{"id":13399,"date":"2023-06-11T10:28:48","date_gmt":"2023-06-11T16:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13399"},"modified":"2023-06-11T12:06:37","modified_gmt":"2023-06-11T18:06:37","slug":"13399","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13399","title":{"rendered":"The Scholar and the Unabomber"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Federal marshalls with Ted Kaczynski in custody, Helena, Montana, 1996.<\/p><\/div>\n

Theodore \u201cUnabomber\u201d Kaczynski, my former neighbor, loosely speaking, has died at age 81.<\/a> From 1998\u20132021 he was in the “Supermax” facility at the federal prison complex outside Florence, Colorado, a place I usually drive past once or twice a week. More recently he was in a federal prison hospital, possibly an improvement to being in a concrete box 23 hours a day.<\/p>\n

Shortly after he arrived at ADX Florence<\/a>, I was walking up Pike’s Peak Avenue to the post office. I saw a man on the sidewalk who looked a lot like a prominent scholar of American nature religion, but I knew <\/em>that that guy lived in the Southeast and would not be in Florence. Until he said, “Hi, Chas.”<\/p>\n

The scholar was sharing a motel room in nearby Ca\u00f1on City with one of the editors of\u00a0 the Earth First! journal. Back when Earth First! was the freewheeling, ecotage-promoting, Neanderthal-affirming organization that dated its publication by the Celtic wheel of the year , I had been a subscriber. In fact, I had had dinner one night with co-founder Dave Foreman<\/a> in Boulder one time and had a great conversation about Neanderthal people, as they were understood and theorized back in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Apparently the EF! editor was on Kaczynski’s approved visitor list. The scholar, who had been around EF! before, had hoped to get on that list too, with research interests in mind. Unfortunately, “Uncle Ted” said no.<\/p>\n

Dave Foreman split with Earth First! in 1990. I had not given all EF! as much thought in the 90s, but when M. and I paid a visit to their motel, we found\u00a0 . . . a different tone.<\/p>\n

Kacyznski’s message of distrust in\u00a0 technological “progress” was important, the editor((More properly, member of the “editorial collective”?)) affirmed. But there was that public-relations problem with his “unique program of direct action,” as she put it.<\/p>\n

In the motel hallway, I shook my head. Unique program of direct action<\/em> \u2014 that is how you describe sending letter bombs when you speak fluent Enviro-tankie<\/a>. Earth First! had changed all right. The journal had lost its Pagan-ish-adjacent flavor. And where are they now? More an idea than a (loose) organization, still invoked by ecotageurs.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>

  1. Funny thing, Uncle Ted was no fan of the political left<\/a>, at least in some of his writings as quoted at the link. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Theodore \u201cUnabomber\u201d Kaczynski, my former neighbor, loosely speaking, has died at age 81. From 1998\u20132021 he was in the “Supermax” facility at the federal prison complex outside Florence, Colorado, a place I usually drive past once or twice a week. More recently he was in a federal prison hospital, possibly an improvement to being in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,114,48,296,79],"class_list":["post-13399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-environmentalism","tag-nature-religion","tag-pagan-ish","tag-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-13399","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1332,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1332","url_meta":{"origin":13399,"position":0},"title":"Gods of the Blood How\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Gods of the Blood How to meet the Asatruar at an academic gathering--walk around carrying a copy of Mattias Gardell's Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Gardell, a Swedish historian of religion, also wrote an earlier book on the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims), In the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":72,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=72","url_meta":{"origin":13399,"position":1},"title":"Gods of the Blood How\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Gods of the Blood How to meet the Asatruar at an academic gathering--walk around carrying a copy of Mattias Gardell's Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Gardell, a Swedish historian of religion, also wrote an earlier book on the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims), In the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1347,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1347","url_meta":{"origin":13399,"position":2},"title":"Gods of the Blood How\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Gods of the Blood How to meet the Asatruar at an academic gathering--walk around carrying a copy of Mattias Gardell's Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Gardell, a Swedish historian of religion, also wrote an earlier book on the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims), In the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1362,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1362","url_meta":{"origin":13399,"position":3},"title":"Gods of the Blood","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"How to meet the Asatruar at an academic gathering--walk around carrying a copy of Mattias Gardell's Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Gardell, a Swedish historian of religion, also wrote an earlier book on the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims), In the Name of Elijah Muhammed.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1239,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1239","url_meta":{"origin":13399,"position":4},"title":"Dining above the Dead","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I opened the Ca\u00f1on City Daily Record on Monday and learned that M. and I have been dining above the dead.One of our two favorite cafes in the nearby town of Florence, Colo., is the Aspen Leaf Bakery, which, it turns out, is the second-most haunted locale in that county.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0936564296","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":694,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=694","url_meta":{"origin":13399,"position":5},"title":"More on the \u00c0satr\u00f9 prison story","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Macha NightMare, one of the people interviewed about the Asatru-related prison stabbing and subsequent scheduled execution in Virginia, gives her own perspective. There is more to the full story than what went out on the Associated Press feed.Other bloggers have already commented: Dave Haxton here and here, and Jason Pitzl-Waters\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13399"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13413,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13399\/revisions\/13413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}