Tragic

Have been trying to catch up with this terrible story in the last couple of weeks.

I knew nothing about Aaron Swartz before his suicide at twenty-six, when I caught some mass media coverage along the lines of "tech boy-genius gone wrong." Since then, learning about his talent and commitment only underscores what a tremendous loss his death is.

There's much speculation about his having made powerful enemies with his work on internet freedom, along with extensive social and political activism in general, as well as a connection to Bradley Manning.

As it happens, I've been reading Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power . One focus of the book is an account of another brilliant young man; also sensitive and emotionally troubled, and someone who would pay for his ability to spur people to action.

From the FBI records on which the book is based, Rosenfeld found ample and very sad evidence of how much effort was made to harass Mario Savio. Hoover, Reagan, local politicians, UC administrators—acting on varying agendas of "anti-communist" fears and career ambitions—for years blocked Savio's school re-admission applications; warned employers against hiring him; enlisted landlords to report on his movements. The harassment continued long after Savio had stopped being publicly active, trying to focus instead on family and personal problems; official surveillance wasn't dropped until 1975. There's no knowing how much the years of persecution might have undermined Savio's health (he died in 1996, at just fifty-three). Yet the authorities' campaign clearly took a toll on someone who had never sought the spotlight, but had merely tried to speak truth.

Charles Pierce this week suggests the incredibly heavy-handed legal action against Swartz is attributable to the political ambitions of the prosecutor; that "if Aaron Swartz hadn't killed himself, he'd have been in an Ortiz for Governor campaign commercial one day." Which sounds much like the way a Reagan inserted himself into politics by running against Berkeley and Savio.

Who is destroyed, and what it does to the survivors—it's always an abstraction.