a concept conveniently cooked up to perpetuate the oppression of ‘the inferiors’. Standards held equally for all remind the Leftist of his own inferiority; this is why Leftists reject the idea of standards altogether and worship equality, as we shall see.
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.
The combination of oversocialisation and feelings of inferiority leave the Leftist childlike, unable to act for fear of judgement. Taking the initiative opens the door to doing things incorrectly, and being criticised for doing so.
The Leftist’s feelings of inferiority make competition anathema to him, which explains why he is drawn to Leftism; by flattening society and imposing ‘equality’ on everybody, distinction is removed, competition is removed, which would alleviate his feelings of inferiority. In addition, while the Leftist likes to think of and portray himself as a rebel, fighting against the system, he is almost always - nowadays at least, if not in Kaczynski’s time - in agreement with the system. He, for example, feverishly professes support for the ‘current thing’ at every given opportunity.
17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.
The true, the good, and the beautiful have been under attack by Leftists for many decades now. Truth, through post-modern deconstructions of literally everything, rewriting of history through an explicitly political lens, and a concerted attempt to destroy the very concept of objectivity.
The good, through deconstruction of unifying legends and stories, branding important historical figures as racist, sexist etc. so we have no shared heroes to connect us to our culture. Villains are now routinely cast as anti-heroes and heroes turned into bumbling idiots. This has become such a trope because our society has become so sick that are now expected to identify with the bad guy over the hero.
The beautiful has been deconstructed, through making awful art and pretending that it is just as beautiful as genuinely great art. (Modern art is dreadful because it is not intended to portray beauty; in the attempt to create beautiful art, or at the very least, art that actually represents something concrete, they would leave themselves open to criticism. Hence, rubbish abstract art which they pretend is just too ‘deep’ for you to understand.)
Ugly art functions as an attack on truth. If beauty is subjective, the link between truth and beauty has been severed. If morality is subjective, the link between the true and the good has been severed. Without a shared conception of what goodness and beauty mean, the link between goodness and beauty has been severed. A common belief in truth, goodness, and beauty is essential for a healthy, unified, stable society - that is why these concepts have been so consistently attacked. Without common ground on which to stand, a sense of cultural belonging and social unity is impossible.
Related to all of the above is the cultural shift from a society which valued sincerity and enthusiasm to one which is endlessly ironic, sarcastic, and pessimistic. We will touch on this more in the second essay, but the fact that this shift took place at the same time as technology and material conditions underwent such a large overhaul seems to be no coincidence. As individual agency and autonomy were stolen away by liberal democracy and placed in the hands of technocrats, bureaucrats, and managers, the power process (which we will look into in detail next time) was increasingly interrupted, leaving the masses unfulfilled, confused, and deflated, creating a society devoid of higher meaning.
18. Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs.
Ted is correct here, Leftists will vehemently deny any scientific findings which disprove their worldview, or any inconvenient modes of categorisation based on scientific fact (such as the sex binary) - but he neglects to mention that Leftists do claim objective truth in certain circumstances, and will claim a belief in science when it suits them. It is ironic, however, that Leftists claim to be the side which adheres to ‘the science’ when they have been the ones attempting to deconstruct “Western” epistemology and “Western” science since the 1960s.
Leftists have even gone as far in their deconstruction of objectivity as claiming that mathematics “is racist”, with predictable consequences. In Seattle, Portland, one elementary school saw its passing rate in maths drop from 28% to 18% among black students after the introduction of a Critical Race Theory-inspired framework of “Mathematics For Liberation”. This is a common Leftist tactic; identify a problem, implement a wacky solution, and after the solution inevitably exacerbates the problem, claim that the problem has only become worse because we haven’t actually gone far enough yet. It may be cynical to assume that this is part of the Leftists’ goal, but it is plausible that in lowering standards, it is assured that fewer people will achieve - this way, Leftists don’t have to feel so bad about being failures themselves. Or perhaps it is a form of accelerationism; you simply ruin society until utopia can be imposed.
For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests.
Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus, if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly.
Leftists view everything is terms of collectives. It is obvious that this is a self-defence mechanism: ‘It’s society’s fault that I’m a failure, and it’s society’s fault that that successful person over there is a success.’
Though, this too seems to only be applied selectively, when it suits the Leftist. If a minority or otherwise ‘underprivileged’ person commits a crime, for example, society is entirely to blame and to punish that individual, or to ascribe to them personal responsibility for their actions, would be compounding the oppression they face. Yet, when a member of a group they regard as ‘privileged’ mistakenly uses a poor choice of wording when speaking on a controversial topic (easily done when language is constantly being subverted and meanings shifted), or makes some other small mistake, the judgement and outrage of Leftists will come down on him like a tonne of bricks. They will make every attempt to ruin his career, or even go so far as to endanger his family through doxxing.
19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.
This is why Leftists are quick to engage in mob rule. They are reliant on group membership for their sense of identity formation. When they are with their ‘kind’, they are quickly overcome by the ‘us-versus-them’ thinking of which they so often accuse others. If you oppose them or their tribe, you must be crushed; your opposition is a threat to the tribe, and therefore to their achievement of the power process through the surrogate activity of activism. (These terms ‘power process’ and ‘surrogate activity’ will be explained in much more depth in part two.)
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.
21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms?
Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.
As Ted says, Leftists often take a hostile approach because through exerting force as part of a larger group, through intimidating others into stepping into line, they achieve a sense of power. As they are losers individually, it is only through the threat of force which numbers bring that they can exert power on others. They especially feel a sense of power at the ‘revenge’ they are taking on the strong, those compared to whom they are made to feel inferior. When the ‘spiteful mutants’ - the coalition of the ugly, the weird, the losers - band together, they possess more force than the strong, well-adjusted individual and can make him bend to their will, which abates their inferiority.
Ted doesn’t touch on it explicitly here, but it has become clear that it is not so much the case that Leftists are misguided in their attempts to solve racism by being hostile to whites and making them feel sidelined - the reaction is part of the goal. By exacerbating the problem, they can feel even more justified in their actions at fighting against perceived injustice. For example, it is no surprise that as the topics of racism and white privilege have become ubiquitous in the media, race relations in the United States have not only ceased improving but have dramatically worsened in recent years. In 2014, 72% of whites and 66% of blacks considered relations between them to be ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ good. Only seven years later, in 2021, that number had fallen to 43% for whites, and had halved, down to 33% for blacks.
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.
The reason Leftists take the view that society is to blame for all actions good or bad is, of course, their inferiority and their feeling of powerlessness. There is a concept in psychology called the ‘locus of control’, the extent to which an individual feels that they are in control of their lives and events around them. Those with an internal locus of control feel that their actions have a direct effect on the world and that they have the ability to positively influence the direction of their lives. Those with an external locus of control feel powerless and overwhelmed due to a belief that their life is primarily determined by outside forces. An external locus of control is, as you may have guessed, strongly linked to neuroticism.
With that in mind, here is a wonderful quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky:
“Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point.”
It is not uncommon to see neurotic people with an external locus of control commit a spiteful and destructive act for the sole purpose of proving to themselves that they have agency. They would even be willing to destroy utopia to prove it. As Leftists are losers, it would be difficult for them to undertake positive actions in order to improve themselves or the world around them; thus their only option is destruction. What better to destroy than the ‘cis-heteronormative white supremacist patriarchy’ which they feel is oppressing them? They exercise their ability to act, while simultaneously lashing out against the parts of the world which make them feel inferior.
23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.
Oversocialization
24. Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem.
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.
26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society’s expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of himself. Moreover, the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more restricted by society’s expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy.
The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think “unclean” thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to conform to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another.
Here I think we come across one of the inherent contradictions of modern Leftism. On the one hand, they claim not to believe in objective morality, while on the other, they view the progressive morality as the ‘correct’ one, and view opposition as essentially the unforgivable sin of impeding the march towards utopia.
I don’t really believe that Leftists are honest when they argue that there is no objective morality, as their actions prove otherwise. The deconstruction of the idea of objective morality is simply used to dismantle the prevailing moral beliefs of Western civilisation, to deracinate people from their culture, to make them believe in nothing, so that morality can then be rebuilt in a manner which better suits the Leftist.
For instance, I don’t believe it is a coincidence that the philosopher Michel Foucault, who advocated for the abolition of age of consent laws, who argued that to assume a minor cannot consent to sexual acts is “an abuse that is intolerable”, and who railed against societal norms around sexual morality, was himself a child molester and a sexual degenerate par excellence. He obviously had some sort of belief in morality; for instance, he presumably believed that it is immoral to oppress people by restraining them from, and shaming them for, sexually abusing children.
Will to Power. Friedrich Nietzsche has been very influential on the Left, or more specifically, he has been very influential on influential Leftist thinkers, including many of the French intellectuals of the 1960s such as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, and Sartre. Now, of course, Nietzsche was actually a quite deeply reactionary figure. But his moral relativism and his concept of the Will to Power made a lasting impact on Leftist thought.
The Left, apparently convinced that objective morality is a social construct, a metanarrative that must be dismantled, simultaneously posits that their struggle against oppression is the highest end. This explains their fascination with domination and power - in the absence of objective morality, the acquisition of, and the exercise of, power is all that remains, as the means by which to impose their new morality, their will, on others.
Presumably their opposition to the premise of an objective standard of morality comes from their perceived inadequacies as a result of their over-socialisation; to speak in Freudian terms, they could be said to have an overactive superego.
Yet in their attempt to break free of the constraints of morality, they instead substitute objective morality for their own subjective morality which better pleases them, and feel themselves justified in attempting to force everybody into subscribing to the new morality.
In the new morality, they would no longer have to feel inferior, because they are both the vanguard and the enforcers of the new morality they are attempting to impose. As the achievement of the overthrow of existing standards and existing society in favour of the new utopia represents, naturally, the highest form of morality for them, they feel entirely justified in whatever means are required to arrive there. Their activism and rejection of what they perceive as the outdated and stifling requirements of the current morality - stemming from their failure to live up to these standards - is, therefore, an expression of the power process.
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 leftwing segment.
28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are not in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals.
More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of its middle and upper classes) for a long time. These values are explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of truth) that society is not living up to these principles.
Here we see that Leftists, in ‘fighting against the system’, actually only use the system’s own values and morals against it, as their oversocialisation drives them to feel the need to show just how virtuous they are - this is the root cause of the rampant virtue signalling seen in the modern day. Combined with social media addiction and the dopamine hit of receiving feedback on posts, the drive has become ever more embedded in the left-wing psyche. As online virtue signalling has become all-pervasive, even non-Leftists are drawn into it; see the wide-spread ‘black square’ Instagram posts in the days and weeks following the killing of George Floyd, and the interpersonal Soviet-style levels of surveillance on who had, and had not, posted it themselves. I personally recall seeing a post stating something along the lines of “to those who haven’t yet posted a black square: we see you.”
The ‘current thing’ has become a well-known meme, and for good reason. Virtue signalling has attained such a state of ubiquity that a feeling of need to adhere to the ‘correct’ opinion on ‘the current thing’ has become an eminently noticeable phenomenon. Black Lives Matter, the pandemic, the Ukraine-Russia war, the Israel-Gaza war, transgender debates; these are all examples of ‘current thing’ topics on which Leftists very quickly fall in line with accepted opinion, and about which they swiftly and loudly voice their conformity with said accepted opinion.
In fact, the reason the Left wins so often is due to their antipathy to intellectual diversity, which ensures that they are inevitably more organised than the divided right. But that is a topic for another time.
29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists push for affirmative action, for moving black people into high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such schools; the way of life of the black “underclass” they regard as a social disgrace.
They want to integrate the black man into the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial matters.
In all essential respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black fathers “responsible,” they want black gangs to become nonviolent, etc.
But these are exactly the values of the industrial-technological system. The system couldn’t care less what kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a “responsible” parent, is non-violent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the system and make him adopt its values.
30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the oversocialized type, never rebel against the fundamental values of our society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have gone so far as to rebel against one of modern society’s most important principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account, violence is for them a form of ‘liberation’.
In other words, by committing violence they break through the psychological restraints that have been trained into them. Because they are oversocialized these restraints have been more confining for them than for others; hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence they claim to be fighting against racism or the like.
While I don’t think Ted is directly alluding to decolonisation here, I couldn’t help but think of Franz Fanon’s ‘Wretched of The Earth’, as well as its preface written by Jean-Paul Sartre, while reading this section. Both Sartre and Fanon make quite clear that decolonisation is an inherently violent process, and has to be so, in order to break through the ‘psychological restraints trained into them’.
Sartre states “They would do well to read Fanon; for he shows clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of resentment: it is man re-creating himself. I think we understood this truth at one time, but we have forgotten it — that no gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them. The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting out the settler through force of arms. When his rage boils over, he rediscovers his lost innocence and he comes to know himself in that he himself creates his self. … When the peasant takes a gun in his hands, the old myths grow dim and the prohibitions are one by one forgotten. The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man.”
Fanon himself says “whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon. … At whatever level we study it… decolonisation is quite simply the replacing of a certain ‘species’ of men by another ‘species’ of men. Without any period of transition, there is a total, complete, and absolute substitution.” This book was first published back in 1961, so prior to the failure and collapse of socialism in the USSR, which led Leftists to reevaluate and realise that, actually, the revolution would not be a sudden, international phenomenon as Marx had originally predicted.
The development of Neo-Marxism in the 1960s accompanied the realisation that efforts to overthrow Western hegemony would have to take place primarily on a cultural level, which would then spread outwards and effect all other areas. So, while Fanon says that decolonisation comprises a “total, complete, and absolute substitution” of “a certain ‘species’ of men by another ‘species’ of men”, later Leftists have adjusted their efforts to work for the insidious, subterranean change which has proven far more effective in bringing about total, complete, and absolute change than what was originally envisioned as a violent overthrow - only at a slower pace which makes resistance more difficult.
There is something satanic about the idea that the birth of a new free man, the emancipation of the oppressed, can only be achieved through violence and bloodshed. The idea that a ritual - a blood sacrifice - is required to regain the oppressed’s ‘stolen’ humanity.
This theme - that revolutionary violence is a requirement for the reclamation of ‘humanity’ for the oppressed - runs throughout Marxist works. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian communist, writes in ‘Pedagogy of The Oppressed’, “It is precisely in the response of the oppressed to the violence of their oppressors that a gesture of love may be found. The act of rebellion by the oppressed (an act which is always, or nearly always, as violent as the initial violence of the oppressors) can initiate love. This violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be fully human.”
This is only one of the multitude of paradoxes which the Left embodies. They claim to operate in love, but their foremost intellectual representatives assert, quite plainly, that violence is a necessity to achieve their aims. Pointing out the double-standards and hypocrisy of the Left is, at this point, irrelevant and pointless. They are comfortable with their contradictions; they have learned how to use them to their advantage. For as long as the main opposition comes in the form of meekly calling out their hypocrisy, the Left will continue to win in the culture war.
31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing thumbnail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is complex, and anything like a complete description of it would take several volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim only to have indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies in the psychology of modern leftism.
32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially noticeable in the left, they are widespread in our society. And today’s society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth.
Kaczynski’s analysis of Leftist psychology should serve as an example of the power of turning their weapons against them. It is an effective form of attack to dissect the psychology of the Leftist and make the connection between a disposition to Leftism and feelings of inferiority, shame, and other associated traits. The psychopathologisation of the conservative disposition, whereby Leftist academics have portrayed such a disposition as essentially a form of mental illness (or, at the very least maladaptive, or a sort of Freudian complex), inherently tied to authoritarianism and fascism, has been a tactic of the Left since the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This is made all the more ironic as, in aggregate, any comparison of Leftists and conservatives makes immediately apparent which group is the mentally unwell one. More work should be done in asserting and solidifying the framing of Leftists as psychologically deficient; this will not be a difficult task, as they freely provide a dearth of evidence corroborating this position.
In part two we will take a look at Kaczynski’s conception of the ‘power process’ and the ‘surrogate activities’ used in the modern age to attempt to fulfill it.