Here’s a 2005 documentary that omits mentioning that Peter Thiel’s father, who apparently feared the 1968 anti-Nazi student movement, fled Germany to raise his son within the residual white-supremacist enclave (German genocide) of Namibia.

Described by the BBC as the story of Germany’s forgotten genocide. This powerful documentary by David Adetayo Olusoga took a sensitive and uncompromising look at the tragic circumstances leading to the massacre of three quarters of the Namibia population in German concentration camps built in Africa.

Systematic extermination of the local population is still being researched, yet little of the work seems to connect to Peter Thiel’s statements about being raised as a German boy escaping anti-Nazism to grow up instead in Hitler-loving Swakopmund.

Over time, Imperial Germany refused to tolerate the independence and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. In 1904, after a military victory against an Ovaherero force at Waterberg, the German general Lothar von Trotha issued an extermination order against all men, women, and children of the Ovaherero. Those who survived the waves of violence that followed the orders were rounded up at ‘collection points’ across the colony and taken to concentration camps, where they were subjected to brutal conditions and forced labour.

Swakopmund was so racist, so directly aligned with support for Hitler, that even the South African government warned about the extremist enclave there in 1939.

The decision to move there after Hitler was defeated, in other words, should be framed entirely in the context of “early apartheid” that turned into the overt support for Nazism through the 1970s.

How strong were the post-WWII ties to Hitler that drew the Thiel family to relocate there, fleeing the end of Nazism?

Here is the news from 1976, as Peter Thiel was placed by his father into a school “More German than Germany“.

SWAKOPMUND, South‐West Africa —’Heil Hitler!” said the black gas station attendant matter‐of‐factly to the department customer, raising his right arm to the traditional height.

Extreme.

Notably, while Peter Thiel was raised in this environment to invest family “fortunes” into the unregulated American tech industry and become a billionaire, museums of the genocide cite a lack of funding.

One of the smallest museums in Africa might be its most important: A curator’s battle to commemorate Germany’s forgotten genocide in Namibia

While survivors of the genocide have tried to pursue officials, like the Germans who erected monuments celebrating genocide, perhaps Peter Thiel should be investigated more thoroughly as a living monument to genocide?

The Marine Denkmal (Marine Memorial) in Swakopmund, Namibia, commemorates the German imperial soldiers who fought against Indigenous Namibians in the Herero Wars (1904-1908). […] Opposition to removing the monument stems from the ideological reservations of German-speaking communities in Swakopmund, as well as fears about its economic consequences, mainly in terms of the memorial’s appeal to tourists.

If we investigate monuments promoting German genocide, shouldn’t we investigate the Germans today who directly benefited from and continue to advocate for the ideologies those monuments represent?

…I wanted to give Peter the benefit of the doubt, so I mustered the courage to go to his room to ask him about it. He said, with no facial affect, that apartheid was a sound economic system working efficiently, and moral issues were irrelevant. He made no effort to even acknowledge the pain the concept of apartheid could possibly raise for me, a Black woman.

To put it another way, more investigative work should go into the “economics” Peter has claimed his family’s success was based upon:

…when Peter proudly entered Stanford he bragged to at least two classmates that apartheid “works” and was “economically sound”. He clearly was referring to his father’s work in apartheid-era Namibia

What kind of economic activity is available to Nazis fleeing post-WWII Germany to flourish in a post-genocide apartheid enclave?

What does ‘economically sound’ mean to Peter Thiel when the foundation is extermination orders and forced labor camps?

And what connections exist between this family history and his current ACTS 17 political organizing – particularly its funding sources and ideological framework?

File this news under the inevitable failure of doing business with white supremacists.

Far-right Christian nationalist and white nationalist accounts flooded [the FBI Director’s Diwali] post with bigoted memes and rhetoric. “Go back home and worship your sand demons,” a far-right pastor wrote. “Get the f**k out of my country,” read another reply. Said another, “This is America. We don’t do this.” These responses, some of which were seen millions of times, were on the tamer end of the spectrum.

Similar hostility followed Diwali greetings on X from former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, as well as posts about the holiday from the White House, the State Department, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Some Indian American conservatives seem shocked that segments of the political right are now taking aim at them.

Shocked by hate speech on the site literally rebranded with swastikas? The X rebrand was a form of overt Nazism, and thus hate speech by definition can not be a surprise there.

Indians in America apparently thought the Swastika-posting MAGA hate machinery meant that someone else, not them, would suffer from all that racism. The FBI Director is getting racist (arguably domestic terrorist) messages sent direct to his social media profile. If he isn’t protected by being “inside” the Trump cabal, nobody is. These Indians foolishly believed they could get a copy of the infamous get out of jail cards of white nationalism, while being non-Christian let alone non-white?

I’m reminded of the many in Nazi Germany who foolishly said Hitler wouldn’t flip and shoot them in the head on a moment’s notice because… reasons.

But wait, it gets worse, as the Indians trying to put white nationalists into power were engaging in the exact form of “non-white” racism they now are allegedly surprised targets them as non-whites.

…Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing commentator who has peddled racism against Black Americans for decades, mused: “In a career spanning 40 years, I have never encountered this type of rhetoric. The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation?”

This type of degrading rhetoric is not new, but it’s increasingly prominent from the political right. With the rise of once-fringe figures, and with President Donald Trump aggressively cracking down on nearly every type of immigration, some members of the MAGA coalition are openly suggesting that only white Christians belong in America.

Peddled racism for decades, and yet we are supposed to believe this guy is surprised by the racism he himself peddled?

Pardon my French but WTAF? The Right always used to talk like this! Nixon, Ford, Reagan… huge racists, and there’s no secret about it.

Monkeys. That’s what the white Right calls people with skin darker than their own.

That’s the guy with a long history of racism that the Right chose to be their President, not that long after Gerald Ford had literally created the white-supremacist America First college hate group that was aligned with Hitler, until if course it became banned after declaration of war.

Imagine having that giant seditious period of promoting Hitler on your resume, right next to being the American President who was never elected. That’s the kind of politician who defines the Right these days, pining for an unelected unitary executive who keeps the non-whites out of power.

Truman clearly warned Eisenhower that Richard Nixon was the kind of man America had just defeated in WWII. Ford probably was even worse in that context. And Truman was right, yet not leading the Right, so here we are a generation later talking about the same wrong Right.

A recent article in Behavioral Scientist presents Richard Thaler as the founder of behavioral economics. This is misinformation.

Thaler was effective at packaging and promoting psychological research in ways that economics couldn’t ignore, while he most certainly did NOT discover human irrationality.

Common sense, right? Claiming someone recently discovered human irrationality is itself irrational… the latest evidence confirming ancient theories of human irrationality.

More specifically, making claims about “observing that people are influenced” – the fundamental insight that context and framing affect decisions – definitely is NOT Thaler’s invention.

Herbert Simon won a Nobel in 1978 (before Thaler even started) for work on bounded rationality. Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory was then presented in 1979. An endowment effect was documented by Thaler, yet the fundamental psychology of loss aversion came from Kahneman and Tversky. Going back earlier, researchers like Ward Edwards in the 1950s-60s presented psychological research on decision-making that challenged expected utility theory. And we really should include Smith, Wollstonecraft, Kant and Hume (published extensively that human reasoning isn’t purely rational calculation), as I wrote here in 2016, about some of my work in 2014.

I say this because nobody should be calling Thaler the founder of behavioral economics (he helped establish a distinct field in economics, but absolutely didn’t invent the ideas or lay the foundation). The article frames “anomalies” as Thaler’s discovery, despite economists and psychologists documenting violations of rational choice theory for decades. And then, insult to injury, the article says Imas’ career progression is defined by some weird proximity to Thaler (“once a distant role model… now a friend and collaborator”).

With propagandist articles like this, it’s no wonder economists are skeptical of behavioral theory as glorification of propagandists.

The misinformation serves a specific function: it centers credit within economics (and specifically at Chicago, infamous for hero seeking radical individualism) rather than acknowledging that economics was VERY late to recognize what other disciplines already knew and shared with them.

Thaler’s actual contribution was politics and marketing of others’ work to fit his own sphere of influence (erasing them), NOT discovery.

Historians, popping immodest economist bubbles since… forever.

I mean historians see through the fog of Chicago immediately because we trace actual intellectual genealogies rather than mythologized “founding fathers” trying to prove themselves weird ubermensch. The economist version is institutional hagiography, and false heroism, NOT history.

Philosophy (18th-19th c): Humans aren’t rational calculators.

Psychology (1950s-1970s): Empirical demonstration of systematic deviations from rationality.

Chicago (1980s+): “Ooh, look at what we found others talking about. Can we get someone around here to take credit for discovering them, and rebrand it anomalies?!”

The mythology machine creates a hero narrative where Thaler is the lone genius challenging orthodoxy, rather than what actually happened, to fit the Chicago mental model of radical white male individualism.

They can’t bring themselves to admit a story where knowledge emerges collectively and collaboratively across disciplines.

God forbid the ruling men of Chicago recognize that women and non-economists did foundational work. Women? Could you imagine, Chicago school dudes giving credit to women? Where’s the credit for Sarah Lichtenstein’s work on preference reversals that directly challenged rational choice? For Eleanor Rosch’s prototype theory that explained how people actually categorize? For developmental psychologists studying children’s economic reasoning? For Baruch Fischhoff’s work on hindsight bias and risk perception?

Progress happens through institutions slowly correcting errors, yet Chicago instead waits at the top of a tree for scraps like a vulture hoping to spin a narrative about being the apex predator. Imagine economists admitting it was fundamentally wrong and learning from outsiders?

The Thaler propaganda is to curate a lone genius, bravely challenging orthodoxy from within, founding a new field through individual brilliance. That’s the same bogus narrative structure as their whole economic theory – the heroic individual entrepreneur disrupting markets like a God above mere mortals. It’s circular and self-serving mythology.

MAGA’s U-turn takes America back to open white hate as federal policy after 70 years of encoding.

$300 million in private funding from America’s tech oligarchs is being funneled into Trump’s Hitler-esque marble ballroom on top of Franklin Roosevelt’s demolished wartime offices and bunker.

Destroying the White House WWII wing and hosting a fascist ball on top of the bunker Roosevelt built to defeat Hitler? That’s not an accidental architectural placement. As Betty Ford allegedly put it:

If the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is the heart.

Trump just destroyed the heart of America, as he very narrowly targeted the legacy of Roosevelt and JFK for a “renewal” in Hitler’s image. That’s beyond Nixon, beyond even Reagan, this is the most extreme white nationalist President since Woodrow Wilson.

Nixon and Reagan used coded language and justified devastation with infrastructure “improvements”. Trump uses Wilson’s explicitly racist “America First” (KKK) branding and builds actual monuments to domestic terrorism and dictatorship. Nixon ran bulldozers through Black neighborhoods to enable “white flight” roads, Reagan ran “urban renewal” demolitions and expanded Nixon’s “war on drugs” racism. Trump has… plans to build Hitler’s marble and gold “ballroom.”

Trump is different because he’s returned to the dangerous nativist “America First” architectural playbook—the same one used for a century to position giant celebratory Klaverns on the ashes of successful community leaders (e.g. 1921 firebombing of Tulsa) and statues of the monstrous Robert E. Lee (e.g. reputation for raping girls) around schools and parks.

This is simply a reiteration of the explicit architectural playbook. The pattern is clear, the evidence is material, and the stakes are existential.

Part I: “America First” is White Nationalism

“America First” is not a slogan. It’s a late 1800s declaration of racial dominance with documented continuity from the end of the Civil War to President Wilson’s restart of the KKK, to American supporters of Hitler and Trump.

• 1882: President Arthur (after Garfield’s assassination) is violently coerced into 10 year ban on immigration (“exclusion”) among “America First” nativist xenophobic campaigns killing immigrants (Los Angeles Massacre of 1871, Rock Springs Massacre of 1885)
• 1915: Woodrow Wilson makes “America First” his campaign slogan and restarts the KKK. He screens “Birth of a Nation” in the White House, uses presidential power to promote “white hood” vigilantism, and makes white supremacy federal policy, removing Blacks from office. America First opposes “military preparedness” against Germany in WWI.
• 1915-1920s: “America First” used as rallying cry for militant white supremacist organizations nationwide. It’s not subtle, it’s still the brand for racist lynchings like in the 1800s.

  

• 1940-1941: The America First Committee of white supremacists (e.g. founded by Gerald Ford, later hand-picked as VP by Nixon and then President without ever winning a national election) aligns with Hitler, actively working to undermine “military preparedness” against Germany in WWII. Roosevelt impanels a federal grand jury to investigate them as Nazi agents.

  

• 1942: A federal grand jury rules the America First Committee is officially Nazi propaganda. Dozens of “America First” adherents are federally prosecuted for sedition. One Nazi asset at trial compared himself to Martin Luther and Woodrow Wilson, after which he was jailed.
• 1996: A leader of the American Nazi Party, the former KKK campaign manager for David Duke, officially declares his “America First” platform for President and wins under 1,000 votes.

  

• 2016-Present: Trump openly campaigns and governs under “America First.” He knows the history. The continuity is the point.

The Lee Monument Pattern: Architecture Predicts Violence

Historians have documented a direct correlation between General Robert E. Lee monument placement and lynching activity. Wherever America First erected a Lee statue in the early 1900s, there was a measurable concentration of lynchings in the surrounding area.

The monuments weren’t actual memorials, and Lee himself asked no such statues be erected (as he was in danger of being hanged for sedition)—they were territorial markers meant to perpetuate a Civil War. They announced white supremacist control and signaled that racial terrorism would go unpunished, just like Lee himself. The statues predicted violence because they were infrastructure for violence, a statement that America could someday return to Slavery-era state sanctioned rape of girls (e.g. Epstein files).

The monuments like gang-led graffiti provided geographic markers for Klan organizing, rally points for mob formation, and legal cover—officials could claim they were “defending” (bogus) heritage markers rather than committing and escalating racial terrorism.

This pattern extended beyond Lee to Confederate monuments generally: statue dedication ceremonies were frequently followed by spikes in racial violence. The architecture announced ownership. The violence enforced it.

The same America First movement built these Lee monuments, the Tulsa Klavern, and sets the context for the why and how of Trump’s Hitleresque ballroom. The architectural vocabulary hasn’t changed. Neither has the pattern.

Early 1900s General Lee monuments predicted lynchings. A 1921 Tulsa Klavern wasn’t the endpoint—it enabled decades of white supremacist control. Hitler’s 1939 Chancellery wasn’t the endpoint—it launched genocide. Trump’s ballroom is not renovation. It’s infrastructure.

Part II: The Tulsa Massacre Monument (1921-1922)

On June 1, 1921, city officials backed white militias to burn Greenwood, Oklahoma to the ground—the wealthiest Black community in America, known as “Black Wall Street.” An estimated 300 Black residents were murdered in an ethnic cleansing movement that firebombed 35 city blocks. Over 10,000 people were made homeless by “America First” violence.

Despite national outrage, Tulsa officials immediately began erasing the massacre from public records. They buried bodies in unmarked mass graves. They blamed Black residents for the violence. They rewrote newspaper archives and called anyone daring to speak of accountability as “rude”.

Six months later—SIX MONTHS—the Ku Klux Klan formed a cynically named “Tulsa Benevolent Association” and began construction on BeNO Hall, a massive Klavern seating 3,000 members. The building cost $200,000 ($3.6 million in today’s dollars). It towered over the western edge of destroyed Greenwood, built on land owned by W. Tate Brady, a KKK member who had served as night watchman during the ethnic cleansing.

“BeNO” was the local America First slogan, taunting the core exclusions by a domestic terrorism group.

Be No Nigger, Be No Jew, Be No Catholic, Be No Immigrant, Be NO Hall

Clear weaponization of language by America First should not be underestimated:

“Benevolent” → “Be No” is perfect evidence of how white supremacists openly mock their victims while building monuments on top of hidden graves. The disgusting cynicism is the point. They’re gloating in the pain caused.

The architectural message was unambiguous: America First will destroy opportunity and prosperity. America First will build monuments to themselves on top of the devastation they cause. Consider how “America First” targeted American soldiers who fought in WWI (while America First opposed preparedness in that war). The irony is devastating.

This is America First, forever, as foreshadowing of a Hitler ball on top of the rubble from Roosevelt’s East Wing.

BeNO Hall stood until 1979 and NOBODY spoke of the ethnic cleansing. Mass graves remained hidden until 2024 — white supremacist architecture sat promoting genocide in America for a whole generation or more!

Part III: The Hitler Template (1935-1939)

Hitler not only intensely studied the America First atrocities of the early 1900s to model Nazi Germany after them, he understood monumental architecture as political technology.

In 1938, he assigned Albert Speer to build the New Reich Chancellery with unlimited funding, demanding completion within one year for January 1939 diplomatic receptions. While ordinary Germans faced economic catastrophe, Hitler spent lavishly on a building designed to overwhelm visitors with the physical reality of fascist power.

• A 400-meter Marble Gallery (longer than Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors), clad entirely in marble produced by slave labor
• Massive ballroom and reception halls built to “make an impression on people” through architectural domination
• Bunker complex beneath the ballroom for protection from Allied attack

Hitler personally micromanaged every detail. Albert Speer later recalled that when political tensions mounted, Hitler would obsessively rearrange furniture or fixate on marble samples and column designs.

Hitler also commissioned plans for a massive Arch of Triumph—triple the size of the Arc de Triomphe—meant to celebrate mass slavery and genocide. It was never built since Hitler committed suicide in the bunker beneath his ballroom on April 30, 1945, as Allied forces approached the madman and he couldn’t handle the truth.

After the war, the Soviets demolished the Trump-like Reich Chancellery. They repurposed Hitler’s slave-labor marble for their war memorials—literally building monuments to anti-fascist victory from the physical materials of fascism.

Part IV: Trump Attacks the Enemies of Hitler (2025)

The Systematic Destruction of Anti-Fascist Presidential Legacies

What Franklin Roosevelt built in 1942 (during the war against Hitler):

• The East Wing—wartime expansion for military coordination against Nazi Germany
• The Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) bunker beneath the East Wing
• Rose Garden landscape redesign by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
• Commemorative magnolia tree at the East Wing entrance

What Trump destroyed in 2025 (under “America First”):

• The entire East Wing—demolished to ground level
• Roosevelt’s commemorative magnolia tree—removed
• The Rose Garden—paved over with white stone
• The Jacqueline Kennedy Garden—leveled
• Kennedy’s 1960s Rose Garden design—destroyed
• Six historic trees including commemorative plantings for FDR and Warren Harding

When asked about his Rose Garden “renovations,” Trump said:

“It’s very white.”

That’s not a description. That’s America First again, that’s BeNO Hall, that’s the announcement.

Trump is constructing a 90,000-square-foot ballroom—nearly double the size of the entire White House (55,000 sq ft). It sits on the exact footprint of Roosevelt’s demolished Anti-fascist East Wing, directly above the WWII bunker that Roosevelt built during America’s fight against Hitler.

• $300 million cost, privately funded to avoid congressional oversight
• Seats 999 people (the largest ballroom in Washington, D.C.)
• Floor-to-ceiling white marble throughout
• Gold chandeliers, gilded Corinthian columns, gold-colored fixtures
• Checkered white marble floors

The peculiar private funds:

Amazon, Google, Meta, and other tech oligarchs are financing this construction. Their contributions are deliberately structured as private donations to avoid transparency requirements. They are funding Nazi architecture on American soil to symbolize dictatorial power over the public, as if a business decision.

The peculiar micromanagement:

Staff reports describe Trump’s obsessive involvement:

“The tenser things are, the more he moves the pieces around in his spare time, or he takes a break and thinks about the marble he wants or the columns.”

This is Hitler’s 1938 behavior pattern, word for word.

The peculiar look of fascism

Trump is installing the same material palette throughout the White House complex:

• Lincoln Bedroom bathroom: Floor-to-ceiling “white polished Statuary marble”
• Passageways to South Lawn: New white marble floors
• Ballroom: Checkered white marble floors
• All fixtures: Gold-colored metal

This is not generic luxury. This is the exact material vocabulary of Hitler’s Reich Chancellery: boring white marble, shiny gold fixtures, gross monumental scale, obsessive ugly symmetry.

The peculiar “triumph” arch

Trump has proposed a massive triumphal arch at Memorial Circle, positioned directly across from the Lincoln Memorial. The design features two Hitler-esque eagles and a golden winged figure—architecturally identical to Hitler’s unbuilt Arch of Triumph.

The placement ensures the arch will block and obscure John F. Kennedy’s eternal flame, meant to connect and be visible from the Lincoln Memorial at night. Breaking the connection of Lincoln and JFK is obviously intentional.

Hitler planned his arch in 1938 yet couldn’t get it up, killed himself before construction even began. Trump is proposing the arch Hitler failed on, positioning it very specifically to disgrace anti-fascist American presidents.

Part V: The Pattern is the Evidence

Architecture is announcement. Monuments declare ownership and signal intent.

General Lee Monuments (1900s-1920s): Statues then lynchings concentrated around them, racial terrorism.

1. Erect Confederate monuments in Black neighborhoods and public squares
2. Lynching rates concentrate in areas surrounding monuments
3. Architecture signals that racial terrorism will go unpunished
4. Violence enforces the territorial claim announced by the monuments

Tulsa 1921-1922: Massacre, then monument.

1. Destroy Black Wall Street through ethnic cleansing
2. Build KKK Klavern overlooking the ruins
3. Use “America First” ideology as justification
4. Make white supremacist power impossible to ignore

Berlin 1935-1939: Monument, then war and genocide.

1. Build massive marble ballroom above bunker complex
2. Create reception spaces designed to overwhelm through scale
3. Plan triumphal arch celebrating Aryan supremacy (never built)
4. Micromanage every detail personally

Washington 2025: Destruction, then ???

1. Operate under “America First” ideology with full historical awareness
2. Systematically destroy Roosevelt and Kennedy legacies—the two most prominent anti-fascist presidents
3. Build Hitler’s marble ballroom on Roosevelt’s ruins, above Roosevelt’s anti-fascist bunker
4. Build Hitler’s unbuilt triumphal arch
5. Position the arch to obscure Kennedy’s eternal flame
6. Fund construction privately through oligarchs to avoid transparency

When America First builds monuments on ruins, violence follows. The architecture announces control. The control enables escalation.

Trump uses deliberate architectural replication of white supremacist monument-building to destroy and denigrate democratic leaders who fought against fascism. It comes along with the technology infrastructure being built by DHS with all the hallmarks of past genocide platforms.

The pattern suggests:

• Escalation beyond symbolic architecture into policy and violence
• Intensified targeting of anti-fascist symbols and movements
• Coordination between state power and private oligarchic funding
• International signaling to fascist and authoritarian movements worldwide

Conclusions

The architecture announces ownership of American state power under white supremacist ideology. It erases anti-fascist presidential legacies and replaces them with fascist monumental vocabulary. It’s privately funded by oligarchs who benefit from authoritarian governance.

The architectural pattern doesn’t stop at buildings. Monuments are an infrastructure for what comes next.

Roosevelt’s East Wing represented resilience in war and the defeat of Hitler. Trump demolished it to reverse history and build Hitler’s dream ballroom and arch. That’s not coincidence. That’s declaration.

The question is not whether Trump follows a pattern. The evidence is clear. The question is what Americans do when Nazis announce themselves in a capital city—funded by oligarchs, built on history, flying under the American flag.

The pattern of white nationalism, unbroken from 1880s to today, predicts escalation. History suggests resistance is possible. Architecture is believed to be destiny, that’s why the fascists obsess about it.