On General Political Reading Lists
(some initial caveats)
Indomista / Wild Nature Worship
Anti-Civ / Primitivist / Collapsist
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 sections 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.
Stop the Machines by Mauro Lubrano (2025)
Rebels Against the Future (1995)
The Unabomber and the origins of anti-tech radicalism by Sean Fleming (2021)
The Politics of Attack: Communiqués and Insurrectionary Violence by Michael Loadenthal
Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism by Bron Taylor (2007)
Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber (Jun 2000)
From the Unabomber to the Incels: Angry Young Men on Campus by Eileen Pollack
Coyote in the Maze by Peter Quigley (1998)
Earth First! Environmental Apocalypse by Martha F. Lee (1995)
A Historical Scholarly Collection of Writings on the Earth Liberation Front (2019)
Fires in the Night by Matthew Wolfe (2026)
Burning Rage of a Dying Planet by Craig Rosebraugh (2004)
A Shorter History of a Northwest E.L.F. Cell by Tides of Flame (2016)
The Rise and Fall of the Eco-Radical Underground by Vanessa Grigoriadis (2006)
Children of Ted and a Response by John H. Richardson (2018)
The Forest Passage by Ernst Jünger
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
Our Posthuman Future by Francis Fukuyama
The Case for an Environmental Conservatism by Roger Scruton
The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism by Roger Scruton
Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos by Garrett Hardin
The Trouble with Wilderness by William Cronon (1995)
Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom (1990)
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann
In Defense of Posthuman Dignity by Nick Bostrom
Citizen Cyborg by James Hughes
Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola
The Crisis of the Modern World by René Guénon
Can Life Prevail? by Pentti Linkola
Harassment Architecture by Mike Ma
Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert
New Nobility of Blood and Soil by Richard Walther Darré
The Land and the People: The British Union Policy for Agriculture by Jorian Jenks
Spring Comes Again by Jorian Jenks
The Impeachment of Man by Savitri Devi
Man and Technics by Oswald Spengler
The Way of Men by Jack Donovan
Becoming A Barbarian by Jack Donovan
The Metaphysics of Technology by David Skrbina (2014)
Anti-Tech 101 by David Skrbina (2023)
Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience by Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier
Ecofascism: An Aberrant Branch of Leftism by Ted Kaczynski
Against the Modern World by Mark Sedgwick
Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola by Paul Furlong
Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco (1995)
Hitler’s Priestess by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
The Origins of the Organic Movement by Philip Conford
Nature writing’s fascist roots by Richard Smyth
Skrbina’s Creative Reconstruction vs. Kaczynski’s Anti-Tech Revolution (2023)
Industrial Society and Its Future by Ted Kaczynski
Technological Slavery by Ted Kaczynski
Anti-Tech Revolution by Ted Kaczynski
Ted Kaczynski’s Letter to an Eco-Centrist by Ted Kaczynski
The System’s Neatest Trick by Ted Kaczynski
Hit where it hurts by Ted Kaczynski
Derrick Jensen Letters (1998–2000)
Ship of Fools by Ted Kaczynski (1999)
The Philosophy of Ted Kaczynski by Chad Haag (2019)
The Hermeneutics of Ecological Limitation by Chad Haag
Autopsy of Revolution by Jacques Ellul (1969)
A Critique of Ted Kaczynski’s Anti-Tech Revolution by Ultimo Reducto (2018)
Critical Comments on Ted Kaczynski’s “In Defense of Violence” by Ultimo Reducto
Critical Comments on Ted Kaczynski’s “Ecofascism: An Aberrant Branch of Leftism” by Ultimo Reducto
Human Ethology by Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1989)
The Natural and The Artefactual by Lee Keekok (1999)
Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins by Konrad Lorenz
Basic Requirements for Creating an Efficient Movement Against Technoindustrial Society by Ultimo Reducto
Some Replies to an Anarcho-Vegan by Ultimo Reducto
A Brief Comment on Pleistocene “Rewilding” by Ultimo Reducto
On eco-extremism and anarchy by Pack of saboteurs Heriberto Salazar (2016)
There’s Nothing Anarchist about Eco-Fascism by Scott Campbell (2017)
Not Our Comrades by Scott Campbell (2017)
Eco-extremism and the Indiscriminate Attack by L (2017)
Of Indiscriminate Attacks & Wild Reactions by Edelweiss Pirates (2017)
Against Green Reactionaries (2020)
Seek and Destroy Eco-Extremism Everywhere by Individualist Network & Indonesian Anarchist Black Cross (2021)
Public Criticism of Individualities Tending to the Wild (2014)
Some Comments on the Communiques from Individualists Tending toward the Wild by Ultimo Reducto (2015)
Eco-Extremism or Extinctionism by John Jacobi (2017)
Desert by Anonymous (2011)
Against His-Story; Against Leviathan by Fredy Perlman
A Primitivist Primer by John Moore
Against the Megamachine by David Watson (1997)
Post Historic Primitivism by David Watson
Uncivilized by Green Anarchy Collective (2012)
Future Primitive by John Zerzan
Against Civilization by John Zerzan (2005)
Agents of Change: Primal War and the Collapse of Global Civilization by Kevin Tucker
For Wildness and Anarchy by Kevin Tucker
Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine
Stone Age Economics by Marshall Sahlins (2004)
Against Domestication by Jacques Camatte (1973)
Coming Home to the Pleistocene by Paul Shepard
The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter
Overshoot by William Catton
The Long Descent by John Michael Greer
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021)
A Quick and Dirty Critique of Primitivist & Anti-Civ Thought
Bakunin Versus the Primitivists by Brian Oliver Sheppard (2002)
Anarchism vs. Primitivism by Brian Oliver Sheppard (2003)
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism by Murray Bookchin (1995)
Monkeywrenching Drives Me Nuts by George French
Basic Principles of Deep Ecology by Arne Naess and George Sessions
Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century by George Sessions
The Religion and Politics of Earth First! by Bron Taylor
Nature and Madness by Paul Shepard
Thinking Like a Mountain by John Seed et al.
Reinhabitation by Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder and the Invention of Bioregional Spirituality and Politics by Bron Taylor
Environmental Philosophy by Simon P. James
The Presence of Nature by Simon P. James
On Being None With Nature by John Clark
Against Holism by Simon P. James
Theses on Social Ecology and Deep Ecology by Janet Biehl
Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement by Murray Bookchin
Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us by Bill Joy (2000)
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (1985)
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman
Why Things Bite Back by Edward Tenner (1996)
War Before Civilization by Lawrence Keeley (1996)
The Ecological Indian by Shepard Krech
Techno-Fix by Michael Huesemann and Joyce Huesemann (2011)
Civilized to Death by Christopher Ryan (2023)
The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris (1969)
Collapse by Jared Diamond (2013)
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond (2012)
Against the Grain by James C. Scott (2017)
War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat (2006)
The Evolution of Technology by George Basalla
Enough by Bill McKibben
The Philosophy of Civilization by Albert Schweitzer
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
Discourse on Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Letters from Lake Como by Romano Guardini (1926)
Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford (1934)
Presence in the Modern World by Jacques Ellul (1948)
The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul (1954)
Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse (1955)
Propaganda by Jacques Ellul (1962)
The Technological Bluff by Jacques Ellul (1988)
The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich (1968)
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays by Martin Heidegger (1977)
Shadow Work by Ivan Illich
The Right to Useful Unemployment by Ivan Illich
Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
The Ohlone Way by Malcolm Margolin
The Forest People by Colin Turnbull (1961)
Wayward Servants by Colin Turnbull (1965)
Tribe by Bruce Parry (2008)
Amazon by Bruce Parry (2008)
Arctic by Bruce Parry (2011)
Works and Days by Hesiod (700 BC)
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (500 BC)
Timaeus and Critias by Plato (360 BC)
Idylls by Theocritus (280 BC)
The Bhagavad-Gita by Various Authors (200 BC)
Conspiracy of Catiline and the Jugurthine War by Sallust (40 BC)
Eclogues by Virgil (39 BC)
Stoic Six Pack by Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca and Marcus Aurelius (180 AD)
Neither Lord Nor Subject by Bao Jingyan (300 AD)
Kaianere’kó:wa by Haudenosaunee (1200)
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult by Joseph Bédier (compiles 12th century texts)
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1921)
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)
The Kin by Peter Dickinson
World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler
Retrotopia by John Michael Greer
Quest for the Faradawn by Richard Ford
Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey (1975)
Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather (1940)