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> I think that when it becomes culty and reality-denying is where the real problems come in. For example, 47 years ago the city of Phenom Penh was forced at gunpoint to march into the wilderness to farm rice because of how some people interpreted

This! Absolutely. Technological backlash is one of the grave dangers I address in Digital Vegan. Anti-intellectualism lies just beneath the surface in a technological society that is out of touch with itself and has alienated its members through the very technology that could unite it. It grows prone to regressive catastrophes like Mao's brutal projects and of the Khmer Rouge you mention. "Strong Leaders" attach themselves easily to ruralism, "back to basics" and other regressive ideologies. In many ways I think Putin may be one of them. Technological cults beget anti-technological cults.

A problem is that nuanced (but 'inconvenient') tech critique gets labelled as precisely that regressive anti-intellectualism by those who profit from technologically mediated alienation. Simply count the allusions to Luddism in responses to my comments. That "shutting down" and trying to place reasoned technological critique as beyond discussion is mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and is the road to trouble.