What’s up With All These Billionaires That Have Ties to South Africa?

Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and their fascist billionaire friends have worked for years to destroy democracy, and it's time we all start exposing them.

25 years ago, two white men from apartheid-era South Africa—Elon Musk and Peter Thiel—created PayPal.

Their goal?

Subvert democracy and undermine the U.S. dollar.

They failed.

But over the next few decades, they stayed the course—finding new modes of subversion, landing us where we are today.

With the money from PayPal’s sale, Musk and Thiel went off to start new ventures.

We know Musk’s story—Tesla and SpaceX—both of which wouldn’t exist without government funding.

Thiel's lesser-known story however continues when he invests in someone named Mark Zuckerberg and his new platform, Facebook.

Around the same time, Thiel also founded Palantir Technologies, a data company.

Over the years, he invested in more subversive tech (i.e., crypto) while Palantir enmeshed itself in the U.S. government, selling its surveillance tools and AI weapons to U.S. intelligence agencies and the military.

As Thiel's mentee, Zuckerberg, grew Facebook into a social media monopoly—harvesting data from all of us in the public—Palantir became an ever-present tool for our government's defense efforts.

Coincidence these two companies, influenced by Thiel, have wide-reaching surveillance capabilities?

Today, Palantir is working with ICE to create a mass surveillance and deportation apparatus, and Meta is under investigation for offering to assist China in developing censorship tools for their authoritarian government.

You see, neither one of these individuals has allegiance to any country.

They do however pledge allegiance to a fascist named Curtis Yarvin and the ideology he espouses called the neoreactionary movement (i.e., "Dark Enlightenment"), which aims to dismantle democracy and replace it with authoritarian societies run by the tech elite and enabled by AI and crypto.

This fascist ideology believes freedom and democracy are incompatible, the demise of democracy is inevitable and should be accelerated, and nation-states will be replaced by "network states". In their view, people are not smart enough to govern themselves, thus necessitating CEO-dictators.

All this sounds absurd, but the evidence is well-documented as many of these techno-fascist billionaires have been openly discussing it for years.

This includes Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, and Brian Armstrong among others.

Some are already invested in network states: Prospera and Praxis.

In an essay titled “The Sovereign Network: Crypto’s End Game”, the Thiel-backed Praxis writes, “As local communities dissolve and Nation States stumble, Sovereign Networks will ascend. Soon, Sovereign Networks will be your most important group affiliation, passport, and community.”

The website is disturbing to say the least.

And perhaps most concerning is the connection between Peter Thiel and JD Vance.

Thiel hired Vance at his global investment firm in 2017, then spent a record-breaking $15 million to get Vance elected to the US Senate in 2022.

In 2024, Thiel was a large reason for Vance's selection as Trump's VP.

Vance has openly supported some ideas from the neoreactionary movement.

Namely, in 2021, Vance said that Trump should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant... and replace them with our people”, advice that is identical to Yarvin's RAGE (Retire All Government Employees).

Vance is also connected to the Heritage Foundation, supporting Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the neoreactionary ideology (e.g., Yarvin’s RAGE and Vought’s mass firings, consolidating power under the executive branch).

If anything, neoreactionary involvement has only accelerated the plan.

In fact, the thought leader behind the neoreactionary movement, Yarvin, laid out a playbook for how a CEO-dictator could "reboot" the government.

It involves naming a CEO—not Trump—to run through the government, fire employees, and centralize power.

Sound familiar?

Enter Elon Musk.

“Ten Tesla cybertrucks, painted in camouflage colors with a giant X on each roof, drive noisily through Washington DC. Tires screech. Out jump a couple of dozen young men, dressed in red and black Devil’s Champion armored costumes. After giving Nazi salutes, they grab guns and run to one government departmental after another, calling out slogans like ‘all power to Supreme Leader Skibidi Hitler’”, writes Timothy Snyder.

Though it instead played out through DOGE, the goal was the same: a coup.

Musk and DOGE infiltrated every federal agency, fired tens of thousands of people, and stole our most sensitive data.

Now, Facebook and Instagram are being used by the State Department to find immigrants and political dissidents, and Palantir is supporting ICE and developing a surveillance weapon that has access to all Americans’ data.

With power consolidated in the executive branch, the federal government dismantled, regulations thrown to the wayside, an unfettered domestic law enforcement (ICE) in full force, and a surveillance apparatus being built, it's clear they are establishing the infrastructure for long-lasting authoritarianism and oligarchy.

But what's in it for everyone?

For the neoreactionaries (e.g., Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg): total deregulation of tech and a chance to build their fantasy "network states".

For the Heritage Foundation: transformation from a diverse pluralistic democracy to a white Christian-nationalist state.

For Trump: an escape from prison, along with unlimited power and money.

You can see the corruption in broad daylight. Musk buys deregulation and new contracts; Thiel gets "Freedom Cities"; the Heritage Foundation rewrites our nation's history; Trump avoids jail and cashes in.

They're all in it for different reasons, but they share the common goal to rid of democracy and the rule of law.

Heritage Foundation architect Russell Vought says we are in "post-constitutional times" and Thiel says "democracy and freedom are incompatible".

They don't defend the constitution. They are actively trampling it, and they are not even trying to hide it.

Each of these individuals are threats to democracy.

At this point, it is not far-fetched to call them and their enablers treasonous.

It's long overdue that we seriously consider Article II, Section 4 of the constitution which outlines the process for removing the President, Vice President, and all civil officers from office through impeachment.

If any representative votes against, they should also be considered traitors.

Yes, we don't have the votes today, but getting this on record as early as possible is vital.

One day, this nightmare will be over, and everyone that was complicit in enabling this attempted overthrow of our democracy will be held accountable.

The people will rise, and we will win.

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Join us in the fight on July 17 at the nonviolent nationwide protest by finding an event near you.

We are protesting this regime, its techno-fascist billionaire backers, and their collective desire to be crowned kings.

We also share ways you can fight back online in the meantime here:

How to Fight the Broligarchy

This article was written by R, an anonymous member of 50501 NY. This is not an official statement of the 50501 movement.

Edits

• An earlier version was titled “What’s up With All These South African Billionaires”. A reader pointed out that, although Peter Thiel grew up in South Africa, he is not in fact South African. To correct this error, we updated the title to “What’s up With All These Billionaires That Have Ties to South Africa?”