The Big Bad Luddite List
ANTI: fascism, ai, nfts, Big Tech, billionaires, surveillance states, optimization, algorithms, bot farms, technofeudalism, enshittification, exploitation, extractionism, planned obsolescence PRO: organized labor, punk, analog, solidarity, free speech, friction, degrowth, experimentation, right to privacy, right to repair, diy, material process, mutual aid, ecological living, the human hand, the human mind
Looking for fiction? Check out The Big Bad Luddite Novel*.
created by teddydee
last updated August, 2026
Comments
EDIT: link to spinoff list
I've been thinking! I really like this list being huge and sprawling and encompassing many different points of view. At the same time, I don't feel like it totally reflects my point of view â I haven't read all 440+ books listed here (lol) (actually I'm treating it like an ongoing personal research project) and some of the titles I have read, I didn't love. In general I do not see lists like this as endorsements/recommendations, just as curating interesting information in interesting ways. So I do not really want to remove those kinds of books if it feels like they still apply (especially if someone else might get more use out of them than I did), but I'd like to create some more unambiguous way to cut to the chase for people who are interested but maybe not interested enough to wade through, you know, 440+ books.
IDEA: I am thinking about creating a spinoff list that's like Luddism: Teddy's greatest hits version. This list would only contain books I have personally read and thought worth recommending. If I have caveats/little asterisks about any of them, I would put a note in the comments with the details. I would continue to update both lists.
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oh my god it just keeps going!! đ love this
teddydeeOP
More on the way, I'm still manually adding missing books haha
Dang, this list could keep me reading for years! Great job!
Well hold on to your boots, I'm still manually adding missing titles lol
genuine question so i'm hoping this doesn't come across as bad faith, but i'm wondering why there's a julius evola book in a list that is antifascist when evola was a well known fascist whose influence continues into the modern day? đ fwiw i've not read the book in question so i apologise if it fits here for another reason better, i was just a bit surprised to see an evola book at the top of a list that says it's anti-fascist when he's the complete opposite of that đ
sidenote tho, love the inclusion of against his-story, against leviathan which is how i found this list! đ«¶
I found the review that led me to put this book on here, btw, if you're interested: link What I've consistently read about it in several places is that the book flips wildly between sense/nonsense and insightful analysis/fucked-up ideas (and that "when he's right, he's right on the money, and when he's wrong, he's extremely wrong"). I think (sometimes, anyway) the diagnosis of a problem is more or less correct but what these people choose to do about it and how they exploit the problem is deeply fucked. But maybe somewhere in the initial diagnosis lies the ghost of another path we could choose to take to address these problems in actually healthy ways
the link doesn't seem to work unfortunately đ but i agree with you here as well, and i definitely understand why you added it to the list now! đ«¶
teddydeeOP
I have realized I didn't know how to link to a goodreads review, lol. I think it's fixed now, if not let me know and I'll take another look!
it works, that was a really interesting read so thank you! 𫶠i'm not fully versed in evola but i do a lot in terms of antifacism etc in music and i've only ever seen fascists use him as an influence (and obviously they only quote the fascist parts), so to see him shadow marx in some aspects was relatively surprising, but also makes sense for a list like this!
Hi, thanks! A couple things: â the list is always under construction and subject to change! I have read a number of these titles but certainly not all of them and as I continue reading I expect some will be removed and others added. â but also, not all of these authors or titles agree with each other, and being on this list shouldn't be taken as an endorsement. Complete agreement, between authors or with myself, is not necessarily one of my goals here. If anything the list description should be read as a disclaimer against taking every title at face value â those are my values in the description, and I think most of the titles fit them most of the time, but when any part of a book here conflicts with those values, I do not support those ideas (eg the Unabomber is also on here â while I think certain parts of his analysis are insightful, he also clearly went way, way wrong). The books on this list are here because they deal in their own way with some core questions/concerns of mine around labor/technology/progress. I think there can still be things to gain from critically reading books by people I strongly disagree with. One of the things that I personally find useful in doing this is seeing in real time how a valid critique can be twisted to disturbing ends, like peeking under the hood to study how public idealism can be manipulated to ultimately betray those same ideals. I think this can be helpful for identifying different forms of this manipulation creeping into our communities and equipping ourselves to combat it where we see it. This may not be the right approach to curating a public list like this and I might change my mind about it at some point! â as far as it being the first on the list, that's just functionally because I thought of 400 other books to add first :)
thank you, that makes a lot of sense when you explain it like that! 𫶠apologies if i came across as implying you agreed with all authors on the list, that definitely wasn't my intention. i definitely agree with you about the critically reading authors you disagree with as well, i just (mis)interpreted it (the description) to mean that the books in this list fell under the same "categories" which is where my confusion came from, if that makes sense? (tbh i think this is an Autism Momentâąïž from me in that i took the description too literally and i apologise đ )
i appreciate the detailed answer and i will definitely be adding some of these to my own backlog so thank you again for making this list! 𫶠(also re the order it was more so the contrast of its placement to the description rather than it being first specifically as well, apologies if i implied anything about it as well đ )
Please don't apologize, no problem at all, I'm glad you asked! I wanted to say something about this in the description anyway but my character limit was already maxed out, lol. So I appreciate the prompt to put some kind of notice in the comments :) I feel like when you get into certain branches of anarchism (etc) too some of those ideas can get a little questionable as well, although I find a lot of anarchist thought compelling. And as I said, I have not read all of these yet, I'm very open to feedback and thoughtful conversations about anything here!
yes i'm so glad we can have this conversation, i really appreciate it as well since i was worried about coming across as bad faith/confrontational in my original message đ 𫶠and for sure, my work in anarchist (etc) spaces means i have to tread carefully, there's some people that end up sliding into ecofascist/anprim territory/rhetoric (much like the unabomber) and we have to distance ourselves from them, so i understand where you're coming from!
teddydeeOP
I'm so glad you reached out â€ïž and I totally get where you are coming from!!
