Tedpilled: The green future of white terror

The massacres in El Paso and Christchurch are troubling previews of what far-right environmentalism might look like

Another week. Another mass shooting targeting minorities. Another white nationalist manifesto posted to 8chan. The El Paso killer’s boilerplate screed against an immigrant “invasion” just underscored the horrifying sameness of it all.

The media’s response was no less routine. Some commentators advised against spreading the manifesto. Others made an attempt to summarize and analyze it.

On the whole, the document was unremarkable in the most literal sense, containing the same generic hateful sentiment that has sadly become ubiquitous—not only in the dark corners of the internet but also at Trump rallies and on prime-time TV.

There was, however, one thing that set the manifesto apart from statements like the one Dylann Roof posted before he shot up a black church in South Carolina. Patrick Crusius ended his with a long paragraph detailing various ways that the American “lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country.”

There are faint echoes of “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, more popularly known as The Unabomber. It’s a poor imitation, but the influences can be seen.

‘Read Uncle Ted’s Manifesto’

A professor with an Ivy League education, Kaczynski had a much more nuanced understanding of the issue— not to mention an entirely different plan for what to do about it. From a shack in the woods with no electricity or running water, the Unabomber railed against the harmful effects of technological progress while advocating a primitivist society.

The main motive of his bombings was to get his lengthy exposition published in the mainstream media. To that end, he targeted academics—many of whom he knew personally—as well as executives, government officials and lobbyists. Citing sustainability as a rationale, Crusius just killed as many brown people as he could to discourage future immigration.

Crusius had the same rough diagnosis, but he didn’t think Kaczynski’s return to nature was feasible.