Peter Thiel Flees to Argentina

Last year, tech fascist guru Curtis Yarvin warned that Trump’s Silicon Valley supporters should prepare to flee the United States in case Democrats retake power. Now, one of Yarvin’s key followers—Palantir co-founder and Antichrist enthusiast Peter Thiel—appears to be heeding his advice.

Thiel has purchased a new mansion in an affluent section of Buenos Aires, according to the New York Post. The billionaire plans an extended stay in Argentina, according to the Buenos Aires Herald, and he met with Argentine President Javier Milei this week.

“Thiel, the 58-year-old founder of online payments processor PayPal and AI company Palantir, is reportedly planning to stay in the country for two months,” reported the Herald on April 23. “He is mostly in a US$12 million house he bought in Barrio Parque, an affluent suburb in Buenos Aires City, local media reported. Thiel and his husband, Matt Danzeisen, saw Milei in Casa Rosada at 2 p.m., together with the country’s Foreign Minister, Pablo Quirno.”

The Herald notes the German-born billionaire’s extremist politics: “The ideology he champions is called the ‘Dark Enlightenment’—a proposed alliance between autocrats and AI accelerationists to manage societies as if they were corporations.”

American tech fascists have rallied in support of Milei, a chainsaw-waving anarcho-capitalist zealot who is known for claiming to communicate with the ghost of a dead dog, as well as for imposing disastrous policies on the country’s economy. Milei claims credit for reducing inflation, but his popularity has dropped to 36% as people struggle to survive.

“[T]he drop in inflation is certainly not a victory for Argentine productivity,” writes political economist Can Cinar. “It’s a byproduct of a deliberate and engineered collapse in people’s wages. Milei hasn't fixed the engine of Argentina's economy, he has simply turned it off.”

Things are going so badly under the libertarian economist’s leadership that, late last year, the Trump administration authorized a $20 billion lifeline for Milei’s flailing administration. There was a catch, however: Trump’s offer required Argentina’s voters to support Milei’s party in the country's midterm elections (they did).

Thiel’s decision to establish a beachhead in Buenos Aires comes as Trump sinks to record-low popularity and the Republican Party heads toward a likely defeat in U.S. midterm elections. It’s the latest move for Silicon Valley's most prominent apocalypse enthusiast, who seems to be wandering the earth anxiously in search of refuge. Over the past few years, he has drifted from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Miami. His plans to create some kind of doomsday estate in New Zealand appear to have fizzled.

(Argentina has a peculiar history as a refuge for rootless fascists. After World War II, it became a primary destination for Nazi war criminals fleeing prosecution via the so-called “ratlines.”)

Thiel believes that the United States—and most nation-states—will experience a dramatic collapse in the 21st century as technological advances create widespread economic and political chaos. His beliefs were largely inspired by The Sovereign Individual: How To Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State, a 1997 book which predicted that crypto and AI would collapse the existing world order. It advised savvy investors—a new class of so-called “cognitive elites”—to prepare for this reality by acquiring extra passports and exiting the USA for remote parts of the world.

“Thinly populated regions with temperate climates, and a large endowment of arable land per head, like New Zealand and Argentina, will also enjoy a comparative advantage because they enjoy high standards of public health and are low-cost producers of foods and renewable products,” wrote James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg in The Sovereign Individual.

“A good marker for the viability of cities is whether those living at the core of the city are richer than those on its periphery,” they wrote. “Buenos Aires, London, and Paris will remain inviting places to live and do business long after the last good restaurant closes in South Bend, Louisville, and Philadelphia.”

Davidson and Rees-Mogg made many failed doomsday predictions. But this did not harm their standing with Thiel. When The Sovereign Individual was republished in 2020, he wrote the foreword. He appears to still be following the book’s advice.

“Buenos Aires is only the latest square on what amounts to a meticulously constructed global hedge,” reported the New York Post. “Thiel has spent years assembling a portfolio of residences, passports, and legal presences across multiple continents. In New Zealand, he secured citizenship—a process that drew considerable scrutiny given how rapidly it was granted—and with it, residency access across the Pacific corridor including Australia.” 

In addition: “Thiel subsequently acquired a Maltese passport, granting him full freedom of movement across the European Union.”

News of Thiel’s latest home comes as Palantir faces massive public blowback for publishing a 22-point fascist manifesto. In addition, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—a Thiel protégé who keeps promising that AI will destroy most jobs—recently had a Molotov cocktail thrown at his mansion in San Francisco.

The Sovereign Individual predicted a violent backlash against socially destructive technologies, which may explain why Thiel and his friends are so obsessed with doomsday preparations. In 2016, Altman told the New Yorker he was stockpiling guns, gold and gas masks in Big Sur, and also had plans to flee with Thiel to New Zealand.

If history is any indicator, Thiel will not find happiness in Argentina and will continue touring the globe to preach his own personal brand of apocalypse. But his decision to publicly decamp to Latin America at the height of his power suggests that he, like Yarvin, lacks confidence in the Trump regime.

The Nerd Reich Is Coming!

This is only a taste of what you’ll learn in my forthcoming book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and The War On Democracy. It details how a cult of venture capitalists—led by Thiel—are pushing a self-fulfilling prophecy of societal collapse. If you can, please pre-order it today!

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