The Contrarian-Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s pursuit of power (Max Chafkin):

Thiel is sometimes portrayed as the tech industry’s token conservative – a view that wildly understates his influence. More than any other Silicon Valley investor or entrepreneur – more so even than Jeff Bezos, or Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, or Zuckerberg himself – he had been responsible for creating the ideology that has come to define Silicon Valley: that technological progress should be pursued relentlessly – with little, if any, regard for potential costs or dangers to society.

What scourge of decrepitude, chronic insecurity, personal incapacity or misshapen & closeted weirdness & existential error compels some men (& it is almost singularly men) to become so transfixed & titillated by technological totalitarianism? Clearly lacking, damaged & inadequate, the freaks seem to substitute there own impairment with technological endowment – foisting it onto the rest of us along the way with the incipience of a fervent rapist.
Not that tyrannical technological fetishism is Peter Thiel’s only major flaw – the gimp is replete with sores & sub-humanities galore, & he is genuinely one of the most unpleasant, twisted & dangerous douches sliming the universe.

Zuckerberg’s critics saw Thiel’s influence on the company as more profound – and more pernicious. He was, in this view, the puppet master: pushing a younger, ideologically uncertain founder towards an alliance with an extremist-wing of the Republican Party.

Palantir, his second company, popularised the concept of data mining after 9/11 and paved the way for what critics of the technology industry call surveillance capitalism. More recently, it became a key player in the Trump administration’s immigration and defence projects. The company is worth $50 billion, Thiel controls it and is the biggest shareholder.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/02/seeing-stones-pandemic-reveals-palantirs-troubling-reach-in-europe

How could a bookish, gay immigrant from the most Liberal part of California, who’d gotten rich in the world’s most globalised industry, who seems so profoundly committed to the promise of a better future, come to support a reactionary would-be authoritarian?

Peter’s not a Nazi,” – “Nazi curious, maybe

Startups and founders lean towards a more dictatorial side, “ – “it is more tyrant than mob because it should be.” – Peter Thiel

We’re at a fascinating juncture: the nature of government is about to change at a very fundamental level.” – Peter Thiel

I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” – Peter Thiel

While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better,” – Peter Thiel

Thiel didn’t want to take away women’s right to vote – instead, he wanted to find away around democracy, which was incompatible with freedom,” – George Packer

The state can successfully push science; there is no sense denying it,” “I am not aware of a single political leader in the U.S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research – or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for engineering projects.” – Peter Thiel

a more dictatorial side” – Peter Thiel

Does this shit unsettle you? Does it bother you that such a freak is accepted/tolerated & active in our political & social systems? Not in a nut house, not in jail, not in a pine box, but scraping your data, winning corrupt contracts with unscrupulous governments & fudging it at the Grotto.

When Fortune gathered the PayPal Mafia for a Godfather-themed photo shoot-with Thiel styled to resemble Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone-Musk skipped the shoot, citing a prior commitment. “Peter’s philosophy is pretty odd,” “It’s not normal. He’s a contrarian from an investing standpoint and thinks a lot about the singularity. I’m much less excited about that. I’m pro-human.” – Elon Musk

sick & wrong

A political framework that operates outside the checks and balances of representative democracy as described in high school textbooks” – to deal with terrorism. “Instead of the United Nations,” he wrote “we should consider Eschelon, the secret coordination of the world’s intelligence services, as the decisive path to a truly global Pax Americana.”
There’s all this information about people and we want to know it
Extrajudicial and extralegal methods” as Chafkin defines it. The John Yoo, Dick Cheney, Alan Dershowitz death spiral.
Palantir said nothing improper had occurred but ultimately paid a $10 million settlement
Another settlement then? The offender, with profits to burn from scores of corrupt contracts & asset stripping riches simply doles the tolls & continues right on offending.

Heh. Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner, the gargoyle fuck-up celebrity transvestite (now a Republican runner & a Fox News host), openly supported Trump, with Trump happily accepting his endorsement.
After Trump’s single term in office, Thiel went on to finance Jenner who ran for as a Republican for the governor of California.
The spectre of Roy Cohn, for so many reasons, lingers here in the air like a shroud of shit.
The lies, super sanctimony & conspiracy with any & all that advantage their aims is the message.
Behind the nonsense, its all just plutocracy, maximum exploitation & immunity from consequences, with whatever sick quirk of kink the individual cares to exercise fully tolerated, no matter the politcial ideology or campaign policies.

the British angle – Dominic Cummings – another tech fetishist & human fuck-up.

Thiel had an appalling childhood – “ elite whites-only English prep school in Johannesburg, followed by two years at Deutsche Grundschule – the public German language school – in Swakopmund.” Peter’s father, Klaus, worked for the apartheid regime that was attempting to “create a clandestine nuclear weapons program.”
Nice.
This involved mining uranium in Africa using “forced labor operations” in which “White managers, like the Thiels,” oversaw workers “dying like flies”.
So Peter comes from good stock eh?
He was bullied at school & did not socialise well or make friends easily.
As one fellow student observed – “ I can’t remember him laughing. I never saw him smile. You could tell there was something … a nice way of saying it would be structured – about his family.

& the worst of them will seek power, so that they may compensate for their shortcomings & inflict a perceived retribution & distorted parallax on the larger populace.
I am tired of this societal flaw – & the misery & waste it secures.
Fucked up people dong fucked up stuff in a fucked up system that we need to relinquish.

After the election, Thiel was feted by Trump’s inner circle and given an office in Trump Tower, along with the altitude to install his allies in the new administration.”

Thiel gets into trouble for his written comments on rape, equating “rape” with “seduction” with the kind of warped casuistry one might anticipate from such a knave & bent.

the Thiel-Zuckerberg love bond is a distressing calamity, & the world is massively worse for wear thanks to this odious cross-contaminant. Each provide the other with counter-spectrum credibility, & once again, the elision or greying of intentions or alignment. drench the rat-poison in some Sheryl Sandberg sweetener with a squirting of Bruce Jenner trash-culture & prosthetic progressionism & it’s as muddied as one of Peter’s louche parties.

Mark Zuckerberg, the ultimate Thiel acolyte, would take this to the extreme, styling himself as the Roman emperor Augustus. He adopted an Augustan haircut and even used the ancient Roman war slogan – “Carthage depend west” (“Carthage must be destroyed”) – to pump up his employees to battle with Google

About those parties. Thiel’s “weakness for libertines” and gay parties at his “Grotto” residence, where waiters in “assless chaps” serve guests god knows what. “Allegations of cocaine use” … oh really? Is that a surprise? familiar guests depict dissolute “ragers” – with “drugs and sex out in the open” & bartenders in asseless chaps (Roger “Pervert” Stone) whilst Thiel is thronged by clusters of “attractive young men” before “disappearing into some back room”, presumably for something that is too “taboo” for the public sex, drugs & assless chaps that are going on in the open.
Thiel was “transgressive and esoteric” – who’s malady of “idiosyncratic interests and vanities” & fetish for violating norms & laws along with his open stroking of his nihilism complex paints an extremely troubling picture.

“transgressive & esoteric” + pro rape + vulnerable, isolated teenage boys “jockeying” for the older patrons favour + asslesschaps & a “weakness for libertines” & a fetishistic disreguard for the law who openly espouses “extrajudicial and extralegal methods” = ?

On top of that you have to include his habit of surrounding himself with vulnerable young boys through his “philanthropy” youth startup & “anti education” efforts. That includes the likes of his “20 Under 20” program that would be strictly targeted at teenagers.
They were -nearly all of them – boys, and, almost to a person, they shared Thiel’s social awkwardness.
The boys had the “opportunity to emulate their sponsor”.
The boys, selected by Peter, were generally between 16 & 18, & are often referred to as “handsome”.
They would stay in their own four-boy dorms, but would join Thiel for “networking events” at Thiel’s house (they were on their own in the beginning “Here’s a house, do your thing” according to one “pupil” who applied when he was just 14.)
These sounded promising, but they were often desperate affairs with dozens of young people jockeying for a few minutes with the boss.

Thiel was working on an industrial scale, grooming young, ambitious, like-minded people -“
through The Thiel Fellowship, The Thiel Foundation Summit, private parties at his residence & the 20 Under 20 program, as well as various other “get togethers”, the steady flow of “socially awkward” & vulnerable young boys could compete for their patrons purse strings & other industry favouritism & career opportunities.
What a set of circumstances? What are the odds? What do you think???

Like Zuckerberg, Thiel was ruthlessly competitive and awkward in social situations. They’d been close – Thiel had been Zuckerberg’s mentor and his patron, the first outsider investor in his company – “

The UK government under the Conservative Party has opened the blast hole to Palintir (Dominic Cummings was their plant on the inside), with Thiel taking major private contracts from the treasonous regime to carry out border security, customs processing & health & Covid related data tracking. Post Brexit fallout has been a major profit for this keen vulture capitalist & data rapist.
“Take back control” actually means diminish control, handing it out to a dangerous, foreign, immensely parasitic & predatory arch-leech like Thiel, all on a current of tax payers money.
These are criminal acts & criminal entities.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/21/palantir-concerns-over-data-firm-poised-to-be-operating-system-of-nhs

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/uk-government-using-confidential-patient-data-in-coronavirus-response

grope my palms & play my ploy – Trump with his “Shadow President” …… pure fuckin’ evil.

The Contrarian is an extremely disturbing book.
It also raises the alarm on this major menace & the willingness of corrupt governments & institutions to conspire & collude with such a malicious operator, allowing them exploitative access to their populace in a privatized capacity, shrouded in secrecy & surreptition.
No surprise that Thiel was also very much involved in the Cambridge Analytica “scandal”.
The fact that a man like this can operate, with legitimacy even, clarifies the serious trouble we are in.
How in the fuck can somebody this bad be allowed to operate?
Thiel likes to stay out of the press as much as possible bar very specific scenarios & from assuredly sympathetic sources as he is up to such bad, bad shit & works better in the dark.
This man is a threat & an opponent to all of us.
The Contrarian is an exceptional investigation into this utter psycho & sociopath.
Inform yourselves & take defensive action with extreme prejudice.

on the pay role – the disgraced Alexander Nix, former CEO of the notorious Cambridge Analytica, another denizen of Peter’s Grotto.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Max Chafkin, 2021, Bloomsbury, 336 pages