Pat Dollard

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From the Unabombers Manifesto which was published by The New York Times and The Washington Post on September 19, 1995:

Because of their need for rebellion and for membership in a
movement, leftists or persons of similar psychological type are often
unattracted to a rebellious or activist movement whose goals and
membership are not initially leftist. The resulting influx of leftish
types can easily turn a non-leftist movement into a leftist one, so
that leftist goals replace or distort the original goals of the
movement.

To avoid this, a just political movement must take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must avoid
all collaboration with leftists. Leftism is in the long run
inconsistent with nature, and with human freedom. Leftism is collectivist; it seeks to
bind together the entire world (both nature and the human race) into a
unified whole. But this implies management of nature and of human life
by organized society, and it requires advanced technology. You can’t
have a united world without rapid transportation and communication,
you can’t make all people love one another without sophisticated
psychological techniques, you can’t have a “planned society” without
the necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the
need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis,
through identification with a mass movement or an organization.
Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is
too valuable a source of collective power.

Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose
it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is
controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in
society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands
of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth.
In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown
again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were
outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police,
they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth;
but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter
censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had
existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least
as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of
decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist
professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in
those universities where leftists have become dominant, they have
shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else’s academic
freedom. (This is “political correctness.”) The same will happen with
leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if
they ever get it under their own control.

The Unabomber’s cabin as put on display by the Federal Government at the Newseum

In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power-hungry type,
repeatedly, have first cooperated with non-leftist revolutionaries, as
well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later
have double-crossed them to seize power for themselves. Robespierre
did this in the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks did it in the
Russian Revolution, the communists did it in Spain in 1938 and Castro
and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history of leftism,
it would be utterly foolish for non-leftist revolutionaries today to
collaborate with leftists.

Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of
religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because
leftist doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural
being. But for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role much
like that which religion plays for some people. The leftist NEEDS to
believe in leftism; it plays a vital role in his psychological
economy. His beliefs are not easily modified by logic or facts. He has
a deep conviction that leftism is morally Right with a capital R, and
that he has not only a right but a duty to impose leftist morality on
everyone. (However, many of the people we are referring to as
“leftists” do not think of themselves as leftists and would not
describe their system of beliefs as leftism. We use the term “leftism”
because we don’t know of any better words to designate the spectrum of
related creeds that includes the feminist, gay rights, political
correctness, etc., movements, and because these movements have a
strong affinity with the old left. See paragraphs 227-230.)

Leftism is totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position
of power it tends to invade every private corner and force every
thought into a leftist mold. In part this is because of the
quasi-religious character of leftism; everything contrary to leftists
beliefs represents Sin. More importantly, leftism is a totalitarian
force because of the leftists’ drive for power. The leftist seeks to
satisfy his need for power through identification with a social
movement and he tries to go through the power process by helping to
pursue and attain the goals of the movement (see paragraph 83). But no
matter how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals the
leftist is never satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate
activity (see paragraph 41). That is, the leftist’s real motive is not
to attain the ostensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated
by the sense of power he gets from struggling for and then reaching a
social goal.

Consequently the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has
already attained; his need for the power process leads him always to
pursue some new goal. The leftist wants equal opportunities for
minorities. When that is attained he insists on statistical equality
of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone harbors in some
corner of his mind a negative attitude toward some minority, the
leftist has to re-educated him. And ethnic minorities are not enough;
no one can be allowed to have a negative attitude toward homosexuals,
disabled people, fat people, old people, ugly people, and on and on
and on. It’s not enough that the public should be informed about the
hazards of smoking; a warning has to be stamped on every package of
cigarettes. Then cigarette advertising has to be restricted if not
banned. The activists will never be satisfied until tobacco is
outlawed, and after that it will be alco hot then junk food, etc.
Activists have fought gross child abuse, which is reasonable. But now
they want to stop all spanking. When they have done that they will
want to ban something else they consider unwholesome, then another
thing and then another. They will never be satisfied until they have
complete control over all child rearing practices. And then they will
move on to another cause.

Suppose you asked leftists to make a list of ALL the things that
were wrong with society, and then suppose you instituted EVERY social
change that they demanded. It is safe to say that within a couple of
years the majority of leftists would find something new to complain
about, some new social “evil” to correct because, once again, the
leftist is motivated less by distress at society’s ills than by the
need to satisfy his drive for power by imposing his solutions on
society.

Because of the restrictions placed on their thoughts and behavior
by their high level of socialization, many leftists of the
over-socialized type cannot pursue power in the ways that other people
do. For them the drive for power has only one morally acceptable
outlet, and that is in the struggle to impose their morality on
everyone.

Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, are True
Believers in the sense of Eric Hoffer’s book, “The True Believer.” But
not all True Believers are of the same psychological type as leftists.
Presumably a truebelieving nazi, for instance is very different
psychologically from a truebelieving leftist. Because of their
capacity for single-minded devotion to a cause, True Believers are a
useful, perhaps a necessary, ingredient of any revolutionary movement.
This presents a problem with which we must admit we don’t know how to
deal. We aren’t sure how to harness the energies of the True Believer
to a revolution against technology. At present all we can say is that
no True Believer will make a safe recruit to the revolution unless his
commitment is exclusively to the destruction of technology. If he is
committed also to another ideal, he may want to use technology as a
tool for pursuing that other ideal (see paragraphs 220, 221).

Some readers may say, “This stuff about leftism is a lot of crap.
I know John and Jane who are leftish types and they don’t have all
these totalitarian tendencies.” It’s quite true that many leftists,
possibly even a numerical majority, are decent people who sincerely
believe in tolerating others’ values (up to a point) and wouldn’t want
to use high-handed methods to reach their social goals. Our remarks
about leftism are not meant to apply to every individual leftist but
to describe the general character of leftism as a movement. And the
general character of a movement is not necessarily determined by the
numerical proportions of the various kinds of people involved in the
movement.

The people who rise to positions of power in leftist movements
tend to be leftists of the most power-hungry type because power-hungry
people are those who strive hardest to get into positions of power.
Once the power-hungry types have captured control of the movement,
there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of
many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to
oppose them. They NEED their faith in the movement, and because they
cannot give up this faith they go along with the leaders. True, SOME
leftists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian tendencies that
emerge, but they generally lose, because the power-hungry types are
better organized, are more ruthless and Machiavellian and have taken
care to build themselves a strong power base.

These phenomena appeared clearly in Russia and other countries
that were taken over by leftists. Similarly, before the breakdown of
communism in the USSR, leftish types in the West would seldom
criticize that country. If prodded they would admit that the USSR did
many wrong things, but then they would try to find excuses for the
communists and begin talking about the faults of the West. They always
opposed Western military resistance to communist aggression. Leftish
types all over the world vigorously protested the U.S. military action
in Vietnam, but when the USSR invaded Afghanistan they did nothing.
Not that they approved of the Soviet actions; but because of their
leftist faith, they just couldn’t bear to put themselves in opposition
to communism. Today, in those of our universities where “political
correctness” has become dominant, there are probably many leftish
types who privately disapprove of the suppression of academic freedom,
but they go along with it anyway.

Thus the fact that many individual leftists are personally mild
and fairly tolerant people by no means prevents leftism as a whole
form having a totalitarian tendency.

My discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It is still far
from clear what we mean by the word “leftist.” There doesn’t seem to
be much we can do about this. Today leftism is fragmented into a whole
spectrum of activist movements. Yet not all activist movements are
leftist, and some activist movements (e.g.., radical environmentalism)
seem to include both personalities of the leftist type and
personalities of thoroughly un-leftist types who ought to know better
than to collaborate with leftists. Varieties of leftists fade out
gradually into varieties of non-leftists and we ourselves would often
be hard-pressed to decide whether a given individual is or is not a
leftist. To the extent that it is defined at all, our conception of
leftism is defined by the discussion of it that we have given in this
article, and we can only advise the reader to use his own judgment in
deciding who is a leftist.

But it will be helpful to list some criteria for diagnosing
leftism. These criteria cannot be applied in a cut and dried manner.
Some individuals may meet some of the criteria without being leftists,
some leftists may not meet any of the criteria. Again, you just have
to use your judgment.

The leftist is oriented toward largescale collectivism. He
emphasizes the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of
society to take care of the individual. He has a negative attitude
toward individualism. He often takes a moralistic tone. He tends to be
for gun control, for sex education and other psychologically
“enlightened” educational methods, for planning, for affirmative
action, for multiculturalism. He tends to identify with victims. He
tends to be against competition and against violence, but he often
finds excuses for those leftists who do commit violence. He is fond of
using the common catch-phrases of the left like “racism, ” “sexism, ”
“homophobia, ” “capitalism,” “imperialism,” “neocolonialism ”
“genocide,” “social change,” “social justice,” “social
responsibility.” Maybe the best diagnostic trait of the leftist is his
tendency to sympathize with the following movements: feminism, gay
rights, ethnic rights, disability rights, animal rights political
correctness. Anyone who strongly sympathizes with ALL of these
movements is almost certainly a leftist.

The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who are most
power-hungry, are often characterized by arrogance or by a dogmatic
approach to ideology. However, the most dangerous leftists of all may
be certain oversocialized types who avoid irritating displays of
aggressiveness and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work
quietly and unobtrusively to promote collectivist values,
“enlightened” psychological techniques for socializing children,
dependence of the individual on the system, and so forth. These
crypto-leftists (as we may call them) approximate certain bourgeois
types as far as practical action is concerned, but differ from them in
psychology, ideology and motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to
bring people under control of the system in order to protect his way
of life, or he does so simply because his attitudes are conventional.
The crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control of the system
because he is a True Believer in a collectivistic ideology. The
crypto-leftist is differentiated from the average leftist of the
oversocialized type by the fact that his rebellious impulse is weaker
and he is more securely socialized. He is differentiated from the
ordinary well-socialized bourgeois by the fact that there is some deep
lack within him that makes it necessary for him to devote himself to a
cause and immerse himself in a collectivity. And maybe his
(well-sublimated) drive for power is stronger than that of the average
bourgeois.