A curious thing happened to me. I was trying to watch the new Netflix feature Unabomber (2026), dozed off, and had a funny dream about a comedy movie starring Leslie Nielsen (Naked Gun) and Roger E. Mosley (T.C. from Magnum P.I.). T.C. was making posters, not on the internet but actual posters, putting them out with the same intention: to communicate a message as a kind of prelude to the actual internet. After waking up, I watched Unabomber. I found something remarkably similar, with a young Ted Kaczynski (Jacob Tremblay) becoming self-radicalised once he discovers he’s being surveilled as part of a CIA project.

By Emad Aysha
No wonder there’s so much political violence now, in the USA, with people being monitored electronically 24 hours a day. If you treat someone like a suspect, they’ll become suspicious!

I think the moviemakers were trying to make a contemporary commentary on the post-9/11 world of drones, NSA hacking, CCTV, GPS tracking (and now flocking cameras) as a warning to the authorities not to push people over the edge.

At the same time, they give a very grounded, and I presume historically accurate, tale of the genesis of the infamous Unabomber. A self-made terrorist who killed 3 people through parcel bombs and maimed over 20.

NATURAL LOVER: Shailene Woodley as FBI agent Joanne Miller, the person who put the pieces together while also looking at things from his point of view.

But first, some negative comments. While well produced, particularly the flashback scenes back in the 1950s, this is a Netflix movie. The camera work is good but not inspired, and the performances are mostly low-key or stiff.

The two standouts are the more established actors: Russell Crowe as Dr Henry Murray and Shailene Woodley as the arresting FBI officer, Joanne Miller. Crowe kills it as the charming but self-indulgent mentor figure.

He’s the psychiatrist who brings Ted under his wing, supposedly because he sees himself in him. Woodley, who got famous in the dystopian Divergent series, is sexy, enthusiastic, thoughtful and compassionate.

Dr Murray encourages young Ted Kaczynski to join the debating society at Harvard to learn philosophy and help change the world with ideas. In reality, this is a double-blind social science experiment.

They’re measuring his responses to being verbally and intellectually harassed as part of a CIA experiment to investigate interrogation techniques and, you guessed it, brainwashing. Dr. Murry’s wife spills the beans to the boy, of how the CIA was worried about American GIs who’d apparently been ‘reprogrammed’ into becoming communists during the Korean War.

That’s the Manchurian Candidate scenario, and MKUltra. Of course the joke’s on them. Even before the Cold War, the OSS was doing brainwashing experiments to create hypno-curriers and brainwashed assassins. And it seems the poor guys who couldn’t remember anything from when they were in Manchuria were actually interrogated by the Americans to see if they were moles.

The Americans, it’s been revealed, had Nazis working for them who’d done their own brainwashing experiments during WWII. BBC documentary maker Adam Curtis even did his own series on this, "You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough," and finally revealed that the whole story about the American GIs was a ploy from the start!

Well, Ted Kaczynski was the worst possible person to use for such experiments. He was a timid guy who couldn’t stand up to his father, a mere butcher who nonetheless saved up enough money to send his kid to Harvard.

He was also awkward around girls, freaking out when one kissed him passionately. He clearly has an angelic vision of women, so he can’t handle fleshiness, probably because his mother consoled him against his dad.

Later, Ted’s brother confesses to the FBI agent how Ted became obsessive about a woman who had shunned him, calling her a slut and basically stalking her.

MATERNITY WARD: Annabelle Wallis plays Christiana Morgan, the wife of the not nearly as sympathetic Dr. Henry Murray (Russell Crowe). Whose shoulder would 'you' cry on?

Enter Dr Murray, a substitute father figure and a charismatic dude who promises the young, impressionable boy that he’s destined for greatness. The man’s wife, the lovely, deeply intellectual Annabelle Wallis (Christiana Morgan), is also a mother figure, sincere and caring.

That would explain the Unabomber’s choice of targets, professors and universities, seeing them all as sell-outs to the system. He’s killing bad father figures, in his view. (The poor guy was stuck in a rut, if you ask me, complaining about industrial society in the 1990s, the post-industrial era!)

I’d also wager the Unabomber was trying to live up to American ‘pioneer’ standards, the country’s historical image of itself. He lives in a wooden shack out in the forest, with no phone line, bear traps, and an old-fashioned rifle like some Davy Crockett character.

You know what, when I first saw Tyler Robinson, I got the same damn impression. He looked like a militiaman. In his mind he probably is, but a manipulated one thanks to his erstwhile boyfriend, who has now conveniently given up on the female look.

Tyler probably thought of himself as the man standing up for his woman. I don't think he actually fired the killshot that day, but he may have been set up to believe he was the hero of this twisted tale in an R-rated comic strip.

The endless electronic surveillance and shocking paradoxes of contemporary techno-society probably contributed to his radicalisation. Somebody was clearly pumping ideas into him about total self-assertiveness that don’t fit in with social reality.

The old analogue era of lie detector tests, people talking to your face, and two-way mirrors has given way to CCTV, mobile phones, and Discord servers. The perfect way to vet candidates and push them over the edge.

For all we know, the Unabomber campaign may have been an experiment itself. Whitey Bulger volunteering for LSD experiments in prison. (Recollect the prison sequence in A Clockwork Orange [1971].) Even mainstream lawmakers don’t believe the official stories for Charles Manson and Jim Jones.

SUBSTITUTE TEACHER: The infamous Dr. Murray fits the profile of the charismatic father-figure of a cult, true enough, but also of the 'lapsed' childhood hero.

The difference between brainwashing in England and America is that the English want to force you to be a law-abiding citizen. The Americans do the opposite, using unhinged violence as a way to scare people into submission to mega-corporations and the surveillance state.

Once again, my analog dream about posters like online posts and can cam cames!