Unabomber’s brother breaks silence after Luigi Mangione was ‘influenced by terrorist’

The brother of Ted Kaczynski, better known as the ‘Unabomber’ for his devastating domestic terrorism, has broken his silence after Luigi Mangione posted about his manifesto on his Goodreads account.

Mangione, 26, was arrested Monday after visiting a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and charged with murder for the Dec. 4 shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The accused killer had left notes and his opinions on Kaczynski’s longstanding ideas, which led him to injure dozens and kill three people over the course of two decades.

Many have drawn comparisons between the alleged killer and Kaczynski, saying Mangione may have been influenced by him based on his social media habits.

David Kaczynski, Ted’s brother, said the idea that the Unabomber could have motivated Mangione causes him great sadness.

“There are many factors that go into what motivates someone to behave so drastically, and I hope my brother wasn’t a key model for him in some way,” he said. NBC News.

“It truly causes me great personal pain to think that my brother’s actions in any way helped influence a man like this to kill an innocent human being.

Mangione praised the Unabomber in online posts reviewing his book, but David said his brother is not someone others should look up to.

Ted Kaczynski, better known as the ‘Unabomber’, was involved in a bombing campaign for seventeen years before he was caught

‘As far as him [the Unabomber] could have attributed to normalizing or recasting the violent acts as beneficial to humanity is a terrible mistake,” said David Kaczynski.

‘His actions are like a virus. They might look like a virus unless they understand that he was a very angry and disturbed man. It doesn’t mean that his ideas are the ideas of a madman, but his behavior is, I believe, the behavior of a madman.’

Both Mangione and Kaczynski were described as highly intelligent, with Mangione serving as valedictorian of his $40,000-a-year prep school before studying computer science and engineering at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania – and Kaczynski starting at Harvard at age 16.

The Unabomber – who was involved in a bombing campaign for seventeen years before being caught – went on to study mathematics as a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan and became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967.

Kaczynski eventually isolated himself from society in a cabin in Montana, where he wrote a 35,000-word essay in which he said he was trying to bring about a “revolution against the industrial system” while speaking out about the ills of modern society.

That manifesto was later published as a book – which seems to have resonated with Mangione decades later.

He praised Kaczynski in posts on Goodreads as an “extreme political revolutionary,” writing, “It is simply impossible to ignore how presciently many of his predictions about modern society have come true.”

“When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary for survival,” Mangione wrote. “You may not like his methods, but if you look at things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”

David Kaczynski, Ted’s brother, said the idea that the Unabomber could have motivated Mangione gives him major problems

He even quoted Kaczynski on his page, with excerpts from his ramblings including: “Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy and then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness.”

“The concept of ‘mental health’ in our society is largely defined by the extent to which an individual behaves in accordance with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress,” read another excerpt.