Title: A General Anti-Tech Reading List
Author: Theo Slade
Date: 2026
Notes: To view a general anarchist reading list click here. I’ve brazenly plagiarized most of the introduction from that text, simply editing sentences here and there to quickly make it work for here. I’ll likely keep swapping out paragraphs until it’s no longer plagiarized, though someone else is welcome to work on it also.

Theo Slade

A General Anti-Tech Reading List

    On General Political Reading Lists
(some initial caveats)

    Orientation

      Easy Entry Points

      Histories of the various milieus

      Intellectual Roots

      Notable Not Actually Anti-Tech Influences

    Ideologies

      Agrarianism / Localism

        Primary Source Reading

        Critiques

      Distributism

        Primary Source Reading

        Critiques

      Conservatism

        Primary Source Reading

        Critiques

      Eco-Fascism

        Primary Source Reading

        Critiques

      Anti-Tech Vanguardism

        Primary Source Reading

        Critiques

      ‘Untamed Nature’ Worship

        Primary Source Reading

        Critiques

      Eco-Extremist ‘Savage Nature’ Worship

        Primary Source Reading

        Critiques

      Anti-Civ / Primitivist / Collapsist

        Primary Source Reading

        Critiques

      Deep Ecology

        Primary Source Reading

        Critiques

    Aesthetic and Cultural Influences

      Cottagecore / Cozy Rural Classics

      Homesteading / Self-Sufficiency

      Nature Writing

      Frontier Life

      Tribal Life

      Pre-Industrial Writings

    Literary Influences

      Radicalism, Revolt and Resistance

      Warnings

        Dystopias and Runaway Machines

        Existential and Philosophical Fiction

      Aftermath and alternatives

        Collapse and Post-Apocalypse

        Utopias and Alternative Societies

      Aesthetic and Cultural Fiction

        Tribes, Feral Kids and the Wild

        Frontier and Castaways

        Back to the Land and Rural Life Fiction

      Children’s and Young Adult Books

      Critiques and Cautionary Tales

On General Political Reading Lists
(some initial caveats)


Below is a quickly sketched map of texts with importance and influence in the anti-tech milieu. It is not a map of ideas, which are distinct from texts and flourish in political spaces often with little or no reference to formal texts.

The point of this map is to provide those new to the anti-tech milieu with a quick way to understand “what matters” to anti-tech folk. For pro-tech folk, the use value might be attempting to better understand the threat of technophobic conservatives & eco-fascists in your community.

Most ideologies have a critique sub-section where I’ve unashamedly included critiques with prescriptions that sometimes contradict one another. The aim is to find some critiques that are close to each specific ideology, giving zealots from those ideological tendencies the best chance of resonating with the critique.

This is decidedly NOT a bibliography for answers to questions about “Is Pro or Anti-Tech Ideology Meant For You?” I would have made a completely different map for the uninitiated looking to grasp foundations or answer 101 concerns and questions. I might yet make that map, but it will be skewed to what I consider good arguments and counter-arguments, not necessarily every argument ever made under the banner of “anti-tech.”

Reading a ton of books and zines is no replacement for having personal discussions and arguments with actual living people in the milieu. Ideally at actual gatherings and festivals, and away from online echo-chambers filled with people who have bootstrapped themselves with a lot of formal learning but little tacit knowledge or cultural continuity.

Too often bibliographies of political milieus are wildly biased documents clearly pushing a specific party line or actively trying to re-write history by ignoring major texts and inflating minor ones. I have my own leanings, both ones with historical pedigrees and those operating as largely novel projects, but this is an attempt to map out the anti-tech milieu warts-and-all, not the milieu as anti-tech folk would like it to eventually sort out. I believe in providing people with accurate maps to expand their agency, and perhaps that will better inform conversations. Especially as so many new people interested in anti-tech ideas today are so disconnected from the prior culture and movement.

I deeply despise a number of texts and writers included below (to say nothing of the ones I find tiresome or useless). It matters quite a lot that some of the authors of the texts below are fascists, apologist for child rape, etc. Other political traditions from Marxism to right-libertarianism have ugly histories also, however I think it’s imperative to be up-front about them.

This also involves a dance around whether people that explicitly rejected identification as anti-tech should be included. I have included Ultimo Reducto for instance even though he rejects the label because he has a longstanding influence on the anti-tech milieu and even got Ted to acknowledge logical errors in his writing.

There are many ‘missing sections’ (like short intros, anthropology reading, survivalist reading, etc) where there aren’t classic books per se to be linked, but where much of what there is of importance/influence is easily found online. I’m also sure I’ve forgotten stuff in the couple hours I’ve given to this. It’s a simple wikipedia style web page, so if you like you’re very welcome to help improve it by clicking the little writers pen at the top, or adding ‘/edit’ to the end of the URL. Or you can even copy the HTML and post it elsewhere, adding all the shit you hate me for not including.

Orientation

Easy Entry Points

Less radical and more readable. Most of these don’t call for dismantling anything, but they make the case that something has gone wrong with how we live with technology and food, and plenty of people come into the milieu this way.

  • Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin (2011)

  • You Can Farm by Joel Salatin (1998)

  • Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin (2007)

  • The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (2006)

  • Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford (2009)

  • Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv (2005)

  • The Shallows by Nicholas Carr (2010)

  • Alone Together by Sherry Turkle (2011)

  • Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier (2018)

  • Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport (2019)

  • The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (2024)

Histories of the various milieus

Accounts of how various anti-tech milieus formed, including histories of the original Luddites, the Unabomber case, Earth First!, the Earth Liberation Front and more. Good for getting the timeline and cast of characters straight before diving into the primary texts.

Intellectual Roots

Older thinkers on technology, civilization and modernity whose ideas anti-tech writers keep leaning on. If you only read one, the usual starting point is Ellul.

Notable Not Actually Anti-Tech Influences

Authors who aren’t anti-tech themselves but get cited constantly in anti-tech circles. Handy if the person in your life keeps quoting Jared Diamond or Neil Postman at you.

Ideologies

Agrarianism / Localism

The “what do we do instead” answer for the more mainstream-friendly end of the milieu: small farms, local food and low-energy living.

Primary Source Reading

  • A Small Farm Future by Chris Smaje (2020)

  • The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry (1977)

  • What Are People For? by Wendell Berry (1990)

  • The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka (1975)

  • Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing (1954)

  • Loving and Leaving the Good Life by Helen Nearing (1992)

  • Fields, Factories and Workshops by Peter Kropotkin (1898)

  • Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher (1973)

  • Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich (1973)

  • Human Scale by Kirkpatrick Sale (1980)

Critiques

Distributism

Distributism is a Catholic-rooted tradition that wants property and production spread widely among ordinary people, with small-scale local economies instead of big corporations or big states. It overlaps a lot with the agrarian and “small is beautiful” writers above. Heads up that Chesterton and Belloc both have a real antisemitism problem.

Primary Source Reading

  • Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII (1891)

  • What’s Wrong with the World by G.K. Chesterton (1910)

  • The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc (1912)

  • The Outline of Sanity by G.K. Chesterton (1926)

  • This Ugly Civilization by Ralph Borsodi (1929)

  • An Essay on the Restoration of Property by Hilaire Belloc (1936)

  • The Breakdown of Nations by Leopold Kohr (1957)

Critiques

Conservatism

Religious, traditionalist and conservative critics of technology, plus a few rebuttals from the transhumanist side. This is where a lot of “technology is eroding human nature” talk comes from when it isn’t coming from the left.

Primary Source Reading

  • The Forest Passage by Ernst Jünger (1951)

  • The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis (1943)

  • Our Posthuman Future by Francis Fukuyama (2002)

  • How to Think Seriously About the Planet by Roger Scruton (2012)

  • The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism by Roger Scruton (1994)

  • Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos by Garrett Hardin (1993)

Critiques

  • The Trouble with Wilderness by William Cronon (1995)

  • Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom (1990)

  • The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann (2018)

  • In Defense of Posthuman Dignity by Nick Bostrom (2005)

  • Citizen Cyborg by James Hughes (2004)

Eco-Fascism

Writers who mix environmental or anti-modern themes with racial hierarchy, “blood and soil” ideas or authoritarian politics. They’re here so researchers can recognize the sources, not as an endorsement. Not every author listed is currently a loud and proud fascist, but all of them come up in discussions of the far-right anti-modern scene.

Primary Source Reading

  • Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola (1934)

  • The Crisis of the Modern World by René Guénon (1927)

  • Can Life Prevail? by Pentti Linkola (1989)

  • Harassment Architecture by Mike Ma (2019)

  • Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert (2018)

  • New Nobility of Blood and Soil by Richard Walther Darré (1930)

  • The Land and the People: The British Union Policy for Agriculture by Jorian Jenks (1938)

  • Spring Comes Again by Jorian Jenks (1939)

  • The Impeachment of Man by Savitri Devi (1959)

  • Man and Technics by Oswald Spengler (1931)

  • The Way of Men by Jack Donovan (2012)

  • Becoming A Barbarian by Jack Donovan (2016)

  • The Metaphysics of Technology by David Skrbina (2014)

  • Anti-Tech 101 by David Skrbina (2023)

Critiques

Anti-Tech Vanguardism

The Kaczynski wing, which holds that a small organized movement should aim to bring down the technological system. These are the core texts behind most “Ted was right” talk, and the critiques include several from fellow anti-tech people who disagree with his strategy.

Primary Source Reading
Critiques

‘Untamed Nature’ Worship

Writers who put wild nature above everything else and want the technoindustrial system destroyed for its sake. The central figure is Ultimo Reducto, a Spain-based writer who corresponded with Ted and also critiques him. He argues human numbers should fall by several orders of magnitude, ideally fast through higher mortality, and that a movement might have to seize power, deceive people and kill or let many die, since 'the end justifies the means'. He’s openly contemptuous of the masses and wants a tiny, highly selective movement.

Primary Source Reading
Critiques

Eco-Extremist ‘Savage Nature’ Worship

A violent offshoot, best known through groups like Individualists Tending Toward the Wild, that endorses indiscriminate attacks. It’s widely condemned, including by anarchists and other anti-tech people.

Primary Source Reading
Critiques

Anti-Civ / Primitivist / Collapsist

Mostly anarchist-rooted writers who argue civilization itself, not just industry, is the problem, plus “collapse” writers who think it’s coming down regardless. Much of the criticism comes from other anarchists, which makes this a good section for seeing how the left argues with the anti-tech milieu.

Primary Source Reading
Critiques

Deep Ecology

Environmental philosophy that values nature for its own sake, not for how useful it is to humans. It’s a mainstream topic in academic environmental ethics, and it’s the philosophical backdrop to Earth First! and a lot of radical environmentalism.

Primary Source Reading
Critiques

Aesthetic and Cultural Influences

Cottagecore / Cozy Rural Classics

Gentle rural classics that the cottagecore aesthetic draws on. Not political, and not anti-tech in themselves, but the vibe of a simpler, slower, handmade life starts here for a lot of people.

  • Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (1908)

  • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908)

  • The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)

  • The Outermost House by Henry Beston (1928)

  • Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932)

  • Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson (1945)

  • A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (1949)

  • Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee (1959)

  • The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg (2003)

  • Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry (2004)

Homesteading / Self-Sufficiency

Practical how-to books and memoirs from the back-to-the-land tradition. Mostly not political, but they’re a common gateway for people who later end up in anti-tech circles, and they explain a lot about what the person in your life is doing with all those chickens.

  • Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (almost) No Money by Dolly Freed (1978)

  • The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour (1976)

  • Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Traditional American Skills by Reader’s Digest (1981)

  • The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery (1974)

  • How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back by Ruth Stout (1955)

  • The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman (1989)

  • Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman (1992)

  • Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual by Bill Mollison (1988)

  • Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway (2000)

  • The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe (2010)

  • The Contrary Farmer by Gene Logsdon (1994)

  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (2007)

  • The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball (2010)

Nature Writing

Wilderness and solitude classics that shaped the romance of leaving it all behind. They explain a lot of the aesthetic and the emotional pull of the scene.

Frontier Life

First-hand accounts of trappers and mountain men in the American West. They feed the self-reliance myth, though they usually skip over the violence and colonial context around them.

Tribal Life

Ethnographies and travel accounts of non-industrial peoples that anti-tech writers draw on. Many are old and some are contested by modern anthropologists, so read them as sources the milieu uses rather than settled authority.

Pre-Industrial Writings

Ancient and medieval texts that get used to argue suspicion of technology and civilization is nothing new.

Literary Influences

Fiction that keeps coming up in the milieu, from classic dystopias to eco-sabotage adventures. A fast way to get a feel for the worldview.

Radicalism, Revolt and Resistance

Stories about saboteurs, nihilists and revolutionaries.

Warnings

Dystopias and Runaway Machines

Classic and modern warnings about technology, surveillance and conformity. The easiest door into the worldview for most people.

Existential and Philosophical Fiction

Fiction that raises the anti-tech question philosophically rather than politically: scientific hubris, alienation, the limits of knowledge, and what becomes of meaning in a world rebuilt around technique. A few of these, like That Hideous Strength, The Glass Bees and Ishmael, are close to arguments dressed up as stories, and some of the authors (Jünger, Lewis) sit toward the conservative end of the milieu.

  • The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1955)

  • Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992)

  • The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda (1968) (critique)

  • Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan (1991) (critique)

  • The Vision by Tom Brown Jr. (1988) (critique)

  • The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (1983)

  • Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley (1948)

  • Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915)

  • Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818)

  • The Birth-Mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1843)

  • The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells (1896)

  • In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka (1919)

  • That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (1945)

  • The Glass Bees by Ernst Jünger (1957)

  • Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (1963)

Aftermath and alternatives

Post-collapse stories alongside utopias and alternative societies. Part of the appeal of collapse thinking is what people imagine comes next, whether that’s ruins or a better arrangement.

Collapse and Post-Apocalypse
Utopias and Alternative Societies

  • Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach (1975)

  • The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (1972)

  • Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin (1985)

  • Utopia by Thomas More (1516)

  • The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart (1979)

  • News from Nowhere by William Morris (1890)

Aesthetic and Cultural Fiction

Tribes, Feral Kids and the Wild

Fiction set among prehistoric or tribal peoples, plus kids raised by animals or left to run wild. This is where a lot of the romance around pre-agricultural life comes from, so read it as fiction, not anthropology. (One of these is a famous fabrication that was marketed as fact.)

Frontier and Castaways

Westerns, wagon trails and desert islands. They feed the self-reliance myth, and a lot of them are worth reading with the colonial context in mind.

Back to the Land and Rural Life Fiction

Novels of farms, villages and working the land, from Hardy’s fading rural England to pioneer and Depression-era America. Few are openly anti-tech, but together they show what a life built around land, seasons and kin looks like, and what happens when it’s uprooted or industrialized. Read the romance with care: Hamsun was a Nazi sympathizer, and Growth of the Soil was popular with blood-and-soil writers (see the Eco-Fascist section).

  • Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874)

  • The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (1972)

  • The Last Bullet by Stuart Cloete (1951)

  • The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy (1887)

  • Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (1997)

  • Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun (1917)

  • Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rølvaag (1924–25)

  • Joy of Man’s Desiring by Jean Giono (1935)

  • Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1933)

  • The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow (1954)

Children’s and Young Adult Books

Picture books and younger fiction with nature, wildness and anti-industrial themes. Short, readable and a lot of people’s first exposure.

Critiques and Cautionary Tales

Fiction that pokes at dropout fantasies, radical scenes and the myth of going back to nature. Handy if you want the critique in story form.