Here's some quotes of how Sky News reported on the story:
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Left-wing anarchist guilty of terror offences after declaring he wanted to kill at least 50 people
Jacob Graham, 20, from Norris Green, Liverpool, dedicated his manual, called the "Freedom Encyclopaedia", to "terrorists past and future, anarchists etc" and buried bomb-making chemicals in a secret woodland hide. ...
Graham came to idolise an American terrorist called Theodore Kaczynski - known as the Unabomber - after watching a Netflix series called Manhunt, and pledged to "finish what he started", his trial heard.
In a video on 21 June, Graham took out a machete with a red handle and tapped the blade, saying: "Can't end my life yet, I have so much carnage to commit." ...
In another video, he threatened to attack Hugh Baird College, which he attended, saying: "I'm f****** ready, f****** bring it. I don't care, I'll kill every single last one of them." ...
Graham used Discord and the encrypted Telegram app to communicate with others who shared his hatred of government in groups called Earth Militia, Total Earth Liberation and Neo-Luddite Action. ...
Graham told his trial he felt like a character in a James Bond or Mission Impossible film or The Last Of Us, a post-apocalyptic video game and TV show.
He said he was "doomsday prepping" for "some sort of possible invasion, civil war, martial law, natural disasters, solar flares, floods, things like that".
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Since he was a wannabe school shooter it could obviously be that he would have latched onto any extremist ideology. But, I'll discuss some of the aspects to it below.
For me, it's sad that society failed to offer him meaning, sad that he couldn't be discouraged from his actions, and sad that there maybe wasn't sufficient effort to critique his beliefs and actions.
I think Sean Fleming and Bron Taylor both argue persuasively that, in short, when people who are anti-tech reject the view that other social justice campaigns can be complementary to their ideal end goal, then they on average become more open to using terrorism & bodily-harm violence:
- Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism
- The Unabomber and the origins of anti-tech radicalism
- Searching for Ecoterrorism
I remember seeing two of the telegrams mentioned promoted on an anti-tech discord I joined to see what they talk about when I was writing an essay on Ted. I noticed there's obviously plenty of small changes anti-tech groups and forums could implement to make them less appealing for people to hold onto their terrorist desires, like not allowing people to make their profile picture a terror group as one example, which is allowed in the one server I know.
Finally, there is a website called The Ted K Archive that aims to promote critiques of people like the Unabomber / Ted Kaczynski's ideas and actions. A common question some anti-tech people have about the website is 'if the most objectionable aspect to Ted K was his terrorism, why not just promote texts critiquing Ted's justification for using terrorism?' But here's, I think, a creditable argument, the website gives on the 'about' page:
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- Because we like the arguments against a lot of his ideas, so why would we aim only for such a small change? By winning someone over to a bunch of arguments, you can sometimes get them to see the value of a very different life and future. We think more people being invested in high-tech culturally-complex society means getting to experience more people expressing what motivates them in complex ways. And...
- Because being able to have the debate at the motivating foundation of people's philosophy is important because even if we were able to argue someone out of the justification that it's ok to use terroristic means in x circumstance, because of y secondary practical reason, the next day they could just double down on their foundational philosophy, that that sacrifice needs to be made for the philosophy to flourish.
So, we hope to offer the best counter-ideal that we think it's possible to argue for. And any runner-up prize from achieving that ideal would be great too, like just encouraging a few extremists to drop their justifications for terrorism, just encouraging a few people to be a bit more anti-authoritarian, just a bit more leftist/egalitarian and/or just a bit more pro-tech.
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I think I'm going to try and start up a correspondence with him, to see if his views have changed, and if so, ask him what intervention or differences in his life he thinks could have helped put him on a better path. So, to see what lessons can be learned.
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