Peter Thiel’s family infamously fled Germany at the end of WWII to apartheid South Africa, where he could be raised in an ex-pat Nazi community. That’s a big part of why his Palantir company is so obviously and closely aligned with failed Nazi total surveillance objectives, as it reflects a continuation of thought.
Let me be more clear here for those unfamiliar with the Thiel doctrine behind Palantir.
He glorifies monopolistic power and the denigration of competition, framing business in terms of domination rather than collaboration.
He makes statements like “Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival: monopoly profits”, which use language reminiscent of “struggle” rhetoric (kampf) symbolic of fascist ideologies.
He emphasizes domination by an elite few who succeed while others fail, with little concern for those who don’t “escape competition” as if rationalizing the “Arbeit macht frei” of Auschwitz
He focuses on selfish, secretive, conspiratorial thinking, such as when he spilled ink that “The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world”
He is apparently very dismissive of democratic or inclusive systems in favor of concentrated power.
All in all, Thiel exhibits a life filled with language of “struggle,” “monopoly,” “secrets,” and “conspiracies” that intentionally invokes totalitarian concepts, framing business success as belonging only to those who achieve dominance over others.
It all apparently comes from Thiel’s unapologetic social Darwinist upbringing in fascist enclaves outside of Germany. And we have zero evidence he has ever in any meaningful way tried to stop or condemn Nazism.
We even have a case where Palantir was briefly brought into modern Germany… only to be found working with modern day Nazis to attack politicians.
Unidentified police officers in Hesse accessed the contact details of several politicians and prominent immigrants from official records and shared them with the neo-Nazi group, according to local reports.
For other German families who stayed and went through occupation after the fall of Nazism, it’s a very different story. They too became “mysteriously” wealthy after genocide yet, unlike the Thiel family efforts to simply relocate and then return as before, the details of Nazi roots were hidden by those who remained in Germany.
…siblings Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten own more than 40% of BMW and are worth about $38 billion [thanks to their family operating] …battery factories in Berlin, where, thousands of forced slave laborers were used, including female slave laborers from concentration camps, you learn nothing about [this] history.
A Spiegel article now highlights 80% admit wealth came from crimes against humanity, while 80% also think it must not have been their own Nazi family to blame.
Only 20 percent “strongly disagree” with the idea that the prosperity of many families is still based on crimes committed during National Socialism. Yet almost 80 percent “strongly disagree” with the notion that their own family’s prosperity can be traced to such crimes.
It seems as though there is an unspoken agreement that dealing with the Nazi period can be outsourced to the memorial sites and museums and that families themselves are absolved from doing so in all but the most drastic cases.
The whole Spiegel article is worth a read, not least of all because Spiegel is German for “mirror”.
Technology always intersects with human rights, whether the usual technologist recognizes it or not. An abolitionist network in the 1800s defied unjust laws to free enslaved people, and today technologists are drawing explicit parallels to this tradition. We’re witnessing an evolution toward a modern Digital Underground Railroad as citizens resist what they see as Trump’s systematic human rights violations.
Imagine being stopped, having rifles pointed at your head, being harassed or detained simply because a computer system tagged you as suspicious based on the color of your hat at dawn or the car you drove.
Consider the example of Quantrill’s Raiders, who were masked armed men without uniforms similar to the “enforcers” showing up in communities today. They terrorized America in the 1860s through brutal mob acts like the Lawrence Massacre. Critics rightly compare immigration enforcement raids of Trump to these historical patterns of militant violence adjacent to state-sanctioned oppression based on race.
William Clarke’s painting of the 1863 Quantrill “offensive defense” raid on Lawrence, Kansas that targeted innocent civilians. Some called it warfare tactics to intimidate and harm anti-slavery/abolitionist Jayhawkers. Source: LJworld
The parallels connect past and present systems, exploited by white supremacist groups for them to operate outside judicial oversight, which leaves technologists at a crucial fork in the road that has been seen before.
I’m not even going to explain why President “America First” Wilson similarly sent federal troops in 1919 to open fire on Black farm workers in Arkansas, murdering hundreds after they organized in a Church to discuss fair wages. And that’s to say nothing of airplanes used in 1921 to firebomb Black neighborhoods in Oklahoma, while firefighters and police stood by doing nothing. Americans should know these past events well already, or at least be able to recognize the symbolism of the X within KKK and Nazi history.
The KKK in 1921 used bi-planes to firebomb Tulsa, OK. They also dropped racist propaganda leaflets across America. The swastika was their symbol, and the X.
While examining historical parallels and wondering where the Quantrill Raids go next, read Confederate General McCulloch complaints about the escalating civilian mistreatment by armed white supremacist mobs that expanded even under his militant command attempting to restrain them:
Civilians were accosted, homes were broken into, church steeples were shot up, and a Confederate recruiting officer, Major George N. Butts, was found shot to death on the side of a road. “They regard the life of a man less than you would that of a sheep-killing dog,” said McCulloch.
These descriptions invite reflection on modern law enforcement approaches, especially how anti-immigrant militant leaders planning systemic armed actions against American communities, may be unable to prevent their own troops devolving into total chaos, which is what the legendary patriot John Brown had warned until he was hanged for taking a stand against the violence.
John Brown grew tired of torture and murder of abolitionists and called for armed defense against expansion of slavery. Curry’s “Tragic Prelude” impressive mural can be seen in the Kansas State Capitol celebrating his moral conviction to defend Americans against tyranny in the mid-1800s.
Remember the symbolism of the X? Historical context gives perspective to the recent action against GlobalX Air, where technologists identifying with Anonymous accessed flight manifests and records of an ICE charter airline.
GlobalX airline, a Miami-based company of Canadians that shows a “team” page of only white people all the way to the board of directors. Many suspect Elon Musk is involved as his Canadian Grandfather also promoted the “X” as a symbol of “Technocracy”, a localized form of Nazism, before he relocated in 1950 to South Africa to promote apartheid as Nazism there instead.
Anonymous said their “data liberation” operation targeted specific flights that were central to ongoing litigation, including deportation flights that allegedly were rushed to depart. Why were flights in a rush? The Trump regime saw this as their way to “hack” the courts, exploit a loophole to undermine lawyers who were in process of defending national security.
A digital version of the famous General Tubman thus justified entry into the GlobalX systems as simply “enforcing a judge’s order,” positioning the patriotic act as upholding American law rather than violating it. “Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge’s order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans,” read the message on GlobalX’s updated website.
A U.S. judge had indeed ordered a report of flight manifests and records. And suddenly the Trump regime decided it was no longer able to be in a rush. The Anonymous disclosure, therefore serving that judge in a more timely fashion, provides records of GlobalX from January through May. It delivers clear evidence of systematic removal of many innocent people from American soil; indiscriminate Quantrill-like raids by plain-clothed masked militants targeting non-white communities for racist incarceration or death.
Making America Grotesque Again
The immigration enforcement under the current administration has been characterized by critics as operating with questionable legal authority, particularly when deportations proceed despite pending legal challenges. This creates a complex ethical terrain where some view digital intervention to serve the law as a necessary response to what they perceive as systematic circumvention of legal processes.
We must ask: Who here really operates outside the law?
The GlobalX Air files accessed do indeed document flights central to a Supreme Court case involving Venezuelan asylum seekers who were reportedly removed from the country in direct and intentional opposition to the law. The timing of such a “hack” by the Trump regime brings profound questions about their relationship to enforcement actions designed to exploit vulnerabilities in judicial oversight.
Conducting a Digital Freedom Railroad
In comparison, an emerging pattern of digital resistance to Trump draws directly from American traditions of civil action to enhance law and order and restore moral foundations. Those who engage in these actions rightfully invoke historical figures like General Tubman because they fit within a lineage of Americans who aligned defense of law and order in America to its underlying documented principles (e.g. Constitution).
The digital actions countering unlawful deportations are information exposure rather than system interruption, unlike the Trump regime’s aggressive and destructive actions. Like whistleblowers, they direct information to sunlight, creating accountability channels outside compromised structures.
Constitutional Disregard is a Trump Family Tradition
When executive actions appear to intentionally and cruelly “hack” judicial review, fundamental constitutional questions emerge. The intervention in GlobalX Air systems to deliver justice presents a complex case study in the tensions between executive enforcement power, judicial authority, and citizen intervention.
Throughout American history, from abolitionism to civil rights movements, significant moral progress has often begun with acts of civil action to serve the greater meaning of law and order. Today’s digital actions represent the latest chapter in this ongoing negotiation between law, justice, and resistance.
As we evaluate these events, we confront profound questions about democratic processes: When formal systems of checks and balances are under attack by white supremacist groups aiming to imbalance power for selfish gains, what responsibilities do citizens have? At what point does resistance to attacks on America become not just justified but necessary to restore the balance of power and prevent tyranny?
What Would LaGuardia Do?
Speaking of airlines and airports, let’s take a moment to think about LaGuardia, mayor of New York during the rise of fascism in Europe. He was well-known as a warrior of direct and uncompromising stance against authoritarianism. He understood that certain moments in history require clear moral language rather than cautious equivocation. In 1937, for example, he directly called out fascism by name and denounced dictators like Hitler and Mussolini when many American politicians were still hesitant to do so. This wasn’t just a foreign concern, but more importantly a domestic one where America First campaigns were correctly ruled an act of sedition.
The kind of illustration that still should be required in American school textbooks
We’re at a similar inflection point regarding immigration enforcement and civil liberties. When LaGuardia saw the early signs of authoritarianism, he recognized the urgent need to speak plainly about the threats he perceived, rather than softening his language out of political convenience.
Acts of resistance against extrajudicial deportations are within this tradition of urgent moral action. The Underground Railroad and abolitionists, from John Brown to General Tubman, inform Americans how direct action can effect change where formal systems have been compromised and redirected towards harm of vulnerable populations.
Saturday’s Russian-looking “vote” of SpaceX employees to incorporate Starbase, Texas as a public government might seem like a grand victory for the discredited and disliked Elon Musk. With 212 votes for and only 6 against, the company town’s creation appears to cement SpaceX’s destruction of local environmental regulations for their rocket launch facility. The company bought 90% of the local real estate, and all the “elected” officials are current or former SpaceX employees appointed by the CEO.
But in the cavalier rush to consolidate power and ignore communities, SpaceX may have unwittingly introduced vulnerabilities that could eventually undermine their desire for absolute unrepresentative control.
By transforming their private facility into a public municipality, they’ve opened new avenues for change through Texas municipal law—potentially repeating the pattern that has led to the downfall of every single American company town in history.
Look at the prior art to understand the collapse or transformation beyond a controlling company’s original vision of private profit leading to public control.
Distributed Power Still Finds a Way: The Pullman Strike of 1894 demonstrated how company towns can backfire spectacularly. When George Pullman cruelly cut wages and refused to lower rents in his model town, company residents revolted in what became one of America’s most significant public rights protests. A company town on strike eventually involved 250,000 people across 27 states only suppressed with federal military intervention.
Monarchs Can’t See What’s Coming Until Late: Company towns face a fundamental contradiction—paternalistic control cannot coexist indefinitely with democratic municipal governance. As Starbase must now hold public elections, maintain public records, and follow Texas municipal law, opportunities for democratic participation emerge that weren’t available in a purely private corporate setting.
Adjacent Development Means Power Will Recenter: As was seen in historic company towns, development in surrounding areas inherently creates competing economic and political power that will outperform SpaceX myopic tyranny. Texas law specifically provides multiple pathways for strategic land acquisition and development adjacent to municipalities, especially undemocratic ones.
Economic Prosperity Undermines Company Control: Over time, successful towns inevitably attract other businesses and residents with better interests. Should Starbase genuinely grow into a “world-class place to live” that SpaceX PR claims, that growth necessarily makes SpaceX’s narrow local corporate goals look worse and worse, holding back the better more “worldly” residents.
With these historic lessons in mind it seems only appropriate to point out the incorporation plan exposes specific vulnerabilities:
Public Records and Transparency Requirements: As a municipality, Starbase must now comply with Texas open records laws, making previously private corporate decisions subject to public scrutiny.
Municipal Utility District Opportunities: Texas law allows for the creation of Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs) that could serve as simple beachheads for labor-friendly development surrounding and pushing hard into Starbase.
Election Cycles: While SpaceX employees currently stacked the voter rolls like they hate democracy, municipal elections occur regularly and operate under different rules than corporate governance, potentially allowing organized groups to gain representation without detection.
Legal Challenges Through Public Processes: Municipalities must follow procedural requirements that can be challenged through legal means, unlike private corporate decisions.
Let’s face it, Elon Musk keeps running anti-patterns. He clearly thinks Hitler should have won WWII. And now he’s showing how a push into company towns also could repeat the wrong side of history.
Every major company town in American history—from Pullman to Hershey to coal mining communities—eventually faced a reckoning with people exposing the patently unfair and soul crushing designs. The American government protection of workers’ rights to unionize spelled the end of purely company-controlled towns, which surely has to do why Musk thinks he will replay the past to prove a different result. Even Hershey, considered one of the most benevolent company towns, faced a significant strike for rights in 1937.
SpaceX’s corporate control currently seems absolute and tyrannical in mind, but the legal structure of Texas municipalities expands their target surface with pathways for change that wouldn’t have existed without incorporation. The company may have unwittingly traded short-term benefits (streamlined approvals for environmental destruction, closure authority to deny local children access to beaches) for long-term vulnerabilities inherent to public governance structures.
For now, Starbase represents a bold experiment in Elon Musk pushing fascism into American government – but if history is any guide, its long-term fate may be a lesson we have learned repeatedly already.
European EV sales are really taking off with booming sales.
BYD’s sales grew 94 percent to 4,436, Polestar was up 84 percent to 2,405, and newcomer XPeng logged 1,034 sales, representing an increase of 259 percent from February 2024. The best-performing brand in terms of EV sales, however, was VW, whose registrations boomed 180 percent to 19,600. The German brand’s ID.4 was the third-best-selling EV… and VW,’s ID.7 and ID.3 were in fifth and sixth spot, separated from the ID.4 by Renault’s Car of the Year-winning 5.
Meanwhile, it’s really hard not to notice how Tesla campaigns to boost a German political party (AfD) affiliated with Nazism had a direct impact on the European market.
Tesla’s sales are diving headfirst into the red. In France, deliveries were down 59.4 percent compared to April last year, with just 863 vehicles sold. Denmark saw a 67.2 percent decrease, bringing the monthly total there to only 180 cars. But, as reported by Reuters, Sweden takes the prize for most dramatic plunge: sales dropped 80.7 percent, from 1,052 units last April to just 208 this year.
Europeans, still picking shrapnel from their grandparents’ photo albums, are teaching Tesla a sales collapse lesson that makes the Hindenburg disaster look like a successful landing.
Do you know who completely distances themselves from Nazism? Billionaire Germans.
…siblings Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten own more than 40% of BMW and are worth about $38 billion [thanks to their family operating] …battery factories in Berlin, where, thousands of forced slave laborers were used, including female slave laborers from concentration camps, you learn nothing about [this] history.
They hide their Nazism so they can keep all the money from it. Which goes to show how stupid Tesla was to attempt to out-Nazi the billionaires behind German brands born out of Nazism.
The Tesla Factory Near Berlin, Germany
Buying a Tesla in Europe today is about as socially acceptable as an AfD politician goose-stepping in a SS uniform through Anne Frank’s house. Who wants that? Or more to the point, what would Knut Lier Hanson do with a Tesla today?
Swasticars: Remote-controlled explosive devices stockpiled by Musk for deployment into major cities around the world.
Nazi children who grew up in Germany under Allied occupation know better than to build fleets of Swasticars.
Source: “Parked Teslas Keep Catching on Fire Randomly, And There’s No Recall In Sight. A roundup of every spontaneous Tesla fire shows the company’s response is stuck on Autopilot.” The Drive, June 2019
Musk, meanwhile, was raised in apartheid South Africa where segregation wasn’t a shameful historical footnote but a lifestyle choice—like the family had rooted for Nazism, thought it delightful even after defeat, and decided to emigrate to its last remaining franchise location.
They amassed wealth that would later fuel Musk’s political ambitions such as big AfD campaigns. In a November 2024 interview, his father Errol Musk claimed that Elon’s maternal grandparents “support Hitler and all that sort of stuff” and were “part of the Nazi, the German party in Canada” before moving to South Africa because they supported the apartheid regime. As one reporter described, the Musk family lived “what can only be described as a neocolonial life” in post-colonial Africa with servants and extensive property holdings including emerald mine investments that generated significant wealth through exploitative labor practices. This heavily curated avoidance of Allied victory and occupation shaped his worldview, clearly influencing his business practices and political positions as if Hitler didn’t commit suicide.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
