A Michigan professor who corresponds with “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski said the murderer’s cause was a noble one, and that the convicted terrorist may even be “a prophet and potentially a kind of savior of humanity and the planet.”
David Skrbina, a professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, has maintained contact with the Unabomber for the past nine years and has published their letters, Kaczynski’s essays and a manifesto about the bombings from the Washington Post in a book called “Technological Slavery,” the Washington Examiner reported.
Skrbina believes Kaczynski didn’t send the bombs because he thought killing people would do any good, but because the act would give him leverage to pursue the publication of his anti-technology manifesto.
Skrbina compared the Unabomber to President Obama. “If I wanted to be sarcastic,” he told his class, “I’d say our president kills people all the time, why should we listen to a murderer called Barack Obama?” he asked. “But we do. OK, it’s a different context and different circumstances, but there’s a kind of parallel there.”
Kaczynski and Skrbina both believe technological advances pose a mortal threat to society. And while Skrbina argues that the Unabomber wrongly turned to violence, he believes there was value in his message, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
Skrbina first began his correspondence with Kaczyinski in November 2003, and has since sent and received more than 150 letters.
Kaczyinski was convicted in 1998 for sending a series of mail bombs that killed three and wounded 23 more.