the historical luddites, like the historical populists, were really not precursors to marx or bakunin (the populists were chronologically later, but you get the point). they don't even fit under the definition of "utopian socialism" that engels contrasted against the "scientific socialism" of marx, which has been a misnomer to this point but is still the direction that proper socialists and anarchists need to take to be proper. it's a little bit hard to get it right, but if your socialism isn't scientific, it's not proper socialism.

the luddites were brownshirts. they were nazis. they were fascists. like the historical populists, they were very religious. they were a late medieval, pre-modern (if just barely) development of historical barbarism and one of the earliest demonstrations of what we refer to today as the extreme fascist right.

luddite ideas showing up in fake leftist circles should be raising alarm flags. when this shit gurgles up, it's not a left, it's an extreme right. worse, it's consistent with other extreme right ideas infecting and co-opting the fake left, to produce what has become an increasingly ideologically coherent extreme right.

chomsky saw this coming a little but he avoided taking it on. chomsky was pretty hard-headed and not afraid to get into a debate, but he didn't want this fight. the person that really took this issue on, and whose writings on the topic are invaluable at this point, was hitchens, who was almost prophetic at points, despite getting the basic point wrong in iraq. dawkins has been wrong about hormone science and women's rights, but he identified a lot of the fake left issues before they were serious concerns.

the broader society should see these fascist attacks on the use of technology as dangerous and as an extreme warning signal that we're on a path towards collapse and self-harm.