Luddism has been central to the modern Green Anarchist community in the US, Europe and the United Kingdom. Celebrate 30 years of Modern Luddism.
Because We Will Be Dancing On The Ruins Of Multinational Corporations
Historical Context
The Tribes of Britain defend the land. Its always the Hippies who defend the land
The Neoliberal answer was the WTO, the battle for Seattle and the Millitarisation of the US Police.
This Is What Democracy Looks Like
We might be Middle-Aged Today, But New York 2026, 30 Years Later, Is Inspirational.
Some Indigenous communities have legends about plants which self-propagate through division, cloning, rhizomes and other asexual means. These indications of diversification of propagation may be older than humans and related to animal predation too. Indications that a plant was highly sought after often appear in unexpected ways. Understanding of the natural environment through long-term observation. The plants we ate for 100,000 years of human evolution between Ice Ages and warmer spells are suddenly relevant in the post-Anthropocene, oil industry-engineered climate.
“We did it, we did this” -Katherine Hayhoe
If Thrutopia can’t include the radical Greens, then it’s not worth anything.
I’m with the Luddites; while this might be 26 years ago, possibly the last year we went to the Big Green Gathering was 2004. Then we went to other festivals, smaller, child-oriented. A big family group; our kids are all the same age. We’d share a car or some of us would go by train. Having no car is the Luddite life. Survivalist skills are the Luddites looking forward at what happens in the post-anthropocene.
Summer of Ludd, Inter-Generational Counterculture-n Sans Smartphone /Device!
Gen Z, My Children’s Generation, have grown up with access to devices, but we lived off-grid and had no TV! I remember dial-up. We were laughing at phone boxes that took 2p. Telephone boxes full of stickers advertising various dubious sexual services. Now there are random stickers on lamp-posts with QR codes for drug dealers who take bitcoin and post to click and collect, and you will never know if you have purchased on a sting operation. I wonder how many World of Warcraft players know that the NSA & CIA infiltrated World of Warcraft and other social gaming platforms because right-wing domestic terrorists and new age future gurus largely use them. The Gen Z Counterculture rebellion is about escaping the nonsense of Limbic capitalism,
But even Limbic Capitalism is out of date: “In The Age of Addiction, David Courtwright has identified a real and troubling development: modern institutions have learned to systematically exploit human vulnerability, often in ways that predictably produce harm. But by naming that phenomenon limbic capitalism, he misidentifies the level at which the problem operates. The central dynamic he describes is not unique to capitalism. It is the institutional exploitation of evolutionary mismatch, the tendency for evolved human preferences and behaviours to operate poorly in modern environments radically different from those in which they developed. Framing it as a feature of capitalism narrows a broader explanatory problem into a single economic category, obscuring the deeper forces that increasingly shape modern life.
The distinction is not semantic. It changes both diagnosis and prescription.
Courtwright’s evidence is compelling. Modern institutions have become extraordinarily adept at identifying, stimulating, and monetising ancient reward circuits that evolved under radically different conditions.” https://delphicmirror.substack.com/p/beyond-limbic-capitalism-the-institutional?r=5d3u3o&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
The Cult Of ME
In my opinion, it’s not just the scrolling; it’s the cult of ME. The Cult of ME is aimed at any channel/individual on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or any other online social media channel. Where the central individual either talks endlessly to camera about subjects they know a little about or are on a wellness grift or both. The message is irrelevant as long as it looks radical and sounds amazing, whether the content is accurate or safe is irrelevant. I’m not correcting them; if science deniers are giving duff advice, we don’t need to worry about them during the 6th mass extinction: Cynical and lacking compassion? Absolutely. Look how many wellness grifters died during Covid. The Attention industry does not necessarily lead to direct sales, but it’s still a sales process. Preppers: They are on YouTube every week, some every day, they create a cult following, and sadly, the vast majority of those talking about preparedness online are just sharing generic information, their entire existence is about selling gear and talking about migrants and their favourite political parties with no manifesto other thatn deportation, which ultimately means that the vast majority of their followers are of a particular demographic and political ideology, and they get so upset abouut being accused of being far-right or racist. By the same token, the Podcasting New Age Shamanic Practitioners are using the people they interview to push their ideas to their subscribers, which drives subscriptions to their membership and participation in their enlightenment grift. Some YouTubers follow the age-old grift of just asking for money so they don’t need to get a job. The Cult of ME is all about attention, and it is deeply rooted in capitalism, even if the ME, says it isn’t.
Summer of Ludd in New York 2026 (not available on Zoom)
The 21st-century Luddite counterculture and Summer of Ludd in New York 2026 is the best news I have seen about anarchist grassroots rebellion against the Earth-devouring machine. Anticapitalist, anti-datacentre, anti-AI, Anti- smartphone intrusion. The anti-technology backlash is cross-politics but generally more anarchist than any other politics. Collective decision-making, decentralised federated structure. This anti-mass surveillance based on devices we are expected to have has created the conditions for despotic dictatorship and police who can pinpoint you by hijacking your smartphone’s data signal and tower triangulation without a search warrant or court order. In America, the armed police and ICE operate like the paramilitary Gestapo, disappearing people, trafficking children, and summarily executing citizens in the streets. By rejecting the smartphone, you can disappear like going off the grid.
The Hammers have a long history of the late 20th-century Luddites and their music of how Ploughshares Women opposed war by smashing war planes.
Life without a smartphone, social media, I hear, is the ambition of some of the Cult of ME practitioners. There must be tremendous cognitive dissonance between researching quackery and not wanting a smartphone, which you are reliant on for your dashboard studio camera.
Solidarity prepping and learning bushcraft and real ancestral skills, which are also mind-expanding by building new neural networks, fits perfectly with this backlash. Disconnecting from technology, connecting with that land, nature and the ancestors whose land it is. Having a direct relationship with nature rather than one mediated by plastic shaman. We need to separate ancestral skills from food hoarding, prepping and the far-right and remember it’s how humans evolved and survived for over 200,000 years of our evolution. These are the skills of indigenous people, the skills which bring us into deep connection with the land. I have been a luddite for most of my adult life. No car, no TV, old computers running Linux, really old smartphone, Lots of skills for being off the grid.
Digital ID, It’s Already In Your pocket!
Luddism: not having a car and bringing up children while living off the grid. Rejecting the ubiquitous smartphone, we reject the “ambient surveillance” culture of big tech constantly knowing where we are. The Digital ID is already in your pocket, on a contract to the big tech communications company you pay your bill to. They give security services access to your location and movements with or without your consent.
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