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The striking mistake that primitivists made was to assume that civilization was a product of technology, when infact it could be defined as the attainment of an equilibrium of the collective emotional and psychological well-being of a society. It is proposed that some stoneage indigenous cultures reached the peak of civilized existence because there was not a single case of mental disease, psychosis and depression amongst their population.
If JZ had focused on primitivism being a return to certain values, regardless of the technology, he would have attracted many more, though he would have been competing with the many zen groups also.
If you give a machine gun to a nazi or to a zen pacifist, its not the machinegun that must be removed, but the nazi values.