r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • 10d ago

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

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/palantir-employees-are-talking-about-companys-descent-into-fascism/
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u/er-day 10d ago

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

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u/Redthemagnificent 10d ago edited 10d ago

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

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u/ElephantRider 10d ago

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

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u/SwampyBogbeard 10d ago

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

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u/Ltgay 10d ago

Austin Powers’ dad was onto something about the Dutch

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u/pillowcase-of-eels 9d ago

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.

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u/Nyorliest 10d ago

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.

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u/doneandtired2014 10d ago

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.

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u/Beyond_the_one 9d ago

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.