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Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Carl Schmitt, the German legal theorist tapped by the Nazi's to justify Germany's slip from democracy to dictatorship. Those theories have been a roadmap for the billionaire ever since.

As a theorist, Schmitt is remembered for two things: his incisive Weimar-era critique of liberalism and his decision to join the Nazi party in the run-up to the Second World War. In 1996, theologian Wolfgang Palaver introduced Thiel to these ideas at a conference. www.wired.com/story/the-re...

Also, some terms we gotta break down before we carry on: Mimetic Rivalry: Violence that results from humans’ fundamental tendency to imitate each other—specifically to mimic each other’s desires. A key concept for Rene Girard, Thiel’s biggest intellectual influence.

Scapegoat Mechanism: The process by which humans find unity—and relief from mimetic rivalry—in ganging up on one target who gets blamed for all the community’s problems. According to Girard, scapegoating has provided less and less cohesion since the time of Christ. Now, let's carry on with Thiel:

Didn't both our south African billionaires (thiel and musk) go to nazi boy's schools in SA before coming to the states? We shouldn't be surprised then.

While Wolfgang Palaver, the theologian who first introduced Thiel to Schmitt's apocalyptic theories, did so in a way to speak against the Nazi jurist's ideas, Thiel took it, well, in another direction. And Thiel's not alone in this belief. www.wired.com/story/the-re...

"[Thiel's] theory of mimetic rivalry—that we tend to compete over the things that other people want—spoke directly to some of the pressures I experienced at Yale. But it was his related theory of the scapegoat—and what it revealed about Christianity—that made me reconsider my faith," JD Vance, 2019

“There are so many cases where he expresses fears and concerns and a need for protection. And if your main thing is seeking protection, you play with fire," Palaver tells us of Thiel. "In the end, you have to decide: Are you really going to be a Christian in a proper sense? Or are you a Schmittian?"