As we stand on the cusp of an AI revolution, will we see the rise of a new anti-technology extremism that threatens to dismantle the gains of modern civilization?
In the first exploration of this phenomenon, Mauro Lubrano traces the origins and evolution of anti-technology violence across the globe. He identifies three main groups fuelling such resistance: insurrectionary anarchists, eco-extremists, and eco-fascists. Exploring the justifications that underlie the opposition to technology and the strategies employed to ‘stop the machines’, he shows how anti-tech extremism has emerged as a reaction to the Anthropocene – an attempt to undo the epoch of human domination. The intellectual flexibility of this ideology lends itself to different causes, from the class struggle against the techno-elites to the defence of nature and white supremacy. With fears about the risks of artificial intelligence mounting and the world beset by serious ‘polycrises’, what is currently a fragmented, fringe phenomenon holds the potential for dramatic escalation.
Mauro Lubrano is Lecturer in International Relations & Politics in the Department of Politics, Languages, and International Studies at the University of Bath. His research on political violence and terrorism, anti-technology politics, and innovation processes in violent non-state actors has been published in several journals, including Terrorism & Political Violence, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, and Perspectives on Terrorism. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews.
“Mauro Lubrano’s engaging study argues anti-tech movements will drive future political violence. With AI-driven changes touching every workplace, he also wisely reminds us of earlier technological revolutions and how to mitigate their effects. A highly original and relevant book.”
Audrey Cronin, Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology
“Anti-technology extremism has a long, tangled past and includes figures as diverse as the Unabomber and those contemporary activists who oppose AI. Mauro Lubrano’s impressive and original book examines this long history in fascinating ways, exploring the complexities of extremists who are hostile to technology-based society.”
Richard English, author of Does Counter-Terrorism Work?
“A timely and thought-provoking analysis of the burgeoning anti-technology movement. Stop the Machines is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the profound anxieties and grievances fuelling this form of extremism.”
Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, Royal Military College of Canada
“A compelling and timely examination of the rise of anti-technology extremism. Insightful and meticulously researched, this book unravels the intricate relationship between technological advancement and radical resistance. It is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand this critical issue, the importance of which will only continue to grow.”
Bernhard Blumenau, University of St Andrews
“Hate-inspired violence against technology has a worrying future. Mauro Lubrano’s Stop the Machines is essential reading to understand how we got here and what might happen next.”
Manuel R. Torres Soriano, Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla
“A penetrating and accessible analysis of some of today’s most important radical groups. Lubrano’s warning about the threat of anti-technology extremism may well prove to be prophetic.”
Sean Fleming, University of Nottingham
“Lubrano analyzes the development of anti-technology extremism and predicts that it will grow in significance as the impact of technology on human life becomes ever more overbearing.”
Jacobin
To my parents
Stop the Machines
The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism
Mauro Lubrano
polity
Copyright © Mauro Lubrano 2025
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First published in 2025 by Polity Press
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I began working on this book in 2021 as a PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews and I completed it as a lecturer at the University of Bath in 2024. This journey has been long and challenging, but thanks to the incredible friends and colleagues who have supported me, it has been an enjoyable and rewarding one. The list of people who deserve acknowledgement here is long, and I will do my best to recognize each one, knowing that their support has been instrumental.
I am deeply grateful to my editor, Louise Knight, copy-editor, Justin Dyer, and the exceptional team at Polity for their invaluable support and professionalism. My genuine thanks also go to Colin Clarke, who, after reading a journal article I published in 2021, recommended to Polity that I write this book, despite never having met me. I extend my sincere appreciation to the three anonymous reviewers who provided insightful and constructive comments on the early draft of this book. In addition, I would like to thank Sean Fleming. His work on the origins of anti-technology radicalism has been a great inspiration, and he’s been a fantastic and encouraging colleague.
I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies at the University of Bath. Special thanks go to Peter Allen, Patrick Bury, Ivan Gololobov, Sophia Hatzisavvidou, Katka Vrablikova, David Moon, Peter Lambert, André Barrinha, Sophie Whiting, Maria Garcia, Brett Edwards, Benoit Dillet, Leslie Wehner, Brad Evans, Paul Higate, Mattia Cacciatori, David Galbreath, and Micha Germann. Their support, both in giving me a job and in providing a warm and stimulating environment in which to finish this book, has been invaluable.
I am also forever indebted to my PhD supervisors, Bernhard Blumenau and Kieran McConaghy, my PhD examiners, Richard English and Timothy Wilson, and colleagues such as Gary Ackerman and Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, whose guidance and support were instrumental in shaping this book and myself as a scholar. Special thanks also go to my PhD crew, particularly Aristidis Agoglossakis Foley, Sarah Gharib Seif, Sasha Clark, Joao Seixas, Kacper Terlecki, Kalyani Twyman, Andrea Gelardi, and Federico Solfrini, for the early conceptual discussions both in and out of the office and their friendship.
I can’t go without mentioning my dear friends Lorenzo B., Matilde, Lorenzo F., Paolo, Riccardo, and Cody. Thank you for your curiosity, for reminding me not to take myself too seriously, and for our adventures together.
Then, huge thanks go to my partner Sammy for the long walks with scruffy Mabel, for the endless coffee, and for being by my side with her enthusiasm, softness, and strength.
Finally, I want to thank my parents, Mary Jo and Pasquale, and my brother Paolo. This project would have been impossible without their immense support, love, and care.
It was 14 May 2019, Berlin, Germany. The U-Bahn stop at Görlitzer Bahnhof was only a few minutes from the anarchist social space I was headed to in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood. A few days earlier, I came across a leaflet about a meeting there. The topic of discussion was ‘Fall of AI: A Call to Fight “Artificial Intelligence” as Part of the Technological Dominion’.[1] A year earlier, Google had planned to build one of its Google Campus start-up hubs in the same neighbourhood. Kreuzberg’s response was strong — and unsurprising. After months of protests and demonstrations, Google backed down, renouncing its plans.[2]
In 2019, I was a first-year PhD student at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, specializing in political violence and terrorism.[3] I had followed the campaign against Google Campus and knew that anarchist groups had been at its forefront. More importantly, I knew that, in May 2019, Berlin would host the 2019 Rise of AI Conference.[4] The leaflet, with its headline mirroring the conference’s title, naturally piqued my curiosity. I decided to attend the meeting. Of course, I never anticipated that it would end up motivating me to write this book!
The meeting wasn’t exceptionally crowded — around a dozen people. And the first hour was, in all honesty, quite tedious. A few speakers went on about artificial intelligence, explaining what it is and how it works, and then discussed its potential moral and ethical issues. Halfway through, they switched from German to English following the request of a comrade whose German wasn’t good enough to follow the discussion. I was relieved; I am fluent in German but more comfortable with English — especially when the discussion is quite technical, bordering on a computer science talk. But after this first endless hour, the topic changed. Echoing Lenin, the meeting moved to discuss what is to be done about AI. A few people asked to intervene. The first proposed a stable presence at the AI conference, distributing leaflets and trying to raise awareness about the potential risks of artificial intelligence. The second opted for the opposite approach: retreat to the countryside, form a commune, and renounce modem technology — a sort of anarchist Amish. The third, who had been quite vocal throughout the first session, clicked his tongue, pointing out how these paths had already been tried and had failed; there was no reason to believe they’d succeed now. The argument went like this: ‘People won’t change their mind because of a leaflet’ and ‘The consequences of AI and other emerging technologies will be too far-reaching to escape.’ Encouraged to offer a solution, this third speaker admitted he had none but added that he couldn’t exclude a near future when he’d punch someone in the face for wearing Google Glass. I couldn’t tell how serious that comment was. But those words stuck with me for weeks, eventually prompting me to begin researching anti-technology politics as a side interest.
As a student of political violence and terrorism, I was already familiar with the story of Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who conducted a one-man war against technology in the United States from 1978 to 1995. But as I started reading more about this topic, it brought back snippets of related incidents I’d come across online or in the news but hadn’t paid much attention to. I remembered sitting in my living room in Italy in 2012, reading about the CEO of a nuclear engineering group who had just been kneecapped by two insurrectionary anarchists from the Informal Anarchist Federation. What was the motive for such a heinous act? The two anarchists wanted to punish the CEO for pursuing and spreading nuclear technology around the world.[5] Additionally, I recalled hearing about another insurrectionary anarchist action against technology: an arson attack against the
Italian Technology Institute on Christmas Eve in 2018.[6] These incidents no longer seemed like isolated events but rather part of a larger and more significant trend. However, despite sensing a bigger underlying phenomenon, I couldn’t find any readings that fully satisfied my curiosity. Apart from books and articles on the Unabomber, most of what I found on the topic of political violence, terrorism, and technology focused on how violent extremists could adopt and exploit emerging technologies.[7] So I seized the nettle and took it upon myself to begin exploring this disturbing yet fascinating topic.
I will be honest: I did not find what I expected; I found much more. I embarked on this journey expecting to discover anti-technology extremism primarily directed against specific technologies, primarily emerging technology. After all, we live in an era of rapid technological advancement. The Fifth Industrial Revolution is on the horizon. It will see the convergence and integration of various technologies — such as artificial intelligence and machine learning — with humans, whereby the former will be given tasks and decisionmaking capabilities. The potential to bring about a paradigm shift in many sectors of society, from industry to public services, is enormous.[8] UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — the public body of the UK government that directs research and innovation funding — published a report in December 2023 that compiled a list of the fifty emerging technologies that ‘could change everything’.[9] From the Internet of Things, additive manufacturing, drones, biotechnology, neurotechnology, blockchain, and robotics to virtual and augmented reality, the world as we know it is changing. Yet for all the miracles and wonders these technologies herald, they also elicit anxiety, scepticism, and fear. I suspected anti-technology extremism would sit at the intersection of these feelings, motivated primarily by concerns such as exacerbating social and economic inequalities or privacy. Beyond this material realm, I also expected the unease about emerging technologies to stem from the emotional and psychological responses they provoke. For example, watching videos of humanoid robots performing complex tasks can evoke an ‘uncanny valley’ effect where the familiar and unfamiliar seem to merge. This discomfort can escalate into anxiety when people ponder the yet-unknown consequences of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. What exactly can AI do? What is machine learning? How far will they go? Will they surpass human intelligence? Such questions are loaded with uncertainty and can lead to broader apprehension about the direction in which our society is headed and the unknown ramifications that technology can bring. A recent poll, for example, found that 61% of Americans consider AI poses an existential risk to humanity’s future, threatening civilization.[10] While the proportion of people who hold a similar belief is remarkably lower in the United Kingdom (18%), there is a generally pessimistic attitude towards artificial intelligence, with Britons lamenting a lack of confidence that AI can be developed or regulated responsibly.[11] Other recent technologies have similarly caused concern among the general public. For instance, 5G technologies have been associated with a series of harmful effects on human health.[12]
However, as I delved deeper, I soon realized there was much more to anti-technology extremism than this. Its roots run deeper and are far more complex than mere apprehension towards specific technological innovations. In other words, the resistance and unease I encountered were not just reactions to the latest gadgets or groundbreaking advancements. Sure, those do play a role in all this. The recent protests against 5G technology or mRNA vaccines can be seen as reactions to the above-mentioned concerns and to the disinformation, misinformation, and conspiracies that often come with them. But, beyond this, I found that anti-technology extremism constitutes a deep-seated response to the very essence of our modern existence — a reaction against our technological civilization. It is a multifaceted phenomenon; anti-technology extremism emerges as a cross-cutting ideological current found in different ideological milieus — defined as dynamic clusters of social actors that share some ideological traits, presenting both sub-currents and common beliefs. Indeed, while my first encounter with anti-technology extremism was within the anarchist realm, I soon discovered variations of these feelings within other ideologies. Ranging from radical environmentalism to the far right, I focused on the most extreme fringes of such movements to identify and explore the positions that advanced the most uncompromising and violent critique of technology. This exploration led me to different ideological milieus, namely insurrectionary anarchism, eco-extremism, and eco-fascism, which currently display the most marked forms of anti-technology extremism. Despite the many differences that set these milieus apart, they are united in their opposition to technology. This opposition is not, however, associated with one or more specific technologies but with technology as a whole — perceived as an entity that goes beyond the individual machines and takes on the characteristics of an all-encompassing mega-machine that enslaves both humans and nature. As such, this is not merely about a fear of the unknown or a reactionary resistance to change. To these extremists, the issue isn’t just the dangers of artificial intelligence, the ethical dilemmas of biotechnology, or the environmental impact of industrial processes. These are merely symptoms of a more significant problem: the dominance of technology over human life and the subjugation of nature. In other words, technology has become an existential threat to humanity and the planet. In this sense, the stakes could not be higher.
All this entails the potential for escalation. From the perspective of anti-technology extremists, progress can’t be halted, and the technological system can’t be reformed. As the technological system is beyond reform and redemption, the only possible solution is to dismantle it. The only way to restore a genuine connection with nature and rediscover the true meaning of being human is to eradicate technology and do away with techno-industrial civilization (the stage of civilization that emerged following the Industrial Revolutions) before techno-industrial civilization does away with us. Combining an apocalyptic mindset beset by dystopian visions of the future with escalation-bent strategies like accelerationism offers an explosive mix for intensifying the struggle to stop the machines: anti-technology extremists aim to hasten the collapse of the system by pushing its internal contradictions to breaking point. This belief has real-world implications that could lead to a ramping-up of anti-tech activities, from sabotage to more direct forms of lethal violence. In other words, as I will argue throughout this book, anti-technology extremism can become a significant driver of political violence.
The book begins by retracing the historical evolution of anti-technology extremism over the last three centuries to show how it has developed from concerns over material security to viewing technology as an existential threat to humanity and the natural world. It then explores anti-technology extremism within three distinct milieus: insurrectionary anarchism, eco-extremism, and eco-fascism. Each chapter retraces the emergence of antitechnology extremism in these contexts, examining the ideological justifications for rejecting technology and analysing the strategies and tactics to stop the machines. Insurrectionary anarchists intertwine the fight against technology with the class struggle, viewing technology as a manifestation of power structures and the cornerstone of a dystopian ‘prison-society’ where individual freedom and the environment are both endangered. Eco-extremists consider technology as nature’s arch-nemesis — the ultimate adversary of all that is not wild. Driven by nihilistic and misanthropic beliefs, eco-extremists do not fight for a better future but solely to defend and avenge nature. Eco-fascists, a growing fringe group within the far right, perceive technology as a force of modernity that disconnects humanity from nature, threatening racial purity and societal stability. They engage in attacks on technological infrastructure to provoke societal collapse and ignite a race war. The final chapter synthesizes these movements, arguing that anti-technology extremism has emerged as a reaction to the Anthropocene, an attempt to undo the epoch of human domination, and exploring its potential for escalation.
The focus of this book — anti-technology extremism — represents a particularly insidious and rising form of violent extremism. But what is extremism? In this context, it refers to an anti-establishment force that views politics as a struggle for supremacy rather than peaceful competition between parties seeking support for advancing the common good. Usually found at the periphery of society, extremists seek to conquer the centre by employing a stark Manichaean ‘us vs them’ framework that considers political and social struggles as zero-sum games. In doing so, extremist movements tend towards authoritarianism and totalitarianism, glorify violence as a conflict resolution mechanism, and are unwilling to compromise.[13] A cognate term, radicalism, similarly refers to the desire for sweeping political change as a form of hostility against the status quo. Yet, although following ideals that can sometimes contain utopian elements, radical political parties or movements seek to restructure or overthrow outdated political structures without glorifying or necessarily resorting to violence. As anti-technology extremists seek to eradicate technology rather than reform it — or change our approach to it — they display a staunch, uncompromising position that legitimizes the use of violence against technology and those who represent it. Therefore, while this book does include reflections on forms of anti-technology radicalism, the label ‘extremism’ more accurately describes the anti-technology politics on which it squarely focuses.[14]
When extremists believe their cause justifies violence, they may turn to different forms of political violence — ‘a genuinely multifaceted and varied phenomenon’ that includes a vast range of activities, from street protest to genocide.[15] In particular, some anti-technology extremists turn to terrorism. In this book, I define terrorism as a form of political violence directed against victims selected for their symbolic value, with the intent of sending a message to a broader target audience and thereby manipulating its perception and behaviour.[16] The defining relationship is not between the perpetrator and the victim but between the perpetrator and the target audience. Hence, victims are not selected for who they are but for what they represent. The goal is to instil fear or provoke a reaction that furthers the perpetrators’ cause among a sympathizing audience.[17] This underscores the severity of anti-technology extremism, where political violence and terrorism have become the tools to target technology and its proponents, aiming to dismantle technological civilization. Yet, to fully grasp this phenomenon, we must first understand what we mean when we talk about technology and civilization.
Technology is a complex term. Curiously, a word so familiar and inherently intertwined with virtually every aspect of life and society can be challenging to capture. What is technology? Is it the keyboard I am using to type these words, the process that went into producing the keyboard itself, or the knowledge necessary to create that process in the first place? We might instinctively link it to devices or science, but technology is more than that. Although I am more interested in how anti-technology extremists define technology, I still need to explain what I mean by the term. We can think of technology within a four-dimensional framework and distinguish it as: (a) an artefact — that is, tools and manufactured objects; (b) knowledge — whether in terms of ‘how-to’, engineering, or insights from the social and physical sciences; (c) a process — namely, problem-solving, research and development, invention, and innovation; and (d) volition — meaning technology as a social force and a social construct.[18]
Technology is, then, intrinsically linked to the concept of civilization. First used in 1756, this term has many definitions.[19] Wolf Schäfer gives one that is particularly suited for this project. Distinguishing between culture and civilization, he argues that we can ‘define the social construction of meaning as the work of culture and the technoscientific handling of nature [...] as the work of civilization’.[20] Whereas history has witnessed the rise and fall of different civilizations at the local level, the contemporary world has many local cultures but a single global civilization spanning the entire planet. Such a civilization ‘has no fixed territory; to find its backbone, one has to look for the worldwide matrix of technoscientific networks. This essential constituent defines the civilization of our time as a deterritorialized ensemble of networked technoscientific practices with global reach.[21] This definition allows us to emphasize the link between technology and civilization — a link that anti-technology extremists themselves decry. Therefore, I will use the terms ‘technology’ and ‘techno-industrial civilization’ interchangeably throughout the book. Doing so highlights one crucial aspect that will emerge from the following pages: for antitech extremists, attacking technology is attacking the civilization it supports and enables. To eradicate one is to tear down the other.
Ultimately, the pages that follow will present a compelling argument about the potential for anti-technology extremism to become a significant driver of political violence in the years ahead. It is crucial to understand the motives, worldviews, and strategies driving this phenomenon if we are to address the challenge effectively. As such, I hope this book serves as the first comprehensive exploration of this emerging trend, providing an in-depth understanding of the movements and groups aiming to eliminate technology.
It is hard — if not impossible — to overstate the role of technology in the history of humanity. From the discovery and mastery of fire to the promise of nuclear fusion, technology has undeniably altered and improved how we live, work, and interact. Deprivation, hunger, and diseases still haunt many parts of the globe. Still, people are nowadays globally better fed and clothed than they were just a mere hundred years ago when leading causes of death were infectious diseases that can now be easily treated with over-the-counter drugs. Of course, technological progress did not just afford us abundant food and effective therapies. It would be difficult to find any area of human activity that hasn’t been affected by technology. Technological change has not, however, maintained the same pace throughout history. In his The Power of the Machine, Robert Buchanan argues that technological change is as old as technology itself — in other words, as old as the human species.[1] Yet, while progress has always accompanied humanity in its journey, the last three centuries have witnessed an unprecedented and continuous series of technological revolutions. This process has inevitably resulted in a cascading effect whereby every aspect of human life has been profoundly affected and reshaped at the individual, societal, and global levels.
Our economic structures have been dramatically altered throughout the four Industrial Revolutions of the last three centuries.[2] This, in turn, has had profound repercussions on social structures, labour dynamics, and cultural norms. The world is nowadays caught in an intricate web of connectivity that enables us to create, exchange, and receive information instantaneously. Besides making the world more interconnected and globalized, this has also contributed, for example, to empowering social movements and activists and to improving education standards. Travelling at a slower pace than information, news, instant messaging, and financial operations, but still much faster than their obsolete counterparts, modern means of transportation allow for goods and people to be taken quickly and safely between different places on the globe. Technology has played a significant, if not essential, role in shaping the world we know today and ourselves as humans. In this regard, Gilbert Ramsay is not wrong when he argues that ‘[w]e forget that technology doesn’t just help us to get more of what we want. It changes what we want, and how we understand our very existence.’[3]
However, not all these changes have had a positive impact. There is, in other words, a darker side to technological progress. While technologies have afforded us tools that have substantially enhanced our lives, they have also given us the means to destroy each other. From the rudimentary hunting tools our ancestors fashioned from sticks and rocks to the discovery of nuclear fission, history brims with examples of technologies that threaten to end, rather than improve, life. Nuclear and chemical weapons are arguably the most notorious examples, but the case of dynamite is perhaps the most paradigmatic. In the midnineteenth century, explosives were widely used in the mining, construction, and transportation industries. However, many such explosives were highly unstable, posing considerable safety risks until 1867, when the Swedish chemist, engineer, and inventor Alfred Nobel patented the safer and more stable dynamite. Nobel saw dynamite’s potential to revolutionize mining and other industries but was not blind to its danger if it were to fall into the wrong hands — which it did. Amidst the societal and technological changes of this period, anarchists were waging their struggle against the state, authority, and capitalism.
Trapped as they were in a dramatic asymmetric conflict, they welcomed Nobel’s invention as the gift that would help them wage their ‘propaganda of the deed’.[4] The adoption of dynamite, along with other explosive devices — for example, the Orsini bomb[5] — resulted in a series of bloody bombings, such as the 1886 Haymarket Massacre,[6] that claimed several innocent lives and injured many others.[7] It is easy to imagine why dynamite appealed to those interested in creating chaos and destruction. In 1605, when conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot sought to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament in London, they amassed thirty-six barrels of gunpowder. Two hundred and fifty years later, anarchists could theoretically afford a similar result with a few easily concealable sticks of dynamite.[8]
Besides giving us the means to kill each other, the ever-increasing pace of technological development has contributed to environmental challenges such as climate change. Discussions on the long-lasting consequences of climate change are now part of everyday public debate, with the majority of the scientific community pointing its finger at pollution and resource depletion as consequences of industrialization and technological progress.[9]
Moreover, technology has been identified as a source of insecurity concerning individual liberties. In particular, the digital age has raised significant concerns about privacy and surveillance, sparking debates over civil liberties, security, and individual rights. In our contemporary hyper-capitalist society, we are constantly bombarded with targeted ads — suggestions for products, travel, entertainment, or investments based on our online activities, location, or demographic profile. The fear that our smartphones and similar devices might be ‘listening’ to us to feed us with ads for products that match our interests has become the source of much speculation and concern.[10] Overall, human behaviour has become a valuable data source that can be used to maximize profit. In this regard, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff maintains that human experiences have been claimed as free raw material for translation into behavioural data. Fed into machine learning, the data gathered by global tech companies such as Google and Facebook can be used to predict our behaviour but also to influence and modify it, which, Zuboff argues, has had catastrophic consequences for democracy and freedom.[11] This represents a prime example of how technology can shape economic structures. After all, technological developments have often created new opportunities. However, in doing so, they have also contributed to exacerbating social disparities, leaving many sectors struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing labour market. Recent examples include the many debates about the impact that automation or artificial intelligence might have on people’s jobs and lives. Following the release of ChatGPT on 30 November 2022, for example, specialized outlets frantically rushed to compile lists of jobs that might face extinction because of the chatbot.[12] Even industries like Hollywood have not been spared and have witnessed strikes and protests over the use of AI.[13] When considering this darker side of technology, it is thus not surprising that, throughout history, many have raised concerns or expressed scepticism about the role of technology. While such critics often neither reject technology outright nor condone the use of violence against it, certain individuals and groups have resolved to adopt more radical and extremist goals and means. This chapter retraces the modern history of the critique of technology, seeking to understand the emergence and evolution of contemporary forms of anti-technology extremism in the last three centuries — the centuries of unprecedented technological development, as per Buchanan — and it does so by starting with what constitutes perhaps the most misunderstood example of a critique of technology: the nineteenth-century Luddite movement.
The legacy of the Luddite movement does not do justice to its struggle to improve labour conditions in early nineteenth-century England. This is because the term ‘Luddite’ is nowadays often used as a synonym for ‘deluded technophobe’ or ‘anti-technology’.[14] In everyday parlance, we might use this term to tease the one friend who’s particularly inept with technologies, prefers traditional methods and techniques, or is hesitant about adopting the latest gadgets. But this label has also been used as an insult, with the term ‘Luddite’ taking on a pejorative meaning to suggest a ‘mindless, reactionary opposition to technological improvement, an ignorant impulse to destroy or resist the inevitable march of mechanized progress’.[15] ‘Luddite’ has become a convenient and effective way to dismiss anyone who raises concerns or criticisms about the role and impact of technology, even when those concerns are valid and well founded.[16] This was the case, for example, for the anti-globalization movement that gained momentum in the 1990s, even though it must be said that its followers were ‘defiantly proud of their Luddism’.[17] On other occasions, the term has been used in a hyperbolic and grossly misleading manner to revile al-Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks. George Gilder — co-founder of the Discovery Institute and Senior Fellow of the Center on Wealth & Poverty — coined the term ‘Osama bin Luddites’ to depict al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as some backward individuals who were after US technology.[18] Therefore, considering the connotations that the terms ‘Luddism’ and ‘Luddite’ have acquired, it appears Gavin Mueller is right when he argues in Breaking Things at Work that history has not been entirely kind to the Luddites.[19]
Who, then, were the Luddites, and what was their struggle about? The original Luddites were a movement of machine-breakers and social activists primarily active in the early nineteenth century in the counties of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire — although other counties, such as Lancashire, also witnessed Luddite activity. At that time, the English economy was gradually escaping the Malthusian trap.[20] This sustained economic growth was mainly due to technological progress and the introduction of labour-saving, automated devices — such as the stocking frame, the gag mill, and the shearing frame — that promised to revolutionize the production process.[21] Thanks to these new devices, cloth could now be produced using a fraction of the labour times and skills that were previously required. A profession once dominated by highly skilled and well-remunerated artisans now opened up to cheap, unskilled workers — including, sometimes, children.[22] As such, productivity increased while the quality of life lagged behind.
Against this backdrop, the Luddites emerged as a movement of skilled labourers — mostly weavers and textile workers — who took direct action against the disruption of their trade and traditional ways of life. This was by no means the first time that workers had rioted against new machinery. Stocking frames, for example, had already been targeted towards the end of the seventeenth century. Karl Marx even noted hostility to wind- and waterpower stretching back to at least the 1630s.[25] Similarly, cases of machine-breaking were reported across England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[24] According to Joel Mokyr, machine-breaking was a less frequent phenomenon during the Middle Ages because the various guilds and trade associations were sufficiently powerful and effective in preventing the introduction of those technologies that could have jeopardized their importance in the production process and the economy.[25] By contrast, the early phases of the industrialization process in England witnessed numerous cases of machine-breaking riots, which gained momentum in the nineteenth century with the emergence of the Luddites. England was not an exception here. Similar machine-breaking events had occurred in other countries before the Luddites and would also occur after their demise.[26]
None of these incidents, however, matched the legendary aura that the Luddites implanted in the collective imagination and persists to this day.
The term ‘Luddites’ came from their alleged leader, the almost mythical figure of Ned Ludd. Historians have not conclusively established the origins of ‘King Ludd’. Some argue that Ludd was a young man with a cognitive disorder who may have misunderstood an order and accidentally destroyed his framing machine. Others maintain he did so out of anger.[27] Be that as it may, the legend of King Ludd reverberated across the movement, ‘a potent collective fiction’ that named and united its followers and was believed to be real by some government officials at the time.[28]
The movement emerged in the spring of 1811 as Luddites protested in Nottinghamshire. Armed with sledgehammers and other rudimentary tools, they assaulted factories, smashing framing machines.[29] The first three months of the protest resulted in the destruction of almost a thousand knitting frames?[30] The following months saw the protests and sabotage spreading and escalating, prompting the authorities to dispatch twelve thousand British troops to quell the machine-breakers. With Parliament making it a capital offence to destroy industrial machinery, several Luddites were hanged, with many others ending up in the penal colony of Australia?[31] The demise of the Luddites did not represent the end of machine-breaking in England. The years 1816 and 1826 witnessed Luddite revivals, while, in 1830, agricultural workers launched a large-scale machine-breaking offensive — known as the Swing Riots — in southern and eastern England.[32] After that, while persisting on a smaller scale,[33] machine-breaking declined, not least because other forms of collective action were becoming available to workers, thanks to the legalization of trade unions in 1824.[34]
What emerges here is that the Luddites’ opposition to technology was not quite an expression of technophobia. These machine-breakers were not against technological progress or the integration of machinery in the production process. After all, the machines that the Luddites sought to destroy had already been available for two centuries in England and elsewhere.[35] As historian Eric Hobsbawm argued, this wasn’t a ‘question of hostility to machines as such. Wrecking was simply a technique of trade unionism’ at a time when organized unions hardly existed. Therefore, through this form of ‘collective bargaining by riot’[36] the Luddites composed themselves as a class during a period when workers had individualized rapports with bosses.[37] The objective was to demand fair wages and control over their trade.[38] Violence was not the first answer. As previous attempts had successfully protected their livelihoods from technology, the Luddites had initially tried to present a petition to Parliament. However, preoccupied with the conflict against Napoleon, the authorities had little time for craftsmen and artisans, so their demands went almost unnoticed, prompting the resort to violence.[39] Whether this was a wise choice has been the subject of lengthy scholarly debates. Indeed, scholars have historically held radically different positions regarding the effectiveness of the Luddites’ campaigns in halting or delaying the diffusion of the new machines to minimize the possible negative consequences of the transformation of the production process. Some, like Shaun Bythell, argue that the Luddites’ impact was minimal, whereas Malcolm Ian Thomis maintains that the riots did not delay the diffusion process. Others, like John Rule and Adrian Randall, assert that, in some cases, the diffusion of new technology was delayed. For example, the dissemination of the threshing machine was postponed by almost two decades following the 1830 Swing Riots.[40]
Regardless of whether the Luddites were successful, their legend lived on, serving as a poignant example of the enduring tension between progress and its social consequences. As we transition to the twentieth century, we shall delve into movements and figures grappling with technology’s impact in their respective eras. Throughout this journey, we will see how a group of technology critics enthusiastically adopted the term ‘Luddite’, now often used pejoratively. In doing so, however, these critics signalled a fundamental difference between them and the original Luddites. The latter opposed technology because of its unmitigated impact on their profession and livelihood. As the next section will show, the neo-Luddites were, instead, primarily concerned with the pervasive nature and influence of technologies in contemporary societies and their potential for harming humans and degrading social relations.
Once the march of progress defeated the Luddites and the rioters who followed in the first half of the nineteenth century, the following decades saw — in particular in Western countries — a period of significant technological advancements and industrialization: the Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1930), a process even more transformative than the First Industrial Revolution in England.[41] Concurrently, the world entered the so-called ‘first wave of globalization’, an era of increased interconnectedness and integration among economies and societies across the globe.[42] Undoubtedly, technology played a crucial role in connecting the world. The construction of railways, the expansion of steamship routes, and the telegraph were among the developments that enabled goods, people, and information to move more swiftly and efficiently across different regions[43] Not all nations entered this period of intense globalization willingly. Pursuing new markets, European powers aggressively expanded their empires, bringing vast parts of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific under colonial rule. In some cases, Western technology was targeted with violence as it represented a symbol of Western encroachment. For example, the Yihetuan Movement — also known as the Boxer Movement — destroyed telegraph poles and other symbolic Western technology during the uprising at the turn of the twentieth century.[44] Similarly, George Wong argues that certain movements emerged in China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties to free ‘Chinese society from the possibility of complete Western technological domination’.[43] In an analogous attempt to fight Western political and military domination, railways became targets of political resistance and protest in Indiai Clearly, these are not examples of movements that sought to eradicate technology as such, but rather instances of symbolic violence against devices that represented the colonial domination of the West.
Meanwhile, positivism emerged as a philosophical and intellectual movement that embraced the scientific method as the ultimate means to understand and perfect society. It was argued that empirical observation, experimentation, and rationality could solve social problems and that progress could be pursued indefinitely.[47] In this period, technology started being systematically and wrongly collapsed into science as if the two terms denoted an identical notion.[48] The spirit of this era is encapsulated in the series of world expositions in major cities around the globe at the turn of the twentieth century. Particularly iconic are the 1889 and 1900 Expositions Universelles in Paris. These expositions epitomized positivist ideals, showcasing the achievements of various nations in science, technology, and industry and celebrating human progress and technological innovations as the key to continuous progress. There was a widespread belief that a better future for humanity was possible thanks to knowledge and reason. It is tragically ironic how this period of intense optimism ended with the world plunging into the catastrophe of World War I. The same science, technology, and industry that — coupled with ‘reason’ — were supposed to afford humanity a brighter future delivered, instead, the bloodiest conflict the world had ever experienced.
While this period did not witness any Luddite-like mass movement of resistance to technological innovations, a few voices began expressing concerns about the scale, magnitude, and consequences of technological progress and industrialization. One such voice was that of that of Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish historian. A staunch critic of industrialism, Carlyle defined his period as the ‘Age of Machinery’ — a world where nothing is ‘done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance’.[49] In his famous 1829 essay ‘Signs of the Times’, he identified pervasive materialism as a pernicious characteristic of this era, calling — at the same time — ‘for a reformation not of society or the economy, but rather of the inner self’.[50] Another important figure of this period was John Ruskin, an English writer and polymath and a close friend of Carlyle.[51] Ruskin was not anti-technology, welcoming technological innovation where this was useful and life-enhancing.[52] Nonetheless, he lamented a dissatisfaction with modernity and the industrial age. In his writings, Ruskin expressed support for improving the condition of the poor while also arguing against the increasing mechanization and division of labour, which he considered dehumanizing.[53] In February 1884, Ruskin delivered a series of two lectures titled The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century at the London Institution, in which he identified industrialism as the cause of air pollution and the degradation of the environment.[54] Both Ruskin and Carlyle would eventually become influential in the development of anti-urban and anti-industrial feelings.[55] A similar call to abandon the industrialized world and return to the countryside was championed by Edward Carpenter — an English writer, poet, and activist who refused the industrial civilization of his time, portraying and idealizing nature as its ‘grand alternative’.[56] Carpenter’s argument, emphasizing the return to a nature that is fundamentally interconnected with humanity, parallels the message of a short dystopian story by one of his close friends, E.M. Forster.
First published in 1909, Forster’s ‘The Machine Stops’ is set in a future where people live underground, relying entirely on an all-encompassing computer-like Machine that tends to their every need and with minimal interactions with other humans. The narrative follows Vashti, a fervent follower of the Machine, and her son Kuno, who, instead, questions the Machine and sets out to explore the outside world. Throughout the story, the Machine shows signs of decay, eventually leading to a total system breakdown. ‘The Machine Stops’ offers a powerful reflection on the consequences of technology and the importance of human connection and the natural world. Despite being over a century old, it raises several thought-provoking questions about our relationship with contemporary technology. It highlights several parallels that can be drawn between the world that Forster depicts and our contemporary society. So, as we can see, antagonism and scepticism towards technologies may not have given rise to protest movements or machine-breaking riots, but critical, intellectual voices were getting louder at the turn of the century. Such voices found an almost natural outlet in the dystopian literature to which Forster’s story belongs. To name two, works like Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published respectively in 1924 and 1932, depict future technology-based dystopian worlds.[57] Arts and literature, especially the techno-dystopian science fiction genre, have always provided a powerful counterpoint to the utopias promised by scientists and technooptimists.[58] Scholars equally engaged with critiques of technology.
Perhaps the most poignant example of this period is Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization. First published in 1934, this work retraces the history of technology and its relationship with civilization, arguing that our resort to technology should not come at the expense of physical and spiritual well-being, thereby paving the way to alienation from nature and other people.[59] Throughout the rest of his career, Mumford authored several other works on technology, providing substantial contributions to the critical study of technology and influencing not only various authors, including Jacques Ellul and Murray [...]
They were not alone in this regard. In 1990, author and activist Chellis Glendinning published ‘Notes Toward a Neo-Luddite Manifesto’. In this manifesto, Glendinning sought to re-evaluate the experience of the nineteenth-century Luddites, who were, as discussed, primarily viewed as ‘reckless machine-smashers’, while also dramatically denouncing that
The technology created and disseminated by modern Western societies are out of control and desecrating the fragile fabric of life on Earth. Like the early Luddites, we too are a desperate people seeking to protect the livelihoods, communities, and families we love, which lie on the verge of destruction.[77]
Glendinning’s manifesto mounts a powerful critique against the worldview that sees technology, material acquisition, and technological development as the keys to human potential, fulfilment, and social progress. In doing so, it denounces the political nature that underlies all technologies, whereby technologies created by the technological society will inevitably favour and serve the perpetuation of the same kind of society. As harmful devices increasingly populate the world, Glendinning’s programme for the future, as outlined in the manifesto, entailed dismantling certain destructive technologies, including television, chemical, genetic, engineering, electromagnetic, computer, and nuclear technologies. In particular, nuclear technology had already been targeted throughout the 1970s and 1980s by different, non-violent movements.[78]
A few years later, Kirkpatrick Sale published Rebels Against the Future. This book — another seminal work of the neo-Luddite movement — attacked what Sale considered the cornerstone of global capitalism: the ideology of technological progress.[79] Rebels Against the Future soon became a significant source of inspiration for 1990s neo-Luddism, not least because of the author’s theatrical attitude. In his public readings and lectures in support of his books, Sale used to smash a personal computer with a giant sledgehammer.[80] Needless to say, the sledgehammer was an evident and explicit reference to the original Luddites. Other neo-Luddites such as Sven Birkerts, David Noble, Clifford Stoll, and Theodore Roszak, shared, to varying degrees, the message of both Glendinning and Sale.[81]
Championing the anarchist strand, a profoundly influential figure of the 1990s neo-Luddite movement is undoubtedly John Zerzan. A prolific author, Zerzan outlined his anarcho-primitivist ideas in a few seminal writings, including Future Primitive and Other Essays, published in 1994.[82] Essentially, Zerzan argued that many of the problems that afflict contemporary society directly result from the adoption of technology. Unlike Glendinning, who advocated dismantling certain harmful technologies, Zerzan promoted the dismantlement of civilization itself, as the pre-civilized life of the hunter-gatherer societies allowed greater individual freedom and a more harmonious relationship with the natural world.[83] John Filiss heralded an analogous position. Like Zerzan,[84] Filiss defined technology as ‘tool manufacture and utilization that has become sufficiently complex to require specialization, implying both a separation and eventual stratification among individuals in the community, along with the rise of toil in the form of specialized, repetitive tasks’. Primitivism offers a solution in the form of a ‘pursuit of ways of life running counter to the development of technology, its alienating antecedents, and the ensemble of changes wrought by both’.[85]
Many of these different neo-Luddite ideas were discussed at the Second Luddite Congress, which took place in Barnesville, Ohio, in April 1996. Here, 350 delegates gathered for three days ‘to write a declaration of independence from the modern world’.[86] The decision to baptize the congress as the ‘second’ was yet another attempt to link the neo-Luddite movement to the nineteenth-century one and a supposed ‘first’ meeting that most likely never took place — at least not in the sense that the neo-Luddites ascribe to it. Kirkpatrick
Sale delivered the keynote speech at the congress, from which neo-Luddism emerged as a ‘leaderless movement of passive resistance to consumerism and the increasingly bizarre and frightening technologies of the ComputerAge’.[87]
However, not all those who opposed technology in the second half of the 1990s did so on non-violent terms. We previously mentioned the acts of sabotage perpetrated by groups like Earth First!, the Animal Liberation Front, and the Earth Liberation Front. Yet these organizations considered violence against people a threshold they would not cross. In their worldview, humans might be inadvertently harmed in defending nature, but their purposeful targeting was out of the question. Active between 1980 and 1983 in France, the anarchist organization CLODO (Committee for Liquidation or Subversion of Computers — Comité Liquidant pour Détournant les Ordinateurs) similarly targeted technology without harming people. Located mainly in Toulouse, CLODO’s attacks targeted companies like CII Honeywell Bull, ICL, and other firms related to computer technology. Overall, CLODO remains a nebulous instance of anti-technology extremism. None of its members have ever been apprehended or identified, and except for a few communiqués published by the organization and a recently published documentary,[88] we do not know much about them. A different opinion on whether humans could be targeted was championed by the individual who represents perhaps the ‘father’ of contemporary anti-technology extremism — or at least its most emblematic figure: Theodore John Kaczynski, aka the ‘Unabomber.’
Born on 22 May 1942 in Chicago, ‘Ted’ Kaczynski pursued an academic career as a mathematician before embarking on his one-man war against technology and civilization. After earning his PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1967, he was appointed assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley?[89] Kaczynski appeared to have what it takes to aim for a brilliant academic career. In the words of many of his former professors, he had an exceptionally bright mind capable of solving mathematical problems so tricky that renowned scholars could not figure them out. Professor George Piranian, for example, commented on Kaczynski’s skills, declaring, ‘It is not enough to say he was smart.’[90] Similar praise came from his supervisor, Professor Allen Shields. When evaluating Ted’s PhD thesis, Boundary Functions, Shields used words that every PhD student dreams of hearing, but few get a chance to: ‘This thesis is the best I have ever directed.’[91] Yet Kaczynski’s mathematical talent remained largely unexpressed. Without any explanation, he resigned on 30 June 1969.
After resigning, Kaczynski moved back to his parents’ home in Illinois for a couple of years before relocating again to just outside of Lincoln, Montana. Here, he pursued a primitive lifestyle in a small, remote cabin he had built that had no access to amenities such as electricity or running water, with occasional jobs and support from his family being the primary sources of his subsistence. Over the next few years, he became increasingly isolated and alienated from society, spending much of his time writing and reading numerous authors, including Jacques Ellul, British zoologist Desmond Morris, and American psychologist Martin Seligman.[92] An introvert and shy person, Kaczynski held a deep-seated and increasingly extreme opposition to modern industrial society and technology. There has been much speculation about episodes in his life that might or might not have contributed to this increasing hostility. From being bullied in school and participating in a particularly abusive psychology study led by Henry Murray in 1962 to allegedly experiencing episodes of gender dysphoria throughout the 1960s, a complex psychological profile emerges.[93] However, while Kaczynski suffered from depression, [...][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]
[1] A few weeks before, a document with the same title was published online. See Anonymous, ‘Fall of AI: Ein Aufruf Zum Kampf gegen „Künstliche Intelligenz“ als Teil der Technologischen Herrschaft’, April 2019, https://anarchistischebibliothek.org/mirror/a/af/anonymous-fall-of-ai.a4.pdf.
[2] For more information, see Victoria Turk, ‘How a Berlin Neighbourhood Took on Google and Won’, Wired, 26 October 2018; Josh O’Kane, ‘When a Berlin Neighborhood Went to War With Google’, Bloomberg UK, 25 October 2022.
[3] I say this only to provide context as to why I was interested in political demonstrations against Google Campus. There is no intention to suggest that the anti-Google campaign had something to do with what we may call terrorism (a term that I will define shortly).
[4] ‘Rise of AI Conference 2019’, 2019, https://app.qwoted.com/opportunities/event-rise-of-ai-conference-2019.
[5] Maria R. D’Angelo, Sentenza n. 6 del 11 luglio 2014 nel procedimento penale contro Alfredo Cospito e Nicola Gai, No. Verdict N. 6 (Corte d’Assise di Appello di Genova 11 July 2014).
[6] EUROPOL, ‘European Union: Terrorism Situation and Trend Report’ (Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2019), 57.
[7] To name a few studies, see Audrey K. Cronin, Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation Is Arming Tomorrows Terrorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020); Gregory D. Koblentz, ‘Emerging Technologies and the Future of CBRN Terrorism’, The Washington Quarterly 43, no. 2 (2 April 2020): 177–96; Andrew Brown, ‘Terror, Tech, and Transformation: Will Emerging Technologies Revolutionize Terrorism?’, Comparative Strategy 42, no. 2 (4 March 2023): 308–20; Zachary Kallenborn and Philipp C. Bleek, ‘Swarming Destruction: Drone Swarms and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Weapons’, The Nonproliferation Review 25, no. 5–6 (2 September 2018): 523–43; Chelsea Daymon, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, and Emil Archambault, ‘Learning from Foes: How Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists Embrace and Mimic Islamic State’s Use of Emerging Technologies’, GNET Report (London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, 2022).
[8] Ioana Petcu et al., ‘Shaping the Future: Between Opportunities and Challenges of the Ongoing 4th and the Forthcoming 5th Industrial Revolution’ (eLSE 2020, Bucharest, 2020), 91–7; Mary Doyle-Kent and Peter Kopacek, ‘Industry 5.0: Is the Manufacturing Industry on the Cusp of a New Revolution?’, in Proceedings of the International Symposium for Production Research 2019, ed. Numan M. Durakbasa and M. Güne§ Gen<;yilmaz (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 432—41.
[9] ‘Revealed: The 50 New Technologies That Could Shape the Future’, UK Research and Innovation, 6 December 2023.
[10] Anna Tong, ‘AI Threatens Humanity’s Future, 61% of Americans Say: Reuters/Ipsos Poll’, Reuters, 17 May 2023.
[11] Matthew Smith, ‘Britons Lack Confidence That AI Can Be Developed and Regulated Responsibly’, YouGov UK, 1 November 2023.
[12] See, for example, Laurens Cerulus, ‘EU Countries Sound Alarm about Growing Anti-5G Movement’, Politico, 19 October 2020; Kelvin Chan, Beatrice Dupuy, and Arijeta Lajka, ‘Conspiracy Theorists Burn 5G Towers Claiming Link to Virus’, AP News, 21 April 2020; Michael Loadenthal, ‘Anti-5G, Infrastructure Sabotage, and COVID-19’ (Global Network on Extremism & Technology, 19 January 2021 ).
[13] Astrid Bötticher, ‘Towards Academic Consensus Definitions of Radicalism and Extremism’, Perspectives on Terrorism 11, no. 4 (2017): 73–7.
[14] This explains the lack of engagement with groups like the Amish in this book.
[15] Stathis N. Kalyvas, ‘The Landscape of Political Violence’, in The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism, ed. Erica Chenoweth et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 12.
[16] This definition builds on Jeffrey M. Bale, The Darkest Sides of Politics, I: Post-War Fascism, Covert Operations, and Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 2018), 4. See also Mauro Lubrano, ‘Choosing What (Not) to Do Next: A Preliminary Theoretical Framework on Strategic Innovation in Terrorist Organizations’, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 17, no. 1 (2 January 2024): 3.
[17] Anyone can use terrorism — be it state or non-state actors — regardless of their ideological background. This book focuses, however, on non-state actors.
[18] Rodney L. Custer, ‘Examining the Dimensions of Technology’, International Journal of Technology and Design Education 5, no. 3 (1995): 219–44.
[19] Bruce Mazlish, ‘Civilization in a Historical and Global Perspective’, International Sociology 16, no. 3 (September 2001): 293–300.
[20] Wolf Schäfer, ‘Global Civilization and Local Cultures: A Crude Look at the Whole’, International Sociology 16, no. 3 (September 2001): 310.
[21] Ibid., 312. Emphasis in original.
[22] Jacobi, Repent to the Primitive (N.C.: Wild Will Coalition, 2017), 87–8.53. Jacobi, ‘The Technology Problem’.
[23] John Jacobi, ‘We Fight for Life’, 8 October 2014, https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/j-j-we-fight-for-life ...
[24] Ibid.
[25] Jacobi, Repent to the Primitive, 15.
[26] Jacobi, ‘The Technology Problem’.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Anonymous, ed., ‘Atltlachinolli’, 5.
[29] Ibid., 22.
[30] Anonymous, Action and Response. https://thetedkarchive.com/library/anonymous-action-and-response.pdf.
[31] Kóshmenk, ed., ‘Bayaq: 1st to 15th’, 16 Seventh Communiqué.
[32] Anonymous, ed., ‘Readings in Eco — Extremism #1’, 41; Anonymous, ‘Mictlanxochitl [...]
[33] Anonymous. Regarding the Death of Kevin Garrido – Clarifications and Positioning, https://thetedkarchive.com/library/regarding-the-death-of-kevin-garrido-clarifications-and-positioning.pdf; Various, ‘A Text Dump on Kevin Garrido’, https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/a-text-dump-on-kevin-garrido.pdf; [...]
[34] Los hijos del Mencho, ‘Against the World-Builders: Eco-extremists respond to critics’, January 2018. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/los-hijos-del-mencho-against-the-world-builders-eco-extremists-respond-to-critics.pdf
[35] Scott Campbell, ‘There’s Nothing Anarchist about Eco-Fascism: A Condemnation of ITS’, [...]
[36] Alfredo Cospito, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, A Few Words of “Freedom”. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/a-few-words-of-freedom
[37] Williams, ‘Anarchism Revived’, 310.
[38] The quote is taken from 325, ‘#11’, 2014, 3 (no longer online). See also Alfredo Cospito , ‘On the “Proposal For a New Anarchist Manifesto”, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-cospito-on-the-proposal-for-a-new-anarchist-manifesto [...]