It’s no secret Peter Thiel’s grandparents were Nazis who sent their family fortunes after losing WWII into South African apartheid, then somehow endied up with him meddling in the “business” of promoting American fascism.

In 2016, Peter Thiel, the contrarian billionaire and co-founder of PayPal, had been the only prominent Valley figure to support Trump, which merely confirmed…as the historian Adam Tooze put it in his landmark book on the period, …that German industrialists [like Thiel] were “willing partners in the destruction of political pluralism…”. In return for their [1933 end of democracy] donations, Tooze wrote, owners and managers of German businesses were granted unprecedented powers to control their workforce, collective bargaining was abolished and wages were frozen at a relatively low level. Corporate profits also rose very rapidly, as did corporate investment. Fascism turned out to be good for business – until it wasn’t.

Who can forget?

…Thiel’s high profile role in the Trump transition is ripe with conflict of interest issues… Thiel’s reported proclivity for fascism and white nationalism adds another layer of concern to the red flag reported…

Many in the Thiel family apparently have been known for making headlines because of things like being caught as Nazi spies in America, trying to sabotage democracy, and for denying the Holocaust. (Notably, Thiel family members who dared to disagree with Nazism were killed).

As if the 2016 Trump disaster for America wasn’t enough of a red flag, Peter now has been caught, yet again, elevating himself even higher on the ignoble pile of generations peddling hate, disinformation and vile theory.

…the podcast was reposted on… Twitter, by user @jimstewartson… who said that Thiel’s comments about liberalism and democracy being exhausted were the same rhetoric Nazis used in Germany.

“This was precisely what the Nazis tried to sell to Germans, that Weimar was ‘too liberal’ and needed ‘strong leadership’ to save it from degeneracy,” Stewartson wrote. “I cannot emphasize enough that this psychopath will be running the country if we don’t protect this election.” The reposted clip was viewed over 1.4 million times by Monday morning.

It reminds me of this clip.

Worth a listen: Many people are pointing out how this expert’s mic was shut down just as he started to explain the real cause of violent riots. Elon Musk is accused of curating the extremist platform xTwitter like a modern Dearborn Independent.

That’s a former chief superintendent of the Met Police saying out loud that Elon Musk’s spread of extremist right-wing content poses a direct threat to national security and public safety… if you listen closely.

When Sky flipped to their next guest, apparently again it was said that Elon Musk has undermined safety by pushing toxic hate speech on xTwitter, intentionally stoking conflict.

‘A polarisation engine’: how social media has created a ‘perfect storm’ for UK’s far-right riots

Keep calm and carry on… calling out Musk for being a threat to society.

I’m hoping the UK terrorism teams are able to trace and expose the links between Russia and xTwitter, uncovering riots and social media hate campaigns as Putin’s typical game plan.

The PM has already hinted at the coordinated nature of Musk’s weird role.

“What we’ve seen in this country is organized, illegal thuggery which has no place on our streets or online.”

Organized and orchestrated by… Musk or Putin… or both?

This summary analysis published in The Guardian is perhaps what Putin knows best and is exploiting with his American “business” contacts.

Lord Walney, the government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, has suggested that the current legal and regulatory framework is insufficient when faced by this kind of “rolling rabble-rousing”. How to tackle this manufactured chaos is among the biggest challenges now facing Sir Keir Starmer’s government.

Rolling rabble rousing is a nice phrase to describe Elon Musk’s role. Manufactured chaos is another nice phrase. The British really do have a way with words.

But it looks like a cartoon by The Onion has said it best of anyone lately.

And that’s really just a new take on an actual 1930s cartoon.

Or as the associate editor of the Financial Times just put it:

The deep misogyny of British culture really comes through in a new BBC retelling of Agent Zo’s work.

First, they misleadingly say she left Britain for Poland.

The woman who left Britain to parachute into Nazi-occupied Poland

Why not say the Polish woman who returned home to lead the liberation of her country? The headline is askew from the first sentence of the piece, which clearly says she was returning to Poland.

…a woman boarded a warplane ready to return to Poland to fight the Nazis…

Next, they try to emphasize she parachuted without wearing trousers, even though she actually was wearing a flight suit. As if Scotland doesn’t have male veterans wearing skirts? As if wearing a flight suit doesn’t mean she was in trousers?

…a woman boarded a warplane ready to return to Poland to fight the Nazis, a parachute strapped to her back and a blue dress beneath her flight suit. […] Branded “the captain in a skirt”… “I quite like the line she’s the only person to parachute back from Britain to Nazi-occupied Poland in a dress because she’s the only woman to do it,” [historian Clare] Mulley says.

She’s the only person to parachute into Poland wearing a blue dress under a flight suit? We should like this minor detail because… why?

Can we believe a blue dress matters at all, or that it’s even true? Did it have dark thread or light? Was it flat front or pleated? Cotton or wool blend? Seriously, this is the kind of tiny detail distraction that the historian’s bias invokes rather than anything important to the main thread of honoring Agent Zo (yes, pun intended).

My guess would be Zo knew she had to immediately appear normal, and was dressed ready to drop and walk. That’s a reflection of occupied Poland at the time, not her own fashion sense, which speaks directly to oppression.

Did Scottish men not wear skirts when they jumped for a similar, yet opposite reason of being distinct?

I suspect this historian spent exactly no time trying to find evidence of others wearing a dress underneath their trousers, as if such a getup would make any sense without a specific reason (e.g. trying to NOT standout or be noticed, on penalty of death).

In other words, it comes across as the historian saying she loves the fact that Polish women were expected to be wearing a dress always, no matter what, or be shot on sight. What kind of person likes that?

Also repeatedly there is an attempt to unfairly brand this fearless patriot in war as being too brave or too confident.

Branded … “a militant female dictator” as she confronted those in charge in London, her efforts would transform the status of women in the Polish Home Army, helping to save thousands of lives. …you look at some of the paperwork of her friends and they said: ‘Zo came and she terrified me. I couldn’t do anything else. I had to do it.’

Some of the paperwork says her friends were terrified by her into fighting against the Nazis? That sounds like war, where unfortunately people have to be motivated by fear early to fight against the Nazis to avoid being slaughtered later without any fight.

You think Zo is the scary one? Versus the Gestapo? Funny how you live to tell that story. I guess she terrified you in the right way. Because she was right, the other option wasn’t an option at all. For a historian to say fighting Nazism was not or is not a binary choice, is for that historian to be promoting Nazism.

…she sort of blithely assumes that everyone shares her very binary world vision – they’re bad, we’ve got to free Poland. “That’s it. That’s what’s driving her.”

It was a binary world because Nazism is the most binary system. Nazis kill anyone who doesn’t agree with Hitler, or his latest whim in a state of constant improvisation and chaos. I can’t believe I have to say this. This historian even admits as much when she says Nazis were illegally killing Polish women on sight in the most binary way.

“…Hitler has got this Commando Order… he said that anyone who is found fighting not in uniform will be shot without trial,” says Mulley.

Wear a dress and dare to disagree with Hitler? Get shot without trial.

Or publicly beheaded.

Zo didn’t assume that people shared this reality. She saw truths and knew a harsh toxic reality of Nazism. She knew her friends would be shot dead in a dress sooner rather than later, if they weren’t fighting along side her to end the binary world Hitler forced women into without any choice.

Let’s also not fixate on the voice of some offended man in London who branded Zo a militant dictator, when so many others did not. I’ve run into similar issues with Orde Wingate history, as well as the talented and beautiful “Night Witches”.

Take General Patton, as an opposite canonical example, regarding how tough men can be glorified over their terrifying methods of motivation. Was Zo’s methods as bad/good as Patton? And would she ever be judged in the same way?

Agent Zo is framed unfairly by the BBC, and by spurious voices, as though her confidence and competence as a resistance fighter was a terrifying dictatorship, instead of calm, calculated competency opposed to dictatorships…. Why not tell it always from a foundational story that Zo achieved mission objectives and an absolutely essential role for the success and safety of her troops in the liberation of Poland, despite overwhelming odds against her?