[gelert]

I would have to say that 'derided by scholars' is a bit much. Most historians who are aware of the luddites in any detail would agree with this take. While Luddites were derided in the past since around the 1930s and works like Herbert Butterfield's the Whig interpretation of History Historians have been very wary of ideas like 'the march of history' and luddites are certainly presented within the scholarship as an example where views have changed away from that kind of narrative.