4 ms·

>He was a smart guy, it's too bad he went apeshit and killed a bunch of people. He killed three people, one of which was arguably unintentional. Further, he ha

• bserge 6y ago
  He achieved nothing and also hasn't killed enough people. That's pretty much the difference. He's not a revolutionary, just a murderer.
  • Dirlewanger 6y ago
    So as long as you achieved something, your trail of blood can be as long as you like?
    • atq2119 6y ago
      In the eyes of history, that does tend to be the case, unfortunately. Think of all the former or current colonial and imperial powers, and their leaders. They have lots of blood on their hands, but most of them are viewed far less critically than they should be. It would be good to change that, but it's an uphill slope, not least because you need to tackle current and recent world leaders as well.
    • cjcole 6y ago
      It's likely a paraphrase of the Jean Rostand quote: "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a God." It's in the same category as the ancient "history is written by the victors." So either cynical or realistic (depending on your perspective).
  • dleslie 6y ago
    He achieved precisely what he set out to do: have his ideas published and widely read. He wanted to be heard. His ideas have continued to be discussed and considered by those interested in anarchism, specifically anarcho-primitivists.
• mikeyouse 6y ago
  He tried to bring down an airplane with 78 souls on board and his maimed many people in over a dozen bombings -- that goes way beyond 'unintentional'. Dude was a psychopath. Just because his shitty paranoia about marxists and feminists would fit right in on OANN or whatever doesn't mean he's "lucid" or that those thoughts have any merit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_444 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_444
  • fock 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation when reading the thing about people not related to their work anymore, I heard Marx.
• pvg 6y ago
  political revolutionaries For other people to consider you a political revolutionary it helps to have a political ideology. And more than one adherent to it.
• Nasrudith 6y ago
  He is viewed as insane because the goddamned Manson family had a more coherent plan than him and their idea was to start an "inevitable" race war with a frame up by murdering people. If they pulled off framing successfully indefinitely it could have theoretically worked, stupidly unlikely as it would be. Cycles of revenge and misattributiation of individual actions to some collective other are real things. How precisely will letter bombs to universities and airports in one country lead to the collapse of global industrial society? The "best case" rationally would be an end to all physical package mail as an unacceptable hazard. Even if somehow achieved how the hell will that stop the inevitable reindustrialization as hunter-gatherers seek a greater edge over nature and rivals? They would eventually reach the top again and curse that goddamned idiot ancestor for the millenia of needless suffering. Not to mention the ideas of "freedom" are laughably naive and historically illiterate. He is just yet another small rigid mind who demands that the world become something simple enough to understand instead of trying to understand all of its complexities.
  • opportune 6y ago
    His plan was that by threatening people into publishing his manifesto and drawing attention with the bombings he would sway people over to his cause (the fallacy here being that if only people were exposed to his ideas, they would agree with them). Of course he was deluded in that sense but it’s a pretty common theme among extreme ideologues. I don’t think his ideas are as laughably naive as you think. He was an accomplished mathematician who was disgusted with the societal rat race and thought many aspects of technology were making life worse, and I actually tend to agree with that. But he was also a nut job who killed innocent people