History is written by the victors, and the luddites lost. That's why they're maligned as backwards idiots who didn't want tech to succeed.

They weren't stupid. They knew precisely what was going to happen, and did their best to stop it. Generally they took care to target only machines as their goal wasn't to harm people but to remain employed, and have money to survive with. Naturally there were exceptions, and sometimes people did get hurt.

But then, the bourgeoisie enacted law to prevent this where destroying mechanical looms became punishable by... oh let's see...

The act, as passed, made the destruction of mechanised looms [...] a capital felony (and hence a crime punishable by death).

Right! Death! Destruction of company property became punishable by death.

And people did die. Children died. Mind you, back then workers were anyone capable of working, and they had no rights. They didn't vote for the people who passed this act; workers weren't supposed to have a voice, and so the only recourse was rebellion.

This didn't stop things immediately, there's quite a lot of really cool worker history here, but eventually the government sent in the military and couple that with nothing really changing despite widespread rebellion, the luddite movement fizzled out.

Less of "you're a person who doesn't like tech" and more "you're not with the times/are scared of the future"... which is pretty close to some messaging from clankers.