After all, almost all smart people that identify uncomfortable truths won't go to extremes to convince strangers of actually giving their non-mainstream ideas a chance.
Nietchze, Carl Jung, Marshall McLuhan, William S Burroughs, Franz Kafka, Fritz Lang, PK Dick, Stanley Kubrick, Jared Diamond, Pink Floyd... this list could go on for a while.
Quoting from memory - may not be word for word.
So, if you can believe him, then yes, he murdered as a marketing strategy.
I'm skeptical enough though (having read books about the Zodiac Killer, for example) that I see it just as likely to have been an unexpected opportunity that Kaczynski exploited.
I guess I'm not surprised that a murderer, enjoying their new-found public lectern, might engage in rationalization of their murders.
My take away is that there are and always have been sick people. Citing lack of a megaphone shouldn't even be a sliver of rationale for a murderer's behavior.
Even if he was purely driven out of self-interest and ego, the result of his actions is that today we are discussing his ideas when we should be working.
I'm just suspicious whether this was the case.
> Between 1978 and 1995, Ted Kaczynski engaged in a mail bomb campaign[4] against people involved with modern technology.[5] His initial targets were universities and airlines, which the FBI shortened as UNABOM. In June 1995, Kaczynski offered to end his campaign if one of several publications (the Washington Post, New York Times, or Penthouse) would publish his critique of technology, titled Industrial Society and Its Future, which became widely known as the "Unabomber Manifesto".[6]
In a sense, he used the murders as a marketing strategy, but honestly it was more of a threat to force his manifesto to be published.
Had the American revolution not succeeded it would be relegated to being classified as a typical rebel manifesto that people basically do not care about
Same with writing books, asking people to subscribe to your blog newsletter, shouting on a street corner or asking people to vote for you.
That said, who says having some self-importance is inherently bad? Trying to be humble is a cultural and religious virtue, not an absolute truth.