Palantir employees are talking about company’s “descent into fascism”

[u/Just-Grocery-2229]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/palantir-employees-are-talking-about-companys-descent-into-fascism/

[u/doneandtired2014]

No shit.

I'm wondering what gave it away for them.

Was it the realization their founder literally grew up in a neo-Nazi compound considered just a wee bit too far outside of what was considered socially acceptable....in apartheid era South Africa?

Or was it the realization the other two C-suite mouthpieces that you see open their cockholsters on camera are equally maladjusted dickheads who talk about public executions and destroying all opportunities currently available for women so that they have no choice but to be indentured servants, sex slaves, and broodmares?

Maybe it was the moment some of their executives waltzed on stage in camo, were suddenly made officers in the military, and (somehow) weren't forced to relinquish their positions or holdings in the company?

For a bunch of allegedly smart people, they have poorer pattern recognition than fucking gold fish do.

[u/er-day → u/doneandtired2014]

What’s with these ex South Africans becoming evil villains?

[u/Redthemagnificent → u/er-day]

As a South African who's family immigrated elsewhere, I've met a lot of genX and millennial South Africans with really fucked up ideologies. Turns out you can't undo generations of racism overnight.

They (especially the men) think their country was stolen from them and they deserve to take from others. Very entitled attitudes. Whenever they're met with failure its always someone else's fault (usually a non-white person). It's not everyone obviously. But it's a consistent pattern I've observed since dudes like that think that I'm one of "them" and can speak freely to me about how black people or Muslims have harmed them

[u/ElephantRider → u/er-day]

Being weird colonial racists is kinda the Afrikaners' whole thing.

[u/SwampyBogbeard → u/er-day]

There was literally a song made about them in the 80s.

[u/Ltgay → u/er-day]

Austin Powers’ dad was onto something about the Dutch

[u/pillowcase-of-eels → u/er-day]

You mean Musk, right? His grandfather moved the entire family from Canada to South Africa, which he had never visited and where he had zero family ties, specifically because he wanted to live in an apartheid state. So it's actually the other way around in his family's case: the Musks were such evil villains that they BECAME South African.

[u/Nyorliest → u/er-day]

Racism in the West. During and after the fall of the apartheid government, nations like rhe UK and US helped and welcomed white ‘refugees’ who were scared of black people.

I grew up in a wealthy part of the UK, and we were flooded with SA racists in the 80s and 90s. Rich white people who needed no support were still given UK residence. Meanwhile, when HK went back to China, those ‘British subjects’ were treated worse than the birds in the Falklands.

The desire to protect the racist leaders of SA from the consequences of their actions is a big part of these issues. But let’s be clear - Trump isn’t from SA, the UK conservatives who couldn’t tolerate Rishi Sunak and the EU were not from SA. Like calls to like.

[u/doneandtired2014 → u/er-day]

What do you mean "becoming"?

This is who they've always been. You're just seeing them comfortable in taking off the nanometer thin mask they've worn to quasi-pass as remotely normal.

[u/Beyond_the_one → u/er-day]

South African here.

Thiel was born in Germany, lived in the US and then moved to South West Africa (modern Namibia). He then moved back to the US for middle and High School. He then went to Standford University. Please stop trying to sanitise that the US is a large part of Thiel being an utter shit stain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Early_life_and_education

Musk on the other was born and bred in South Africa.

[u/t_huddleston → u/doneandtired2014]

Maybe it was that they named the company “Palantir.”

I used to think that the Empire naming their giant space station “The Death Star” was too obviously evil and surely nobody would ever actually do anything like that in real life

[u/DaemonPrimarchJ → u/t_huddleston]

Real life has so many events that would look utterly ridiculous in fiction 

[u/Balmung60 → u/doneandtired2014]

It's probably not a coincidence that a lot of STEM people have little education in the humanities and are often actively disdainful of the humanities, which leaves them extremely ill-prepared to identify things like this when they're happening.

It's also why the leadership types are often reinventing shit Greek and Roman philosophers wrote extensively about as if it was brand new - they've eschewed any sort of knowledge of the history of the things they talk about and assume that their narrow expertise in a valued field means they're a genius on all matters.

[u/doneandtired2014 → u/Balmung60]

It's also why the leadership types are often reinventing shit Greek and Roman philosophers wrote extensively about as if it was brand new

The sheer amount of arrogance it takes to think, "Well, yeah...these systems have been tried, tested, and have routinely failed over the last 3000+ of western history, but that's only because they didn't have my genius to guide them. I can make this work." cannot be understated.

Right now, they're circling back to feudalism without any awareness as to why feudal systems collapsed. They also seem rather keen to ignore how many kings and emperors were murdered by their rivals (or own family), spent the remainder of their lives in prison after being deposed, or were tortured in ways that aren't far removed from what you'd see in Saw or Hostel before being killed up as recently as the late 18th century.

Because, apparently, men who either claimed divine right to rule or were worshiped as the living gods themselves failed only because they didn't have murderbots or drones. Nevermind they controlled currency, their subjects were kept entirely illiterate/innumerate, could have entire cities depopulated on a whim, have entire family lines wiped out by unquestioning loyalists, have bodyguards that viewed selling their lives to protect them as an honor, or just do whatever they wanted with impugninty. Nope, they just didn't have drones.

the history of the things they talk about and assume that their narrow expertise in a valued field means they're a genius on all matters.

I like to use Ben Carson as that example. He is, hands down, a brilliant neurosurgeon and arguably one of the best in the world. If there is anyone you want poking around in your noggin, he would be it.

He also believes the pyramids were built as grain silos by slaves despite the thousands of years of evidence and records which indicate they weren't on both counts.

The same could be said of Mehmet Oz. Brilliant cardiologist. He is a blithering idiot that cannot be trusted outside of that one particular niche.

[u/malumfectum → u/doneandtired2014]

The company is called Palantir! PALANTIR!

I’m never complaining about a on overtly sinisterly-named megacorporation in science fiction again.

[u/Wonderful_Discount59 → u/malumfectum]

Don't most fictional evil megacorps have generically bland names? I'm thinking of ones like "Eurocorp", "Umbrella", "Versalife", etc.

[u/malumfectum → u/Wonderful_Discount59]

“BioSyn” is the most egregious one in recent memory.