I don't support his murders in the least. He is rightfully locked up. I just think some of his ideas are interesting. I see ideas as entities separate from humans - one human can have many ideas and one idea can be had by many humans. The ideas would be the same even if someone else wrote them down.
If you spend a few minutes looking you’ll find that many other people have written them down, even pre unabomber. His manifesto is popular because he blew people up, not because he was an original thinker.
To me it feels immoral to promote reading what they wrote, because it was used to justify murder, and popularized as a result of said murders. It's a similar reason for not recommending Mein Kampf. It's a similar reason why some countries won't report the names of mass murders in the news.
If this were a unique idea not repeated since by others, I'd be more likely to agree with you... but it's not.
If you were recommending this reading as a cautionary tale about extremism, I'd also be more inclined to agree with you.
But in reality, all of the information found in the unabomber's manifesto can be found from sources that weren't serial murderers... so what does recommending this writing, and not other related writing accomplish? from my perspective it only serves the murderer. The original publication of the manifesto was also forced under the threat of murder.
> But in reality, all of the information found in the unabomber's manifesto can be found from sources that weren't serial murderers... so what does recommending this writing, and not other related writing accomplish?
You're trying to shift the burden of justification to me, when you are the one trying to censor.
What does censoring me accomplish in the real world?
Does me talking about him make his murders worse then they are?
Are Kaczynski's murders going to disappear once every single person stops talking about him?
Why should I even bother figuring out alternative sources, what difference does it make in the real world whether I talk about him or about any other anarcho-primitivist?
Isn't it rather precedented to do this? In most readings (that I've seen, anecdotally) of Timothy McVeigh's writings, or Hitler's Mein Kamph, people read these works specifically in the framing of a path to the atrocities, rather than in erstwhile debate of normative claims.
