The Purge against AI: Unmasking the Anti-Modern Roots of Today's Tech Panic

In our preceding analysis, "Beyond Burning Books: Russia's Weaponization of Cultural Policy and the Construction of a New Intellectual Iron Curtain", we charted how authoritarian regimes, with Russia as a prime exemplar, strategically deploy cultural repression and narrative control not merely for domestic subjugation but as potent instruments of "negative soft power" to export illiberalism and fracture democratic consensus globally. That investigation illuminated a sophisticated effort to insulate societies from liberal modernity by attacking its cultural and intellectual foundations. "The Purge Against AI" extends this critical inquiry directly onto the technological frontier, the most dynamic and contested terrain of our era. It examines how Artificial Intelligence—modernity’s current vanguard—has become the new symbolic battleground, revealing how analogous anti-Enlightenment forces now seek to instigate a purge, not just of challenging ideas or artistic expressions, but of transformative innovation itself and the very promise of a technologically advanced future.

The image on top, perhaps gracing the cover of a contemporary European news journal or flashing across a heavily monitored social media feed, is stark. Captured in Sofia, Bulgaria, on a volatile Friday, May 31st, 2025, it depicts a seething confluence of fifty thousand euro sceptic(and pro Russian) citizens pressed against the very steps of the Bulgarian Parliament. Officially, their grievance is the nation’s impending adoption of the Euro. But the raw energy emanating from this assembly, mirrored by thousands more in cities across the EU member state, tells a story far more complex and incendiary than a simple debate over currency. This is not merely a protest; it is a front line. Weeks earlier, elements from crowds just like this one had besieged and nearly overwhelmed the European Parliament's liaison office in Sofia. Across the country, the now-familiar rituals of defiance had played out: the burning of European Union and NATO flags, replaced, with defiant cheers, by the tricolor of the Russian Federation. It is from this very crucible of anti-Western fury and resurgent nationalism that a particular, chilling message emerges, not as an official banner of the day, but as a potent distillation of the crowd's deeper animus.

One man, his face a mask of fervent conviction, hoists a transparent placard. Its hand-scrawled text, stark against the backdrop of simmering unrest, presents not a slogan but a terrifying, cascading equation—a paranoid’s roadmap to a foregone conclusion:

Digital Euro = Digital ID = Internet of Big Nano Things = Central Bank Digital Currency = Trans Humanism = New World Order = Social Credit = Green Deal = Digital Fascism.

This is the writing on the wall for the 21st century, a declaration scrawled not by a lone eccentric but by a sentiment gaining alarming currency. It’s a creed amplified by political forces like Bulgaria's Rebirth party—the nation’s fastest-growing, now second-largest political entity, and an avowed partner of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia and Germany’s AfD. This protest, and the sign itself, are symptomatic of a nation where, just weeks prior, a broad political consensus pushed through legislation mandating "Religious and Moral Education" from age six to eighteen, echoing the Kremlin's own pivot towards a state-sponsored traditionalist, Orthodox fundamentalism.

The sign, in its stark ideological arithmetic, is a masterpiece of conflation, a Rosetta Stone for the modern anti-progress narrative. Each term, laden with its own specific technical or political meaning, is stripped of nuance and chained to the next in an inexorable march towards a pre-determined dystopian horizon. The "Digital Euro" and "Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)" are not presented as evolving financial instruments subject to public debate and regulatory oversight, but as immutable waypoints on the road to a panoptic "Social Credit" regime. The "Internet of Big Nano Things"—a phrase conjuring the AI-powered, hyper-connected world of ubiquitous sensors and autonomous systems—becomes the neural network of an oppressive "New World Order." Even the "Green Deal," the European Union's ambitious strategy for ecological sustainability, is cynically reframed as a cog in this machine of control, a component of the overarching "Digital Fascism." And "Transhumanism," the complex and often speculative exploration of human enhancement, is here caricatured as a sinister elite project, a betrayal of natural order. The silent, omnipresent enabler of this entire terrifying edifice, the ghost in this digital machine of perceived oppression, is, by powerful implication, Artificial Intelligence—the very technology capable of realizing the seamless surveillance, algorithmic governance, and transformative societal control that the sign so vehemently decries.

This Bulgarian tableau, however, is far from an isolated Balkan curiosity. It is a potent snapshot of a wider, intensifying ideological confrontation unfolding across the Western world. Similar narratives, employing the same techniques of fear-mongering and conceptual fusion, gain traction from rural American town halls to the metropoles of Western Europe, often amplified by political entities that share Rebirth's nationalist, anti-globalist, and frequently pro-authoritarian leanings. The targets may vary—vaccine mandates yesterday, 5G towers before that, AI chatbots today—but the underlying script of a looming, technologically-enabled oppression remains eerily consistent.

Yet, as these movements passionately decry a future of "digital fascism" and the purported loss of liberty at the hands of an omniscient technological state, a curious and profound silence often pervades their discourse on another, seemingly contradictory, front. If the paramount concern is genuinely for "the people" facing a world irrevocably altered by advanced technology, particularly AI, where is the corresponding clamour for harnessing these same revolutionary tools to empower and provide for those very people? Why are the streets not equally, if not more, animated by demands for AI-optimized Universal Basic Income (UBI), a system potentially underwritten by the colossal efficiencies, cost savings from reduced corruption, and new forms of wealth generation that AI promises to unlock within our economies and state apparatuses? Some of the most prominent figures in AI development themselves link its transformative power to the eventual necessity of UBI, making its omission from the rhetoric of supposed populist champions all the more glaring.

This conspicuous UBI blindspot prompts a series of uncomfortable, yet crucial, questions. Why is there not a more forceful, mainstream demand from parties and movements that build their platforms on social justice and economic equality for AI to underwrite a new social contract, especially when the technology might offer the very means for its equitable and efficient delivery? Is this silence an innocent oversight, a failure of imagination, or does it betray a more complex, perhaps deliberately obscured, truth? Could it be that some of the most potent narratives stoking fear about AI-induced joblessness or technological control, while appearing to defend the common citizen, are in fact serving as unwitting—or witting—proxies for agendas that have precious little to do with genuine public welfare or democratic empowerment? Are we, in fact, witnessing a sophisticated, multi-front proxy war where public perception of AI is the contested territory, and the true objective is to stall Western progress, erode faith in liberal institutions, and pave the way for alternative, often authoritarian, models of governance? And who, then, are the genuinely "interested parties" that benefit most profoundly when AI is relentlessly framed as an existential threat, thereby sidelining any robust discussion of its potential to solve some of humanity's most intractable problems?

The answers, this article will contend, are neither simple nor reassuring. They lie buried beneath layers of historical revisionism, geopolitical strategy, and meticulously crafted "crimes of thought"—the deliberate weaponization of narratives to achieve ideological dominance. To understand the virulent purge mentality increasingly directed against Artificial Intelligence, we must look beyond the surface anxieties of our digital age. We must unmask it as the latest, perhaps most critical, battle in a long and dangerous war against the Enlightenment project itself, a war against the very essence of modernity, with AI now standing as its most visible and vulnerable effigy.

II. Shadows of the Past: Anti-Progress as Historical Doctrine

The impulse to purge society of disruptive knowledge, to recoil from the perceived precipice of an unsettling future, is not a novel affliction of our digital age; it is a recurring fever in the body politic. History casts long, instructive shadows, revealing distinct blueprints for the systematic demonization of progress and the suppression of intellectual currents deemed threatening to an established order or a desired ideological future. When reason itself, and its primary vessels—be they printed books meticulously preserving human thought or complex algorithms extending human intellect—become the enemy, the assault is invariably driven by unreasoned ideologies. These past onslaughts, rooted in mythologies that stand in stark opposition to the universalist and liberal traditions—traditions whose ethical emphasis on individual dignity and a common humanity drew, in part, from deep currents in Christian philosophical thought—illuminate the timeless strategies now marshalled against Artificial Intelligence. To unmask the anti-modern roots of today's tech panic, one must confront these historical specters, for they reveal how potent narratives, divorced from empirical reality, have consistently sought to usurp the throne of reason.

Consider National Socialism in Germany, an ideology whose very architecture was a ferocious flight from Enlightenment rationality into the abyss of racial mythology and a cult of ethno-nationalist particularism. The regime's infamous book burnings, as has been widely documented, were not mere acts of vandalism but profound symbolic rituals: the public immolation of texts deemed "un-German"—works by Jewish intellectuals like Albert Einstein, liberal humanists such as Thomas Mann, or Marxist thinkers—represented a calculated exorcism of universalist thought, critical reason, and the perceived "corrosive" intellectualism of a pluralistic, Judeo-Christian influenced West. As insightful analyses by historians like Philip Ball have shown, Einstein's relativity was not just academically disputed but ideologically vilified as "Jewish physics," a contaminant to the purportedly pure Aryan intellectual tradition. This crusade, as Umberto Eco argued in his deconstruction of "Ur-Fascism," exemplified fascism’s intrinsic "revolt against reason," its foundational preference for blood-and-soil mysticism over empirical evidence and disinterested inquiry. National Socialism constructed its worldview upon the invented "truth" of Aryan supremacy and a romanticized, pre-modern Germanic tribalism, which stood as a direct, violent antithesis to any notion of universal human dignity or rights. This historical precedent—the framing of scientific and philosophical ideas not as subjects for rational debate but as existential cultural or racial pollutants—provides a stark blueprint for how AI today can be, and is, portrayed by certain contemporary narratives as an inherently "alien," "soulless," or "dehumanizing" force, antithetical to "authentic" cultural or spiritual values. The symbolic burning of books finds its modern parallel in the call to preemptively halt or dismantle AI based on ideological fear rather than reasoned assessment of specific risks and benefits.

The Soviet Union, under the banner of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, provides another compelling case study of an unreasoned ideology systematically prioritizing dogma over empirical reality and intellectual freedom. While ostensibly materialist and avowedly atheistic, Soviet communism rapidly ossified into its own form of secular fundamentalism, complete with sacred texts, infallible prophets, and inquisitorial mechanisms for enforcing orthodoxy. The disastrous era of Trofim Lysenko’s dominance over agricultural science, meticulously chronicled by scholars such as David Joravsky or Loren Graham, illustrates this vividly. Lysenko’s scientifically baseless Lamarckian theories gained official sanction, and Mendelian genetics—a pillar of modern biology with Western empirical foundations—was suppressed as "bourgeois pseudoscience." This was not an isolated incident; the nascent field of cybernetics, a crucial precursor to AI, was, as noted in early Western analyses by institutions like the RAND Corporation, initially condemned in the Soviet press of the 1950s as a "misanthropic imperialist pseudoscience," a dangerous tool of capitalism. This reveals a system where "Party truth," dictated by ideological expediency and a deep-seated suspicion of Western intellectual currents, consistently trumped scientific evidence. Though Soviet ideology claimed a form of universalism through "proletarian internationalism," its practice often devolved into a Russian-centric chauvinism and a rigid historical determinism that was profoundly anti-liberal, suppressing individual conscience and critical inquiry in favor of collective submission to the Party line. The Soviet assault on intellectual freedom, often manifesting as the quiet administrative purging of libraries, the strategic rewriting of history, and the silencing or exile of dissenting authors, aimed to create an environment where unreasoned ideology could reign supreme. This model of suppressing inconvenient knowledge and demonizing intellectual innovation originating from ideological adversaries provides a clear template for contemporary efforts to discredit AI research through claims of inherent Western bias or to demand its governance be subordinated to particularistic ideological agendas rather than universal ethical principles and empirical risk assessment.

Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China further exemplifies this pattern of ideologically-driven anti-intellectualism. As explored by Y. Sato and others, the period saw a violent denunciation of Western science and a brutal persecution of intellectuals, all in the name of revolutionary purity and the elimination of "bourgeois" or "imperialist" influences. The elevation of ideological zeal over expertise, the public humiliation of scholars, and the dismantling of educational institutions created a climate of profound intellectual fear. This historical episode serves as a stark reminder of how easily expertise can be framed as an enemy of "the people" when an unreasoned ideology demands absolute conformity, a tactic visible today when AI developers and researchers are sometimes broadly caricatured as an out-of-touch or even malevolent "elite" detached from common concerns.

Even the Manichaean dualism characteristic of certain medieval anti-systemic movements, which posited a stark cosmic struggle between absolute good and absolute evil, offers a psychological insight into the framing of AI in some contemporary discourses. The reduction of a complex, multifaceted technology like AI into an inherently "demonic" force or an unambiguous "existential threat"—rather than a powerful tool with potentials for both immense benefit and significant risk, requiring careful governance—taps into this ancient human tendency for simplistic, binary categorization when faced with the profoundly new or the overwhelmingly powerful. Such framing short-circuits nuanced discussion and fuels a climate of unreasoned fear.

These historical shadows—National Socialism's myth-driven repudiation of universal reason, Soviet Communism's dogmatic war on inconvenient truths, Maoism’s violent anti-intellectualism, and the perennial appeal of dualistic, fear-based worldviews—are not mere academic curiosities. They constitute a discernible and recurring blueprint for the ideological "purge" increasingly directed against Artificial Intelligence. The methods are strikingly consistent across time and context: the systematic delegitimization of science and empirical evidence when they conflict with ideological imperatives; the creation of moral panics around new knowledge or capabilities; the portrayal of innovation as a foreign, alien, or elite-driven conspiracy against "the people" or "tradition"; the invocation of a threatened cultural or spiritual order; and the promise of purification through the rejection or suppression of the offending intellectual or technological current. Understanding this lineage is paramount, for it reveals that many of the anxieties and attacks surrounding AI are not novel reactions to a unique 21st-century technology, but rather the potent reactivation of age-old patterns of resistance to progress, now focused on its most advanced and potentially transformative manifestation. The assault on AI, in essence, often represents a renewed assault on the modern commitment to reason itself.

III. The Modern Crusade Against AI: New Actors, Old Scripts

The historical shadows of anti-progress movements, with their inherent suspicion of reason and vilification of intellectualism as detailed in "Beyond Burning Books," do not merely linger as academic curiosities. They stretch long into our present, providing well-worn scripts for a new cast of actors crusading against the perceived excesses and threats of modernity, with Artificial Intelligence now thrust onto center stage as its most potent and unsettling protagonist. If the past saw books immolated as symbols of "degenerate" thought, today AI often faces a similar trial by ideological fire, where nuanced understanding is sacrificed for narratives of fear and control. These contemporary crusaders, from state-sponsored ideologues in Moscow and Beijing to transnational extremist networks, may employ new digital tools, but their methods—the strategic deployment of anti-reason, the cultivation of anti-intellectualism, and the positioning of themselves as champions of "the people" against a purportedly corrupt or alien modernizing force—echo the darkest chapters of the 20th century. The objective remains consistent: to purge society of influences deemed threatening to a prescribed order, be it cultural, spiritual, or political.

The New Russian Fundamentalism: Wielding Tradition Against Tech Modernity – An Assault on Reasoned Progress

At the forefront of this contemporary ideological offensive stands a resurgent Russia, increasingly cloaking its geopolitical ambitions in the mantle of a "New Russian Fundamentalism." This potent brew of revived Orthodox traditionalism and state-sponsored cultural conservatism frames Western technological advancement, particularly AI, not as a domain for rational inquiry and ethical development, but as an existential spiritual and civilizational threat. This echoes the historical suppression of "un-Russian" ideas explored in "Beyond Burning Books," where cultural output was judged not by its intellectual merit but by its alignment with state-defined values. Now, AI is subjected to a similar ideological filter. As articulated through state media and influential clerical pronouncements, the narrative posits that Western AI is an embodiment of soulless secularism and moral relativism. Here, anti-reason manifests in the blanket condemnation of AI’s trajectory based on spiritual dogma or civilizational anxieties, rather than on a critical, evidence-based engagement with its specific capabilities and risks. The potential for AI to solve complex global problems, for instance, is often ignored or downplayed in favor of emphasizing its capacity to "erode God-given human identity" or serve as a tool for "foreign control."

This narrative is buttressed by a pervasive anti-intellectualism, where Western scientists, ethicists, and tech developers involved in AI are often portrayed not as innovators grappling with complex challenges, but as naive agents of a decadent, post-human agenda, or worse, as malevolent actors deliberately undermining traditional societies. Patriarch Kirill’s warnings about technology enabling the Antichrist, as reported by BBC Monitoring, serve to delegitimize the entire technological enterprise in the eyes of the faithful, framing its proponents as either dupes or collaborators in a satanic project. This strategy is central to Russia's "negative soft power": it seeks to generate repulsion from Western liberal modernity by presenting its technological fruits as inherently poisonous. By fostering a climate where AI is discussed in terms of spiritual warfare rather than scientific endeavor, these "people's defenders" legitimize a purge of Western technological influence, portraying it as a necessary defense of Russia's unique soul and the authentic values of its populace. The script is an old one—casting foreign innovation as a corrupting influence—but it is now aimed squarely at the intellectual foundations of AI development, mirroring past efforts to create an "intellectual iron curtain."

China's Hybrid Gambit: Subversion, Standardization, and the Managed Intellect

China's challenge to Western AI leadership, while often framed in more pragmatic and developmental terms, also incorporates subtle yet potent elements of anti-reason and anti-intellectualism in its approach to information control and narrative management. While Beijing champions its own rapid AI advancement, it simultaneously curates what its population—and to some extent, the global audience it seeks to influence—learns about and from Western AI. The state-enforced censorship of platforms like ChatGPT, as reported by The Guardian, and the official framing of such Western AI models as biased tools of U.S. "political propaganda," are clear examples. This is a manifestation of anti-reason in that it pre-emptively restricts access to diverse information sources and curtails open intellectual inquiry into the global AI landscape, subordinating it to the Party's narrative control. The implicit message is that the Chinese people cannot be trusted to engage critically with "unfiltered" Western AI; they must be protected by the state, the ultimate "defender of the people's" ideological purity.

Furthermore, by consistently highlighting ethical lapses or societal disruptions associated with AI in the West (often amplified by state media), Beijing subtly fosters a form of anti-intellectualism directed at Western tech developers and their governance models. The narrative suggests that the "chaotic" and "irresponsible" nature of Western liberal societies makes their AI inherently untrustworthy or dangerous, contrasting it with China's vision of a centrally planned, harmoniously controlled AI ecosystem. While not employing the overt spiritual demonology of some Russian narratives, this approach effectively delegitimizes Western intellectual leadership in AI by framing its processes as flawed and its outcomes as suspect. The strategy of flooding the market with free AI "copycat" models can also be seen through this lens: it not only disrupts Western economic models but also positions China as the benevolent provider of accessible technology, implicitly framing Western proprietary models as elitist or exploitative. The goal, as intelligence assessments from bodies like the ODNI suggest, is to reshape global norms around AI in a way that favors China's state-centric, and therefore more easily controlled, approach to knowledge and innovation.

The Global Constellation of Resistance: Popular Anti-Intellectualism and the Purge by Proxy

The crusade against AI and the modernity it represents extends beyond major state actors, permeating a diverse global constellation of authoritarian regimes, non-state proxies, extremist groups, and cultic movements. These actors, while varied in their specific doctrines, frequently converge in their deployment of anti-reason and anti-intellectualism to mobilize support and justify their opposition to Western-led technological progress. Authoritarian states like Iran, as documented by Reuters and the Atlantic Council, engage in disinformation campaigns that explicitly portray Western technology as a tool of cultural imperialism and moral decay, urging their populace to reject it in favor of "authentic" indigenous values. This relies on an anti-reason paradigm where ideological pronouncements and appeals to tradition trump any objective assessment of technological benefits or risks.

Within Western societies, extremist movements and cults provide perhaps the most overt examples of popular anti-intellectualism fueling the call for a purge. QAnon, as Gregory Stanton has analyzed for Just Security, builds its entire worldview on the rejection of established facts, expert consensus, and mainstream institutions, including those involved in science and technology. AI is seamlessly integrated into their conspiratorial narratives, depicted as a tool of a nefarious "deep state" or "liberal satanic elites." Here, the "people's defenders" are those who claim access to a hidden, Gnostic truth, while scientists, researchers, and tech developers are cast as either willing conspirators or deluded fools. The call is for a complete rejection—a purge—of these "expert" narratives in favor of an alternative "reality." This pattern of demonizing expertise and promoting charismatic, unreasoned "truths" is a direct echo of the anti-intellectual fervor that characterized historical totalitarian movements. Similarly, some far-right populist figures attack "Big Tech" and AI developers not through reasoned critique of specific policies or products, but by broadly characterizing them as a monolithic, unaccountable elite hostile to the "common person." This fosters a climate where any attempt at rational discourse about AI's complexities is drowned out by populist rage and suspicion, creating fertile ground for the anti-modern narrative that progress itself is a betrayal of "the people." These diverse actors, often amplified by the very digital platforms they critique, collectively contribute to an environment where modernity and reason are demonized, justifying a purge of AI not based on what it is, but on what it is made to symbolize.

IV. Deconstructing the Attack: Narratives, Tropes, and Psychological Warfare

To comprehend the full dimensions of the burgeoning "purge against AI," one must dissect the intricate machinery of narrative warfare that fuels it. This is not a spontaneous eruption of Luddite anxiety, but often a carefully cultivated cognitive battlefield where sophisticated disinformation campaigns, deeply ingrained cultural tropes, potent ideological labels, and the deliberate weaponization of fear converge to shape public perception and demonize technological advancement. The actors identified in the preceding section—be they state propagandists, extremist ideologues, or populist demagogues—do not operate in a vacuum. They draw upon and amplify a rich arsenal of persuasive, often pernicious, narrative tools designed to bypass rational deliberation and mobilize sentiment against AI and the perceived modernity it represents. Understanding these mechanisms is crucial to inoculating open societies against their manipulative effects.

The Disinformation Machine: Hybrid Warfare and Synthetic Realities

The modern assault on AI is significantly amplified by the deliberate strategies of state-sponsored disinformation, a core component of hybrid warfare. Regimes in Moscow and Beijing, among others, have refined techniques to pollute the information ecosystem, as detailed in numerous intelligence assessments and scholarly analyses, such as those by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) or specialized research from institutions like the RAND Corporation. These are not crude falsehoods easily dismissed, but often sophisticated campaigns that exploit existing societal fissures and anxieties. Concerning AI, this involves the selective amplification of legitimate concerns (e.g., algorithmic bias, job displacement) to an alarmist pitch, the subtle seeding of doubt about the trustworthiness of Western AI research and development, and the promotion of narratives that frame AI as an inherently uncontrollable or malevolent force when wielded by liberal democracies. Tactics can include the use of state-controlled media to broadcast skewed perspectives, the deployment of bot networks and troll farms to create an artificial consensus or to harass proponents of AI, and potentially, as generative AI itself becomes more advanced, the creation of synthetic media (deepfakes) to discredit individuals or fabricate "evidence" of AI-related malfeasance. The objective, often echoing the "Firehose of Falsehood" model attributed by analysts like Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews to Russian disinformation, is less about convincing audiences of a single alternative truth and more about overwhelming them with contradictory narratives, thereby eroding trust in all sources of information and fostering a climate of cynicism and paralysis where rational policy-making regarding AI becomes exceedingly difficult.

Conspiracy Cascades: From Vaccines and 5G to AI – The Unified Anti-System Worldview

The narratives attacking AI rarely exist in isolation; they are frequently woven into broader, pre-existing conspiracy theories, creating a cascade effect where suspicion of one perceived threat bleeds into others. As research into belief systems consistently shows, individuals who subscribe to one conspiracy theory are significantly more likely to embrace others, forming a unified anti-system worldview. The networks and rhetorical tropes that fueled skepticism and outright hostility towards COVID-19 vaccines and 5G telecommunications technology are now being demonstrably repurposed to target AI. As documented by organizations like the Alliance for Science and news outlets such as Politico EU, the same online communities, influencers, and even state-backed amplification networks that spread falsehoods about vaccines being "microchipping" schemes or 5G towers causing illness are now circulating alarmist claims about AI. These might include AI being a tool for global depopulation, a mechanism for instituting a "digital dictatorship," or an instrument for mind control, directly paralleling previous conspiratorial framings. This creates a dangerous synergy: an audience already primed to distrust mainstream science, expert institutions, and governmental guidance on one issue becomes readily receptive to similar fear-mongering about AI, regardless of the technological specifics. The underlying narrative is one of a nefarious, often "globalist," elite systematically deceiving and harming the populace through successive waves of dangerous technology.

Exploiting Pop Culture Dystopias: The Terminator/Matrix Effect

Public perception of AI is profoundly, and often unconsciously, shaped by deeply ingrained dystopian imagery from popular culture, most notably iconic films like The Terminator and The Matrix. As media analysts and even figures within the tech industry itself (cited by Sky News) have observed, these cinematic portrayals provide a readily accessible, emotionally charged shorthand for AI-related anxieties. The "Terminator narrative"—rogue AI achieving sentience and initiating a war of extermination against humanity—while a work of fiction, has become a potent, almost default, mental model for existential AI risk, often overshadowing more nuanced and realistic discussions of current AI capabilities and ethical challenges. Propagandists and fear-mongers strategically exploit this pre-existing cognitive landscape. By invoking "Skynet" or warning of machines "taking over," they tap into visceral fears that bypass critical analysis. Similarly, The Matrix, with its allegory of a machine-generated illusory reality and the concept of "taking the red pill" to awaken to a hidden, oppressive truth, has been co-opted by various anti-establishment and conspiratorial movements, as noted by the BBC. In these contexts, "red-pilling" often means accepting the conspiratorial worldview and rejecting mainstream narratives, including those concerning the benefits or benign nature of technologies like AI. Thus, AI is framed not just as a tool, but as a potential architect of a new "Matrix," further justifying a pre-emptive "purge" or rejection.

Weaponizing Labels: "Technofeudalism," "Transhumanism," and "Technofascism"

Beyond general fear-mongering, the anti-AI crusade employs specific, highly charged labels to frame the technology and its societal implications in the most negative light. The term "Technofeudalism," popularized by thinkers such as Yanis Varoufakis, suggests that AI and big data are driving a new economic order where a handful of tech oligarchs become digital overlords, controlling vast swathes of information and capital, while the masses are reduced to a state of precarious digital serfdom. In this narrative, AI is the engine of this neo-medieval power asymmetry. "Transhumanism," a broad field exploring human enhancement, is frequently stripped of its complexities and caricatured in critical narratives as a sinister elite project aimed at creating a two-tiered society of "enhanced" and "unenhanced," fundamentally altering human nature for the benefit of a few, with AI as the key enabling technology. This taps into deep anxieties about hubris, the sanctity of the human form, and eugenicist nightmares. Further, "Technofascism" is invoked to describe a future where AI-powered surveillance, algorithmic governance, predictive policing, and the fusion of state and corporate power create an inescapable, hyper-efficient totalitarianism far exceeding the capabilities of 20th-century fascist regimes. These labels are not neutral descriptors; they are potent ideological weapons designed to evoke immediate negative associations and shut down nuanced debate by framing AI as inherently linked to oppressive socio-economic or political outcomes.

The Far-Right's Anti-Modern Techno-Skepticism: AI as a Tool of "Globalist Elites"

Contemporary far-right movements across the West have increasingly integrated a pronounced techno-skepticism into their broader anti-globalist, anti-liberal, and nativist ideologies. As scholar Jason Stanley outlines in "How Fascism Works," a key tactic of such movements is to foster anti-intellectualism and demonize experts and established institutions. In this vein, AI and its proponents are frequently cast by far-right narratives as tools of a "globalist elite," "cultural Marxists," or other shadowy cabals intent on eroding national sovereignty, traditional identities, and the fabric of "authentic" Western (often implicitly white, Christian) civilization. AI-driven automation might be framed as a plot to replace "native" workers, while AI ethics initiatives are dismissed as "woke" political correctness. This narrative positions "the people" as victims of a technologically empowered, out-of-touch, and often malevolent elite, thereby justifying a rejection of both the technology and the liberal democratic order that fosters it. The affinity of some Western far-right figures for authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, as noted by The Guardian, underscores this shared disdain for liberal modernity and its technological manifestations.

Religious Fundamentalism: AI as Apocalyptic Harbinger and Demonic Force

For various religious fundamentalist groups, AI is often interpreted through an apocalyptic lens, becoming a potent symbol of spiritual warfare or a harbinger of End Times prophecies. As seen in statements from figures like Pastor Jack Hibbs (reported in The Christian Post) or even high-ranking clerics like Patriarch Kirill (via BBC Monitoring), AI can be explicitly branded as a manifestation of "demonic deception" or a tool for the coming Antichrist to exert global control. This framing transforms the debate about AI from one of ethics, policy, and technological development into a cosmic struggle between good and evil. Tropes such as the "Mark of the Beast" from the Book of Revelation are readily applied to AI-related technologies like digital IDs or potential neural interfaces, fueling intense fear and resistance among believers. This sacralization of opposition makes rational discourse exceptionally difficult, as AI is no longer a subject for empirical assessment but an object of faith-based condemnation, justifying its "purge" on divine grounds.

Fear as a Psychological Weapon: The "Existential Threat" Card

Underpinning many of these narratives is the deliberate and strategic weaponization of fear, particularly the invocation of AI as an "existential threat" to humanity. As analysts of authoritarianism like Ruth Ben-Ghiat have observed, stoking moral panics and leveraging perceived existential threats is a classic tactic for consolidating power, discrediting opponents, and justifying extreme measures. While legitimate, long-term concerns about advanced AI safety exist within the scientific community, the "existential threat" narrative is often amplified and distorted by those seeking to induce public panic and policy paralysis. This appeal to primal fear, as psychologists note, can short-circuit rational deliberation and make populations more susceptible to simplistic solutions or authoritarian leadership. Even well-intentioned warnings from tech leaders about hypothetical AI doomsday scenarios can be co-opted by these agendas, presented as "proof" that the technology is an uncontrollable monster that must be summarily halted, rather than carefully and ethically developed.

The Paradox Revisited: Job Displacement Fears vs. UBI Silence – A Case Study in Narrative Manipulation

The pervasive narrative of AI-driven mass unemployment, when juxtaposed with the conspicuous silence from many of its proponents regarding AI-enabled Universal Basic Income, serves as a stark case study in narrative manipulation. While the fear of job displacement is potent and understandable, the failure of many vociferous critics to simultaneously champion UBI—a solution that AI's productivity gains could help fund and its optimization capabilities could help administer—suggests that the concern may not solely be for worker welfare. This selective outrage, this focusing on the disruptive potential of AI without a corresponding engagement with its problem-solving capacity, hints at a deeper agenda. It allows the "job loss" fear to be instrumentalized to stoke generalized anti-AI sentiment and resistance to the broader technological and societal shifts AI represents. If the aim were truly to navigate an automated future equitably, the discourse would be rich with explorations of AI-driven social safety nets. Its frequent absence implies that, for some, the goal is not to manage the transition, but to derail it entirely, purging AI not because its economic consequences are unmanageable, but because its transformative potential challenges entrenched ideologies or power structures.

Collectively, these narratives, tropes, and psychological tactics create a formidable cognitive battlefield. They operate to discredit not only AI technology itself but also the scientists who develop it, the institutions that govern it, and the liberal-democratic societies most closely associated with its advancement, all in service of a broader, often unstated, purge against modernity.

V. The Real Target: AI as a Proxy War on Western Modernity

The cacophony of narratives decrying Artificial Intelligence—from dire warnings of existential doom and conspiratorial whispers of elite machinations to accusations of inherent bias and predictions of societal collapse—paints a bewildering and often terrifying picture. Yet, to focus solely on the critiques of AI as a discrete technology, however valid some specific concerns may be, is to risk missing the forest for the trees. When the historical blueprints of anti-progress movements (Section II), the contemporary strategies of geopolitical actors (Section III), and the manipulative mechanics of narrative warfare (Section IV) are viewed in concert, a more profound and disturbing pattern emerges. The "purge against AI" is frequently not an end in itself, but rather a proxy conflict in a much larger, older, and more fundamental ideological war. The real targets are often the very foundations of Western modernity: the Enlightenment tradition, the framework of liberal democracy, and the dynamic ecosystem of innovation that has propelled global change.

The Enlightenment Under Siege: AI as the Apex of Contested Reason

At its most fundamental level, the assault on AI often represents a resurgence of the perennial revolt against the core tenets of the Enlightenment—reason, empiricism, critical inquiry, and the belief in human progress through knowledge. As Umberto Eco compellingly argued in his analysis of "Ur-Fascism," such ideologies are characterized by an inherent irrationalism, a suspicion of the intellectual life, and a rejection of modernity as decadent. The more extreme anti-AI narratives, which rely on unfalsifiable conspiracies, apocalyptic prophecies, or the outright demonization of scientific endeavor, directly contravene the Enlightenment's call for evidence-based understanding and open debate. AI, as arguably the most complex and potent product of sustained scientific reasoning and cumulative technological advancement, becomes a symbolic affront to those worldviews that seek refuge in dogma, tradition unmoored from critique, or simplistic Manichaean struggles. When public discourse is deliberately flooded with fear-inducing tropes that bypass logical scrutiny, as discussed previously, the aim is often to discredit not just a specific technology but the very process of rational inquiry that produced it. This creates an environment where, as Jeffrey Goldberg observed in The Atlantic, societies risk "losing their grip on Enlightenment values and reality itself," making them susceptible to the allure of unreasoned ideologies that promise certainty in a complex world.

Delegitimizing Liberal Democracy: AI as the Alleged Instrument of Tyranny or Incompetence

A significant thrust of the anti-AI narrative, particularly when amplified by authoritarian states or domestic anti-systemic movements, is the delegitimization of liberal democratic governance. As scholars like Colin Robinson and Simon Watson have explored in the context of anti-globalist conspiracies, such narratives frequently portray democratic institutions as either complicit in nefarious technological plots (e.g., AI as a tool for "digital fascism" or for "liberal satanic elites" to enforce a "New World Order") or as catastrophically incompetent in managing the risks of powerful new technologies. This dual critique serves a clear purpose: it erodes public faith in the ability of liberal democracies to govern effectively and ethically in the technological age. If democratic systems are perceived as either inherently tyrannical in their use of AI or hopelessly naive in its control, then alternative, often authoritarian, models of governance can be presented as more decisive, secure, or morally sound. The strategic goal, as highlighted by analyses in outlets like the Harvard Misinformation Review, is to undermine the political culture of Western democracies, fostering cynicism and disengagement, which are fertile grounds for illiberalism. Thus, AI becomes a convenient scapegoat, a technological lens through which pre-existing anti-democratic agendas can be focused and amplified.

Sabotaging Western Innovation Ecosystems: Discrediting the "Sorcerers" and Their Craft

Beyond philosophy and governance, many anti-AI campaigns implicitly or explicitly target the West's globally leading innovation ecosystems—its universities, research institutions, tech companies, and the community of scientists and engineers driving technological frontiers. By relentlessly portraying these innovators as reckless "sorcerers" unleashing uncontrollable forces, as amoral profiteers indifferent to societal harm, or as agents of a shadowy globalist agenda (a narrative often pushed by sources like the Alliance for Science in its analysis of disinformation), these attacks aim to tarnish the appeal and legitimacy of Western ingenuity itself. The demonization of specific AI developers or the companies they lead, the amplification of every ethical misstep or unintended consequence, and the framing of AI research as inherently dangerous or hubristic all contribute to an environment of suspicion and hostility. This can, in turn, lead to public backlash, diminished investment, brain drain, and overly restrictive, innovation-stifling policies within Western nations. Such an outcome directly benefits geopolitical competitors who seek to close the technological gap or achieve supremacy, by slowing the West's innovation engine from within. The objective is to transform a key Western strength—its dynamic, open, and often disruptive innovative capacity—into a perceived vulnerability and a source of societal fear.

Anti-Westernism as the Unifying Ideology: Modernity as the Ultimate Enemy

Ultimately, the unifying thread connecting the multifaceted "purge against AI" is a profound and often explicitly articulated anti-Western sentiment. In this worldview, "The West" is not merely a geographical designation but a symbol—and indeed, the primary historical engine—of modernity itself, with all its attendant complexities: secularism, individualism, liberal democracy, human rights, globalized markets, and relentless technological dynamism. AI, in this context, is viewed as the logical, perhaps ultimate, apotheosis of this centuries-long modernization trajectory. It embodies the power of secular reason to reshape the world, the capacity for disruptive innovation to overturn established orders, and the potential for global interconnectedness on an unprecedented scale. For those ideologies rooted in traditionalism, religious fundamentalism, ethno-nationalism, or authoritarian statism—ideologies that inherently view these aspects of modernity as corrosive or threatening—AI becomes the quintessential enemy symbol. Attacking AI, therefore, is a proxy for attacking the broader civilizational model it is perceived to represent. This is where the analyses from "Beyond Burning Books" and "Crimes Of Thought" converge with the present crisis: the weaponization of narratives, the construction of intellectual iron curtains, and the appeal to anti-rational sentiments are all tactics in this enduring ideological confrontation, with AI now serving as the most incandescent focal point of a deep-seated animosity towards the modern, Western-led global paradigm. The purge is aimed not just at algorithms, but at the entire intellectual and societal ecosystem from which they emerge.

VI. Conclusion: Navigating Technopaganism – Reclaiming the Narrative of Progress

The contemporary "purge against AI," as this investigation has sought to unmask, is far more than a series of disconnected anxieties about a new technology. It is, in essence, the latest theatre in an enduring war against the foundational principles of modernity, a sophisticated campaign of what might be termed "crimes of thought"—the deliberate weaponization of narratives to distort reality and achieve ideological ends. The diverse actors orchestrating or amplifying these anti-AI sentiments, drawing from historical blueprints of anti-intellectualism and anti-reason, are not merely critiquing algorithms; they are attacking the Enlightenment's legacy of rational inquiry and the very notion of human progress through innovation. When faced with the transformative, almost numinous, power of Artificial Intelligence, there is a discernible retreat in some quarters into a form of technopaganism: a flight from reasoned engagement into the realm of myth, apocalyptic fear, and the simplistic demonization of complex technological realities, akin to ancient societies personifying inexplicable natural forces as capricious deities or malevolent spirits. The stakes in this cognitive battlefield, as analyses from institutions like Freedom House have underscored regarding the broader rise of digital authoritarianism, extend far beyond the future of any single technology. What is truly imperiled is the resilience of open societies, their capacity for evidence-based policy-making, and their commitment to fostering innovation within an ethical, democratic framework. If narratives of fear and ideological revulsion succeed in stifling AI's development or its responsible integration, the cost will not just be measured in lost economic potential or technological leadership, but in a broader societal regression towards the very unreasoned dogmatisms that historical progress has sought to overcome.

Confronting this challenge requires more than reactive debunking of disinformation. It demands a proactive and compelling articulation of an "Enlightened Modernity"—a vision that confidently embraces technological advancement, including AI, while rigorously upholding humanistic values, democratic principles, and ethical accountability. This involves fostering widespread critical thinking, robustly defending the spaces for open intellectual inquiry, and clearly distinguishing legitimate concerns about AI's societal impact from the ideologically motivated campaigns that seek to exploit those concerns for divisive ends. The path forward in navigating the AI revolution is not through a fearful purge of the new, but through intellectual courage, ethical clarity, and an unwavering commitment to ensuring that human ingenuity, guided by reason and universal values, shapes a future of shared progress rather than succumbing to the shadows of atavistic fear and orchestrated dogma.