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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow the roots of the 'PayPal mafia' extend to apartheid South Africa
The Guardian writer puts two of today's billionaire NAZIs pol-watchers into context:
How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa
Elon Musk grew up with the privileges of a stratified racial order and Peter Thiel lived in a city that venerated Hitler
by Chris McGreal
The Guardian, January 26, 2025
Excerpt...
They include Peter Thiel, the German-born billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal cofounder, who was educated in a southern African city in the 1970s where Hitler was still openly venerated. Thiel, a major donor to Trump’s campaign, has been critical of welfare programs and women being permitted to vote as undermining capitalism. A 2021 biography of Thiel, called The Contrarian, alleged that as a student at Stanford he defended apartheid as “economically sound”.
David Sacks, formerly PayPal’s chief operating officer and now a leading fundraiser for Trump, was born in Cape Town and grew up within the South African diaspora after his family moved to the US when he was young. A fourth member of the mafia, Roelof Botha, the grandson of the apartheid regime’s last foreign minister, Pik Botha, and former PayPal CFO, has kept a lower political profile but remains close to Musk.
Among them, Musk stands out for his ownership of X, which is increasingly a platform for far-right views, and his proximity to Trump, who has nominated Musk to head a “department of government efficiency” to slash and burn its way through the federal bureaucracy.
Snip...
The week before the inauguration, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, described white South Africans as the “most racist people on earth”, questioned their involvement in US politics and said Musk was a malign influence who should go back to the country of his birth.
Snip...
The South Africa into which Musk was born in 1971, and to which Thiel moved as a child from Germany, was led by a prime minister, John Vorster, who had been a general in a fascist militia three decades earlier that allied itself with Hitler.
Continues...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa
They live. They are not woke. And they use their wealth to turn America into Amerika.
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How the roots of the 'PayPal mafia' extend to apartheid South Africa (Original Post)
Kid Berwyn
Jan 28
OP
Thank you! Bookmarked. Have you seen this one on their push for Global Race War?
Kid Berwyn
Jan 28
#2
usonian
(15,920 posts)1. The shadow of apartheid South Africa in America.
Summary:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219696928
Source:
https://archive.is/Y1Uz9
FT, paywalled but archived.
Kid Berwyn
(19,160 posts)2. Thank you! Bookmarked. Have you seen this one on their push for Global Race War?
Elon Musk and Peter Thiel: The billionaires fomenting a global race war
The tech bros' strategy to protect their wealth is to direct fear and hostility towards 'the Other' - migrants, Muslims, the 'woke'
by Joe Gill
Middle East Eye, 9 January 2025
Excerpt...
In other interviews, Thiel has focused on the biblical prophecy of apocalypse that he feels could come to pass as a result of the destructive technology unleashed since Hiroshima in 1945.
Nuclear proliferation is something of a close family interest. Thiel’s father was involved in the clandestine drive of apartheid South Africa to acquire nuclear-grade uranium in Namibia.
What he doesn’t mention is that his firm’s own technology is bringing that apocalypse ever closer. Palantir, a defence tech firm, is a major investor and creator of AI technologies. For over a decade it has received major contracts from across the US government - including the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI.
As a co-founder of PayPal, early investor in Facebook and founder of Palantir, Thiel is also currently taking over the UK’s NHS data under a £480m (approximately $600m) UK government contract signed in 2023. His views of public healthcare are clear: "Highways create traffic jams, welfare creates poverty, schools make people dumb and the NHS makes people sick," he said.
Palantir technologies are deployed to both US-backed wars in Gaza and Ukraine. As Responsible Statecraft reported last year, "Palantir has tested in real time its new Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) on the Ukrainian war front. It has been described as ‘an intelligence and decision-making system that can analyze enemy targets and propose battle plans.’ Other Palantir security technologies include AI for predictive policing and surveillance."
Continues...
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/elon-musk-and-peter-thiel-south-africa-raised-billionaires-fomenting-global-race-war
The tech bros' strategy to protect their wealth is to direct fear and hostility towards 'the Other' - migrants, Muslims, the 'woke'
by Joe Gill
Middle East Eye, 9 January 2025
Excerpt...
In other interviews, Thiel has focused on the biblical prophecy of apocalypse that he feels could come to pass as a result of the destructive technology unleashed since Hiroshima in 1945.
Nuclear proliferation is something of a close family interest. Thiel’s father was involved in the clandestine drive of apartheid South Africa to acquire nuclear-grade uranium in Namibia.
What he doesn’t mention is that his firm’s own technology is bringing that apocalypse ever closer. Palantir, a defence tech firm, is a major investor and creator of AI technologies. For over a decade it has received major contracts from across the US government - including the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI.
As a co-founder of PayPal, early investor in Facebook and founder of Palantir, Thiel is also currently taking over the UK’s NHS data under a £480m (approximately $600m) UK government contract signed in 2023. His views of public healthcare are clear: "Highways create traffic jams, welfare creates poverty, schools make people dumb and the NHS makes people sick," he said.
Palantir technologies are deployed to both US-backed wars in Gaza and Ukraine. As Responsible Statecraft reported last year, "Palantir has tested in real time its new Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) on the Ukrainian war front. It has been described as ‘an intelligence and decision-making system that can analyze enemy targets and propose battle plans.’ Other Palantir security technologies include AI for predictive policing and surveillance."
Continues...
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/elon-musk-and-peter-thiel-south-africa-raised-billionaires-fomenting-global-race-war
usonian
(15,920 posts)3. What gets into people? This is all so sick.
I read a bunch by David Loy on how the emptiness people feel inside leads them to artificial means of meaning, when it's there to be had by self-realization. Too much and ever enough.
Money and power and so on are just empty calories to them. Just make them hungrier.
I am content via my Buddhist practice.
Zuck is a fake Buddhist.
But the damage these people do in order to fill that emptiness is horrific.