Joining the resistance is a commitment.

"Technique causes the state to become totalitarian, to absorb the citizens’ life completely. We have noted that this occurs as a result of the accumulation of techniques in the hands of the state. Techniques are mutually engendered and hence interconnected, forming a system that tightly encloses all our activities. When the state takes hold of a single thread of this network of techniques, little by little it draws to itself all the matter and the method, whether or not it consciously wills to do so.
Even when the state is resolutely liberal and democratic, it cannot do otherwise than become totalitarian."
— Jacques Ellul, The Technogical Society, 1954.‍‍

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From the extreme left to the extreme right, all political parties venerate technical progress. All postulate that innovation and science are emancipatory forces that benefit the human condition. For them, scientific research should not tolerate any obstacles, no limits. In reality, we are dealing with a single party giving the plebs the illusion of choice through a few superficial differences. This single party is the technologist party.

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Many authors have already announced the advent of techno-totalitarianism for a long time (Aldous Huxley, Günther Anders, Jacques Ellul, George Orwell, Lewis Mumford, etc.). First of all, let's remember that totalitarianism is not just Nazism or Stalinism, which are two extreme versions. Two elements come up in the commonly accepted definitions of totalitarianism:

• It is a political regime in which a single party has all the powers and does not tolerate any opposition;
• The totalitarian state exercises control over public life, but also over all individual activities.

This is easy to verify. While in most pre-industrial societies, technical progress was systematically debated, even subject to taboos or prohibitions because of the upheaval it would generate within the society. It is almost never discussed anymore today. The collective mentality towards technical change seems to have changed profoundly since the first industrial revolution. On the other hand, it is striking that the possibilities of control, surveillance and repression by the State are increasing as technical progress develops. The telegraph allowed the establishment of rapid communication between the center (Paris) and the periphery of the State, while the railway and then the roads made it possible to send the army and/or the police to pacify an insurrection. Modern urban planning techniques were used by Baron Haussmann in Paris in order to organize the gentrification of the city center — parking the poor on the periphery — and improve the effectiveness of the police in neutralizing insurrections. Today, these means of control are developing at an exponential rate: biometric data, Internet, smartphone, satellites, etc.

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Let's end this point with another quote from Jacques Ellul who, nearly 70 years ago, already well understood our problem:

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"The techniques of the police, which are developing at an extremely rapid tempo, have as their necessary end the transformation of the entire nation into a concentration camp. This is no perverse decision on the part of some party or government. To be sure of apprehending criminals, it is necessary that everyone be supervised. It is necessary to know exactly what every citizen is up to, to know his relations, his amusements, etc. And the state is increasingly in a position to know these things.

This does not imply a reign of terror or of arbitrary arrests. The best technique is one which makes itself felt the least and which represents the least burden. But every citizen must be thoroughly known to the police and must live under conditions of discreet surveillance. All this results from the perfection of technical methods. "

"If the experience of modern society shows us anything, however, it is that technologies are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning."
— Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor - A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, 1987.

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The idea that technology itself is neutral and that the way we humans use is the main problem is  widespread. This idea is wrong. The technological system is a new environment, an artificial landscape that follows its own evolutionary laws, where machines thrive at the expense of living species, of nature. The human is a slave to the machine in this new environment.

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Technology does not grow on trees, as its production has social and ecological implications. In 2020, the technological system engulfed more than 100 billion tons of raw materials. These materials are mainly used to build infrastructure, buildings and heavy machinery. A study published the same year in the revue Nature shows that the total mass of artificial productions — buildings and infrastructures mainly — is now equivalent to the terrestrial biomass living on Earth.

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This problem has nothing to do with a governance issue. Whether a political regime is left or right, it will always be necessary 3,000 tons of sand and gravel (french article) to build a building the size of a hospital, 30,000 tons for a kilometer of highway and 12 million tons for a nuclear power plant. Replacing these materials with others does not fundamentally change the problem: the development and maintenance of cities and infrastructures involves the continuous removal of phenomenal quantities of materials from the Earth's crust.

Human animals are not pests or inferior beings. The propaganda of the technological system celebrates the perfection of the machine and constantly belittles human nature that is inherently spontaneous, and therefore unpredictable. It's about making us obedient and malleable to facilitate submission and slavery. Presenting a certain category of the population as inferior and deficient is part of a set of psychological techniques used for thousands of years, in particular to enslave populations considered to be “savage” or “barbaric.” The fact that millions of modern humans are deeply convinced that they are vermin, to the point of refusing to give birth, says more about their mental health than their astronomical consumption of antidepressants. This pathological conception of human nature seems universal in industrialized countries, but absent in traditional societies of hunter-gatherers, farmers, herders, or subsistence fishermen.

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Humans evolved and share characteristics with many other species. Like sperm whales, orcas, lions or chimpanzees, the human primate develops what is called a culture, that is, the acquisition and social transmission of knowledge — making a shelter and tools, hunting or fishing techniques, etc. — necessary to live well in a particular natural habitat. Culture is closely linked to the material environment. With the scientific and technical revolutions of the last centuries, and then the advent of the first industrial revolution, humans have completely disconnected from their natural environment. They no longer interact with the natural world using tools with their brain and muscles. Homo industrialis created an entirely artificial universe. To populate this new world and interact within it, he builds various and varied machines. This artificial ecosystem is gradually replacing the natural ecosystem and its landscapes composed of living organisms.

“The technical macro-systems and the cybernetic swaddling of the planet are contemporary forms of a generalized encapsulation that is no longer content with subjecting to its implacable conditions a few “exceptional” individuals (astronauts), but humanity and the whole Earth.”
— Alain Gras and Gérard Dubey, La Servitude electrique (2021).

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We believe that the technological system threatens the perpetuation of the human species, that is, the survival of each of the 7.7 billion human individuals on Earth. Regardless of the size of their bank account, their place in the hierarchy, or their social background, no human can survive without clean water, without food, without fertile soil, without a viable atmosphere and temperature — in other words, without a functioning biosphere.

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Blinded by the omnipotence of technoscience, the privileged are mistaken if they believe they can escape geopolitically unstable areas that are hostile to human life in terms of climate. In the long run, there is no place to flee. In the event of total destruction of the biosphere, the confined lifestyle of astronauts is the only possible way out for survivors. But this encapsulated existence poses innumerable problems for physical and mental health. If even astronauts, who undergo drastic selection and high-level training, are subject to serious mental and physiological failures during prolonged lockdowns, it is unlikely that the human species will be able to survive very long in such conditions. As the bunkerized existence is inhuman, if something were to survive a partial or total destruction of the biosphere and colonize space, in all probability, that thing would not be human (biologically speaking).

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Although the technical feasibility of transhumanist delusions is questioned by serious scientists, it would be unwise to rule out the possibility that intelligent and autonomous machines could, in theory, through a process similar to natural selection, be tempted to oust humans and take control of their destiny. While it is impossible to predict the future, one thing is certain: the vital needs of a machine (materials and energy) differ from the vital needs of a human (drinking water, breathing air, viable temperature, fertile land, healthy food, healthy food, social life, the need to move, space and beauty, etc.). An irresponsible neglect of this fundamental incompatibility has led in two centuries to the socio-ecological disasters that we know about. This means that even by returning to the technological level of the 1950s, industrial society will necessarily lead to a continuous degradation of the biosphere. It cannot be otherwise, which is why the system must be completely dismantled.

We are not putting the cart before the horse. Establishing the ideological bases of an ideal society right now without questioning the material bases of modern industrial society is completely illusory. It is a new ideology that gave birth to the telegraph, the factories, the railway, the railway, the cinema, the radio, the automobile, the shells and the tanks; an ideology that tends to strengthen as the human environment is artificialized, because psychological research shows that our brains are profoundly shaped by The culture in which we grow and evolve on a daily basis. This means that cultural reproduction will continue indefinitely as long as the material bases — the economic and technological bases — of modern industrial society are maintained.

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To make matters worse, as the technological system is a totalitarian system gaining power through permanent expansion, it will destroy all alternative forms of society based on low-tech, techniques that are by definition weakly powerful. The system has eradicated the majority of traditional societies that previously existed in Europe, and the few bits of folklore that still remain are just the ghosts of cultures that have disappeared.

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Aggravated by climate disturbances and the scarcity of resources, local and global political instability will certainly reach extraordinary levels in the 21st century. That is why we think it is a priority to eliminate the system in order to be able to rebuild alternative societies now that are able to survive the shocks to come. The Zones To Defend (ZAD) have shown their limits in creating territories that are politically and materially autonomous in France due to the power of the State and the technological arsenal at its disposal (armored vehicles, helicopters, drones, weapons, networks, and communication routes). In the near future, the development of drones and autonomous combat robots will make it all the easier to eradicate low-tech alternatives.

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To conclude on this point, it seems relevant to us to achieve our objective — to safeguard the human species — to defend the traditional societies existing in the countries of the South in order to preserve their precious knowledge and to postpone the moment of their extinction as much as possible. On this point, the NGO Survival International or the World Rainforest Movement are doing commendable work. Since extractive industries are the main threat to these societies, ATR's work also aims to safeguard the remaining human cultural diversity, a strategic asset for the survival of the species.

"We have completed our examination of the monolithic technical world that is coming to be. It is vanity to pretend it can be checked or guided. Indeed, the human race is beginning confusedly to understand at last that it is living in a new and unfamiliar universe. The new order was meant to be a buffer between man and nature. Unfortunately, it has evolved autonomously in such a way that man has lost all contact with his natural framework and has to do only with the organized technical intermediary which sustains relations both with the world of life and with the world of brute matter. Enclosed within his artificial creation, man finds that there is “no exit”; that he cannot pierce the shell of technology to find again the ancient milieu to which he was adapted for hundreds of thousands of years. "
— Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954.‍

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It is impossible to flee the technological system due to both its totalitarian nature and its constant expansion. The technological system colonizes all activities, all aspects of human existence. Wanting to escape a constantly expanding system is an illusion, especially since the entire biosphere has already been contaminated by millions of chemical substances.

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As for the reform, it starts from the false premise that technology is neutral and that it could be otherwise by changing governance or the rules of the economic game. However, as explained above, to build and maintain a highway, a building, a railway, an airport, to operate the machines in this artificial ecosystem, immense quantities of materials and energy are needed regardless of the type of governance or economic regulation.

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On the other hand, Jacques Ellul was wrong when he pretended that stopping the evolution of the technological system was a vain undertaking. Technically, we have long known how to dismantle buildings, factories and infrastructure. Ellul wrote these lines at the beginning of "Les Trente Glorieuses" following the end of the Second World War, at a time when the vast majority of society believed religiously in the inevitability and benefits of techno-scientific progress. That is no longer the case nowadays. Moreover, future environmental and climate disasters will accentuate this distrust.

"It is useless to rail against capitalism. Capitalism did not create our world; the machine did."
— Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954.

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‍We do not want yet another political revolution that will overthrow existing governments and fail, like the previous ones, in improving the human condition. Political masquerade is both a distraction and a poison that divides people, an illusion that diverts us from the priority threat. The left and the right are of no use in achieving our objective, especially since the almost universal progressive conception of modern politics starts from the following fallacious assumption: science and technology are neutral, it is up to the human animal, implicitly or explicitly considered to be “deficient” or “harmful”, to adapt to the progress of machines.

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Our aim is to overturn the economic and technological bases of this society. No technologically advanced society will be viable in the long term because of the major ecological disturbances they systematically cause. The average lifespan of a civilization, of technically highly advanced societies, is at maximum 336 years only. Some environmental activists wrote on their signs “we are nature that defends itself.” Although we are ideologically distant from most environmentalists, that is how we see ourselves. We are living beings who organize themselves to fight back against a system and its machines that destroy the conditions that make life possible on Earth. This is why ATR is more like a self-defense group than a political movement.

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It is common to hear, especially on the left, that ecological disaster is the result of gaping social inequalities. A better distribution of wealth would then suffice, and as if by magic everything would return to normal in terms of climate and ecology. It is a preposterous vision, completely disconnected from reality. If this wealth was created by devastating ecosystems, distributing it better will not fundamentally change the ecological carnage. As Niko Paech, a German economist in favor of degrowth (his book, Liberation from Excess sold 30 000 copies), pointed out, all social progress within the industrial society is economic, and therefore material, progress:

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"In so far as every facet of human existence, down to the most insignificant structuring of time, is connected to accessing some kind of consumer object or convenience-related infrastructure, social aspects inevitably and completely dissolve into economics. After all, according to this logic, individual freedom and appropriate participation in society means being able to afford as much as other people. Consequently, social advancement can only be articulated as economic expansion (entailing further external supply services), regardless of whether externally provided services have been accessed from the market or the state."

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To finish on this point, ATR is not a radical political movement (Marxism, Maoism, Anarchism, etc.), which does not prevent us from drawing ideas from others when these can be used in the fight against tech. Nor does ATR campaign for progressive causes (feminism, anti-racism, LGBT struggles, animalism, environmentalism, etc.). Of course, that doesn't stop a woman of color from becoming an executive in our organization and having men under her leadership. Progressive struggles are certainly commendable, but at a time when life on Earth is under threat, we must learn to prioritize our goals (A fortiori in an asymmetric struggle where the camp of the oppressed has limited resources). As the mathematician Theodore Kaczynski analyzed, social struggles increase the resilience of the technological system by channeling the immense frustration that arises from an undignified life and the widespread powerlessness imposed by the technological system.

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In addition, we do not want people in our ranks who support xenophobic and/or racist smoky theses according to which Asians, Jews, poor people, immigrants, blacks or Arabs are at the origin of the problems of our time.

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The technological system is our one and only concern.

"To introduce the principle of moderation into the theory of war itself would always lead to logical absurdity."
— Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, 1832.

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"We understood that politics is nothing but war without bloodshed and war is nothing but politics without bloodshed"

— Fred Hampton, former leader of the Black Panther Party in Illinois.

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We are fighting for organic life to prevail over mechanical death. Emotions or morals should in no way interfere with the achievement of our goal. The potential short-term consequences of a collapse of the technological system should not make us lose sight of the ultimate goal — to preserve Earth's habitability, stop the extermination of life, and prevent the extinction of the human species.

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To meet this result requirement, we define objectives and numerical performance indicators for our projects. At ATR, our managers are evaluated primarily on their results.

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The mathematician Theodore Kaczynski sums it up well in his book Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How?  :

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"You have to make a decision: Is the elimination of the technological system worth all of the desperate risks and terrifying disasters that it will entail? If you don’t have the courage to answer “yes” to that question, then you’d better quit whining about the evils and hardships of the modern world and just adapt yourself to them as best you can, because nothing short of the collapse of the system will ever get us off the road that we are on now."

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Let's give an example. During the Second World War, the Allied air forces (British and American) bombed France to stop Hitler. It is estimated that these bombings caused between 50,000 and 70,000 deaths (in French only), or about a quarter of the victims of the conflict for France. Most people today would agree that these bombings were worth it because they stopped Hitler and prevented the total extermination of European Jews. If you feel unable to put your emotions aside and reason coldly, rationally, to make difficult but effective decisions, you better forget your dreams of changing the world and go back to your daily routine.

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This is of course just an example, ATR is a non-violent organization and does not want anyone to die.

For many people, it seems paradoxical and inconsistent to oppose the technological system while using technology. Most people are completely alien to the functioning of the technosphere and its totalitarian nature. They also digested the lies of liberal propaganda that would like societal change to start with yourself. Unsurprisingly, the history of human societies contradicts this version of the dynamics of change in every way.

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You also need to understand what a revolutionary process involves and the principles of war. Technology increases power over living organisms and matter, so it is of strategic interest for any revolutionary movement, regardless of the objective pursued. In an asymmetric conflict, as is almost always the case during revolutionary struggles between outsiders in the established order, it would be really stupid to restrict ourselves to low tech when high tech, powerful technologies are accessible at a lower cost.

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For all these reasons, ATR is particularly interested in scientific and technical profiles specialized in the following fields: Big Data, artificial intelligence, robotics, drones, NBIC technologies. We are also looking for people who are experts in web development, graphics, video, animation, web writing or SEO. If you want to give real meaning to your profession by putting your knowledge and experience at the service of the great challenge plan of human history, join our camp — that of humans.

"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."
— Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 5th century BC

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As a legal organization operating in the open, we use nonviolent strategies and tactics to achieve our goal. The collective imagination generally associates the word revolution with a violent and bloody clash. Any revolutionary desire is immediately ridiculed by almost systematic statements that serve as much to rationalize the feeling of powerlessness as to neutralize any strategic thinking about the revolutionary process (“So, with your little comrades, you are going to take up arms and make the revolution? ”). Not believing in winning is the best way to fail. Ask top athletes the question.

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Although we are non-violent, we reject dogmatism. We believe that nonviolent tactics and violent tactics can even be complementary within a large-scale revolutionary movement made up of a wide range of organizations. For example, we understand that some people use violence to respond to the repeated aggressions of the technological system. This is the case of the inhabitants of the Niger Delta who join MEND to fight the oil industry, an initially non-violent movement that saw nine of its leaders (including Ken Saro-Wiwa) executed by hanging. This is also the case for indigenous peoples in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania who are fighting back after being disenfranchised and driven from their lands by extractive industries and corrupt governments. We also understand that, in the face of environmental carnage, exasperation, anger and impatience may encourage young people in industrialized countries to engage in blockade and/or sabotage operations. But as already mentioned above, it is necessary to seriously weigh the pros and cons of such operations.

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So the revolution could be non-violent. History has shown that governments can fall without bloodshed. And even in the case of a violent revolution, armed struggle generally represents a very small part of the extremely diverse range of activities of a revolutionary movement. Of course, being non-violent does not prevent you from learning to defend yourself. Self-defense is even essential to reclaim power.

"Voluntary service and the action of partisans should not be understood in the narrow sense of the word, that is as a struggle of worker and peasant detachments against the local enemy, uncoordinated by a general plan of operation and each acting on its own responsibility, at its own risk. The action and tactics of the partisans in the period of their complete development should be guided by a common revolutionary strategy.
As in all wars, the civil war cannot be waged by the labourers with success unless they apply the two fundamental principles of all military action: unity in the plan of operations and unity of common command."

— Nestor Makhno

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"Organization, far from creating authority, is the only cure for it and the only means whereby each one of us will get used to taking an active and conscious part in the collective work, and cease being passive instruments in the hands of leaders."

— Errico Malatesta

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The revolutionary movement draws its strength from the diversity of the organizations that make up it. To win, we need both hierarchical organizations and non-hierarchical (or horizontal) organizations, for the simple reason that each type of structure shows better efficiency in different areas and complements. Hierarchical organizations seem to be more effective in organizing uncovered, non-violent mass movements, while horizontal and decentralized organizations excel in clandestine operations.

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ATR has opted for a hierarchical organization for various reasons:

• Prevent malicious individuals from seeking to divert our organization from its priority objective: stopping and dismantling the technological system.
• After reaching a certain size, an organization can no longer function effectively without a minimum of hierarchy.
• Organize the transmission of knowledge and know-how from experienced members to less experienced members.
• Organize campaigns to raise public awareness about technological threats. Let's make it clear here that hierarchy and authoritarianism are two different things.

An organization can be hierarchical without being authoritarian, as is the case with many NGOs and associations (Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, etc.). However, in order to avoid any authoritarian tendencies, ATR has set up several firewalls internally.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles"
‍— Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 5th century BC

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According to revolutionary history, societies do not change profoundly as a result of spontaneous popular revolts. We saw it recently with the Yellow Vests movement. The lack of preparation and organization in advance prevents the construction of a solid and sustainable resistance movement. Here's what Foreign Affairs recently stated in a book review on the dynamics of societal change:

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"The replacement of one world-shaping political order with another has always required strategy, leadership, and ideological struggles driven by the search for legitimacy. It is less the downtrodden and dispossessed who reshape political life than activists and charismatic leaders who latch on to potent new ideas and build new coalitions."

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In our ranks, we want fighters who are motivated, self-disciplined, self-sufficient, and hard-working. Too often, political movements are infiltrated by stowaways, dreamers, or frustrated people who spend their time compensating for their neuroses by assaulting their colleagues (the famous “horizontal hostility”). It is to avoid as much as possible (zero risk does not exist) the integration of toxic elements that we proceed with a rigorous selection at the entrance.

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According to the precepts of Sun Tzu, our managers are trained to acquire a good understanding of the technological system and the risks it poses to the biosphere. In addition, you will receive concepts of strategy, geopolitics and history, as well as notions of survival in nature. In addition, weekly physical training, self-defense and first aid training are mandatory for ALL organizational executives (“a healthy mind in a healthy body”).

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Activism as a part-time occupation or as an activity carried out as a dilettante will produce results that measure this level of commitment, that is, poor results. To avoid this pitfall, our managers must be fully committed to the cause and be ready to make sacrifices. Of course, this does not prevent volunteers and supporters from joining us during specific actions.