ACTS 17 Collective: Silicon Nazi Lebensraum Project of Peter Thiel

How Peter Thiel’s apparent “Christian” front group weaponized scripture to legitimize his Nazi territorial philosophy.

Historians Train to Spot Patterns

When Peter Thiel recently delivered four private lectures warning that climate activists and tech industry critics are “legionnaires of the Antichrist,” most coverage ended up focused on the carnaval-like spectacle — apocalyptic language, religious fervor, sheer weirdness of a billionaire investor preaching eschatology into San Francisco “tech elites”.

These reporters missed the point entirely, perhaps because historians are so rare these days.

The lectures, hosted by ACTS 17 Collective—a religious lobby group pushing church control over state through tech industry elites—are neither eccentric theology nor mysterious. As leaked to the Washington Post, they represent the latest iteration of a multigenerational fascist project: establishing sovereign territorial racist enclaves outside democratic accountability.

Understanding this requires historical rigor, not journalistic circumspection or diplomatic euphemism. Let’s be precise then: ACTS 17 Collective is functionally a return to overt promotion of the Nazi Lebensraum doctrines.

Lebenswhat?

I know, the word sounds like some kind of gross cake the neighbors bring over for the holidays.

The Nazis promoted a concept of Lebensraum (living space) to justify territorial expansion. Several interlocking claims were used:

  • Superior people require separate territory
  • The “contaminated” mixed societies are irredeemable
  • Wacky groundless mystical frameworks, meant to sound philosophical or even moral, provide legitimation
  • Availability of space, or really existing populations are worthless and to be displaced or subordinated
  • This expansion is civilizational necessity, not mere conquest or colonization. That’s how “Mars” references, to the trained historian ear, have the unmistakable ring of 1960s Rhodesian or Namibian white flight:
    Source: Twitter

The sophistication of modern tech fascism is that it replaces military conquest with silicon venture capital, and racial pseudo-science with scripture. But the core structure remains identical.

The Thiel surname itself appears repeatedly in Nazi records: Walter Thiel, a famous example, managed a Nazi techo-compound in the 1930s where his slave laborers died producing weapons systems. When German newspapers today glorify this “Silicon Valley,” they’re explicitly connecting Nazi tech slavery to modern tech culture.

Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung (MAZ) is a regional modern newspaper in Brandenburg, Germany an area known for harboring and promoting Nazi sentiment (e.g. the AfD party backed by Elon Musk). Here MAZ clearly glorifies a Nazi named Walter Thiel who was killed 1942 by innovative night-time Allied bombing campaign to destroy his “technology” slave plantation.

Werner Thiel, another well known example, was captured in 1942 attempting to smuggle bombs into America for sabotage operations, a bumbling covert agent of death caught as soon as he landed.

Werner Thiel mugshot after he was caught with “coal-shaped bombs” to kill Americans during WWII. Many called for his execution. Source: Life, July 13, 1942

The Genealogical Evidence

Peter Thiel’s father Klaus Thiel provides the clearest through-line. In 1967, Klaus departed Frankfurt on the eve of denazification intensification, relocating to Cleveland, Ohio. In 1971, he pivoted his United States papers into criminal work in apartheid-era Namibia (illegally occupied by South Africa), where he managed the Rössing uranium mine. His clandestine nuclear weapons supply operation was, according to pro-independence reports, where Black workers were “dying like flies” from radiation exposure while white managers like Klaus enjoyed country club privileges. In 1977, Klaus abruptly fled his racist enclave of Namibia when Black majority rule no longer could be blocked, settling into Reagan-era California’s white-flight suburbs.

The Klaus Thiel story is NOT a normal economic migration.

Each relocation follows the same pattern: flight from democratic accountability toward territories with legally-sanctioned racial hierarchy.

The son clearly has systematized what his father improvised. Peter Thiel has funded charter cities like Próspera in Honduras and California Forever in Solano County—attempts to establish private governance outside democratic control. He invested in seasteading projects for floating cities beyond national jurisdiction.

Through Palantir, Peregrine and Anduril, he’s positioned technology as a prerequisite for white nationalist sovereignty. He installed JD Vance as ideological successor in government. And according to journalist Jacob Silverman:

…politically connected people in the charter cities movement, people receiving investment from Thiel and others, were very excited about the prospect of the U.S. taking over Greenland.

This isn’t even close to libertarian theory, as it often contradicts it. It’s the long-standing active Nazi territorial acquisition strategy transmitted from Klaus to Peter.

Lebensraum.

The Old Acts 17 Red Flag: Scriptural Legitimation of Segregation

ACTS 17 Collective didn’t choose its name randomly. The Acts 17 reference is known white nationalist doctrine, providing the three key elements essential to Lebensraum ideology.

First, the “divine boundaries” verse Acts 17:26 states:

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

This verse has been explicitly weaponized throughout history by extremists to justify racial segregation and apartheid.

Apartheid. Acts 17. Inseparable in history.

Think about Peter Thiel and Elon Musk… spreading the encoded language of apartheid. Or as a defender of American segregation once wrote plainly:

The Scriptures teach Segregation…Acts 17:26…is used over and over again in defense of segregation of the races.

The verse provides divine sanction for separate territories for separate peoples, opposition to “mixing” (racial, cultural, democratic), God-ordained hierarchy and boundaries, and the right of “superior” groups to their own sovereignty.

White nationalism, it’s just apartheid wrapped in “Christian” phrases.

Second, consider the elitist engagement model of the reference. Acts 17 depicts Paul addressing the Areopagus—the intellectual and political elite of Athens. This creates a scriptural template for bypassing democratic processes through elite capture, targeting cultural centers (Athens becomes Silicon Valley, the Nazis appropriated classical imagery), converting powerful individuals rather than building mass movements, and achieving top-down civilizational transformation.

Fascism, it’s just fascism wrapped in “Christian” phrases.

Third, the apocalyptic civilizational warfare frame. Paul’s message announced God’s intention:

…to put an end to the civilisation that has, for a long time, dominated the geographical space that has Athens at its centre.

This justifies viewing democratic culture as existentially threatening, framing opposition as cosmic struggle, demanding complete societal transformation, and rejecting incremental reform in favor of rupture.

It has elements of white nationalism, and overt reference to fascism, but really Acts 17 appears to be about the rapidity of rupture for… Nazism.

The Nuremberg Moment

Thiel’s comments on the Nuremberg trials expose the whole gambit for its underlying resentment doctrine. When asked about Nazi accountability, he expressed nostalgia for Churchill’s early political pressure for summary executions:

I wonder if the Churchill one would have actually been healthier than the American one.

“The Churchill one” means the most extreme, the most illogical, the least law and order. Churchill was not a great guy, let that be clear, across a number of issues. He helped preserve the Chamberlain government’s campaign to defeat Hitler (wrangling in overt UK sympathy for Nazism), and this interrupted German spread of evil, but we must also beware his many flaws.

Crawshay-Williams, a former assistant private secretary to Churchill, wrote the prime minister a long letter cravenly pleading to make terms with Hitler. Churchill’s response was brief and brutal: “I am ashamed of you for writing such a letter. I return it to you — to burn & forget”. Source: Christie’s Auction

Why would a Nazi today prefer summary executions over trials, to “burn and forget”? Because Nuremberg trials were created to generate documentary evidence of Nazi crimes, international law frameworks for accountability, legal precedents preventing fascist rehabilitation, and historical record making denial impossible.

It’s like Bernie Madoff arguing fraud should bring a firing squad instead of forensic accounting. The logic is perverse: extreme penalties without documentation eliminate the evidence trail. If they’re not executed, the argument goes, there’s no proof of crime—and if they are executed, there’s no trial record to study. It’s the “no true Scotsman” fallacy weaponized: real Nazis would have been shot, therefore anyone still breathing can’t be one.

Source: Mitchell and Webb sketch in which Nazi officers realize they are the bad guys. An impossible moment of accountability where immediate summary executions are normalized. See also: Hitler forced suicide upon anyone exhibiting evidence of independent thought.

For someone whose father fled denazification, this isn’t abstract philosophy. The Nuremberg framework is precisely what threatens multigenerational transmission of fascist ideology. Thiel’s preference for summary execution over documented accountability reveals his actual concern: preventing the power of historians, evicerating historical records to avoid exposing what his projects represent (let alone his father’s).

How Silicon Lebensraum Wags the Valley

Silverman’s Gilded Rage documents the practical implementation across multiple domains.

  • Physical sovereignty through Thiel’s New Zealand compounds, charter cities in Honduras and California, Musk’s Texas compounds, interest in Greenland acquisition and “exit” strategies for sovereign enclaves.
  • Economic sovereignty via cryptocurrency as parallel financial system, opposition to tax transparency and the Common Reporting Standard, and resistance to democratic oversight of capital.
  • Educational sovereignty including private schools like Zuckerberg’s pandemic academy, control over curriculum and values transmission, and escape from “contaminated” public education.

    Peter Thiel’s father rushed out of his Nazi compound life in Namibia under illegal South African apartheid occupation, because majority rule was coming, for the “white flight” of late 1970s Nazified California. Source: SFUSD
  • Ideological sovereignty means purging organizations that represent internal dissent. A fetish for unity in thought pervades tech companies. Fifty Google employees were fired for protesting Israeli contracts. As Silverman documents, there’s now “very little tolerance for internal dissent or anything political that feels disruptive.”
  • Military integration proceeds through Palantir and Anduril positioning as essential defense infrastructure, what Silverman describes as “outright enthusiasm for working in the defense industry,” and defense contracts as leverage for political influence.

“Urban” Life Framed as Justification

Silverman identifies their view of San Francisco as “irredeemable” due to prosecutorial reform, equitable history teaching, and treating homelessness as social rather than criminal issue.

President Trump regularly parrots 1970s racist extremist doctrine when fraudulently attacking cities as unsafe or in “decline.” This echoes Klaus Thiel’s 1970s Namibia rhetoric about “failed” multiracial governance—the same lens Peter Thiel applies to San Francisco today, marking its prosecutorial reform, equitable history teaching, and social treatment of homelessness as signs of an “irredeemable” city. It’s the Nixon “Urban Renewal” playbook: frame diverse, democratic governance as failure requiring white-flight (abandonment) or destruction and replacement.

Thiel told Stanford classmates that apartheid “works” and is “economically sound.” His current projects apply the same logic: democratic, diverse society is dysfunctional; superior people require separate sovereign space of exclusivity.

America Needs Historians More Than Ever

JD Vance is a coin-operated “Thiel disciple” who “has written about how much Thiel influenced the course of his life.” His extremely expensive campaigns that enabled elevation to Vice President places the Lebensraum network at the center of American governance.

Americans don’t get it clearly enough yet and seem to think this is about tech regulation disputes, tax policy disagreements, and antitrust enforcement.

Nope.

It’s actually about territorial sovereignty outside democratic control, racial and class separation dressed as innovation, and ending democratic governance for ideologically pure enclaves. As Silverman notes:

I think the Democrats, in some ways, still may not understand what they’re dealing with.

These aren’t opportunistic politicians. These are Nazis infiltrating a political party. Silverman emphasizes: “these guys are rather sincere in a lot of ways.”

People need to smell the coffee. When someone writes like this:

[Thiel has] long been skeptical, at the very least, of democracy. Democracy interferes with his idea of true freedom. [Those feelings] are more widely felt now among the tech elites than they were when Thiel was a little bit lonely on that front in the late 1990s.

This is a platform of swastikas waving, by people who explicitly reject democracy and are building alternatives.

This is stated openly, repeatedly, in their own words.

Historical Analogy as Antidote

In 1930s-40s Germany, society was viewed as “contaminated” by democracy, Jews, and communists, creating the need for Lebensraum in the East. Philosophical justification came from Carl Schmitt—whom Thiel studied. Technological and racial superiority justified expansion through military conquest.

In 2020s Silicon Valley, society is viewed as “contaminated” by wokeness, diversity, and democracy, creating the need for sovereign enclaves through charter cities and compounds. Philosophical and theological justification comes from Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land, and Acts 17. Technological superiority justifies sovereignty achieved through venture capital and defense contracts.

The sophistication is the mechanism, not the ideology.

Some will repeatedly fall for the logical fallacies like Scotsman, and object that any or all comparisons to Nazism are inflammatory.

It’s actually precise.

Lebensraum requires identification of a superior group requiring separate space, justification through philosophical or pseudo-scientific framework, territorial acquisition strategy, rejection of “contaminated” mixed society, subordination or displacement of existing populations, and civilizational necessity framing.

Peter Thiel and his associated network exhibit these characteristics. Thiel has expressed anti-democratic views, stating that ‘democracy interferes with true freedom.’ Thiel has pursued territorial sovereignty projects including charter cities and expressed interest in Greenland acquisition. The ACTS 17 Collective uses Acts 17:26 scripture in its organizational framework. Thiel and associated figures have criticized San Francisco’s governance as failed. Thiel’s broader network invests in alternative governance infrastructure through cryptocurrency, private education, and defense technology companies like Palantir and Anduril. Thiel positioned JD Vance in government through political funding and mentorship.

What ACTS 17 Actually Does

The Acts 17 Collective apparently promote Nazism, not to be confused with The Acts 17 Apologetics who publish anti-Islam content and inflammatory rhetoric.

The organization presents as Christian networking for tech leaders “wrestling with what it means to live with purpose and conviction.”

Its actual function is providing theological legitimation for oligarchic territoriality.

By hosting Thiel’s “sold out” apocalyptic carnival selling fear of “Antichrist legionnaires,” ACTS 17 vaulted speaker has framed democratic oversight as cosmic evil, as if to provide divine sanction for elite sovereignty, by weaponizing Acts 17:26 “boundaries” theology for ideological cohesion among tech elites. It’s hard to say this is anything but a mask for territorial ambitions in thick religious appeals.

This is precisely how fascist ideology gets transmitted across generations: the core remains constant (superior people deserve sovereign space) while packaging is adapted to the latest mystical power juice (from racial pseudo-science to biblical exegesis).

The Multigenerational Project

Klaus Thiel spent his life fleeing democratic accountability through migration to territories with legally-sanctioned hierarchy.

Peter Thiel is systematizing this impulse through institutional capture via defense tech and political placement; territorial acquisition through charter cities and compounds; ideological transmission through ACTS 17 and Vance mentorship; infrastructure building through Palantir surveillance and crypto sovereignty; and philosophical legitimation through Schmitt, Yarvin, and scripture.

This isn’t opportunistic. This is apocalyptic, destructive.

It’s the continuation of fascist ideology through adapted institutional forms, using theological language to avoid acknowledging what they actually seek: the end of democratic accountability and the establishment of sovereign elite enclaves organized on hierarchical principles.

Demand a Stand

Historical analytics demands we name patterns accurately. When a man whose father fled denazification builds surveillance technology for authoritarian regimes; studies Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt; explicitly rejects democracy; funds territorial “exit” strategies; uses scripture historically weaponized for apartheid; positions protégés to dismantle democratic governance; and hosts lectures framing democratic critics as apocalyptic enemies—calling this “libertarianism” or “contrarianism” isn’t analysis.

It’s evasion. It’s information warfare.

It’s certainly not the first time a white supremacist went around saying critics of AI are the real killers, not the horrible people creating the AI.

Source: My presentation at MindTheSec 2021

And look how that prediction turned out.

Don’t allow another goose step.

The ACTS 17 Collective appears in proper context to function as a Nazi front, a Lebensraum organization. The evidence is overwhelming, documented, and stated in their man’s own words.

The only question is whether we have the clarity today, to recognize in 2025 what people said could be seen in 1932 (let alone 2012).

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are simply the continuation of their family Nazi aspirations, to reframe “Der Silicon Valley” of the 1930s into 1950s apartheid “technologists”, seizing political power after losing WWII on the battle fields. The 1980s fall of South Africa has spawned their 2020s efforts to take over America.

Related Reading

“Trickle Down” Myth Destroyed by Direct Cash Transfers to Poor

Trickle-down economics argues that giving money/tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations will benefit everyone as they invest and spend, creating jobs and economic growth that eventually “trickles down” to poorer people.

It’s nonsense, and chokes the economy. Money circulates more effectively when it starts by filling the bottom.

A direct cash transfer approach does the opposite of trickle-down and has recently posted incredible benefits. For every dollar directly given to poor families, the local GDP rose by $2.50, a remarkable economic multiplier.

A study published in August by the National Bureau of Economic Research which looked at the impact of unconditional cash transfers found that they reduced infant mortality by 48% and under-five mortality by 45% in rural Kenya – effects rivalling those of vaccines or antimalarial drugs. The study looked at the period between 2014 and 2017 when the NGO GiveDirectly sent payments of up to $1,000 (£740) to 10,500 households in more than 650 villages in Kenya.

“The problem with big aid organisations is that their approach is based on training and advice,” says Miriam Laker-Oketta, a Ugandan doctor and senior research adviser at GiveDirectly. “They tell people what to do and how to spend their money. But whether in Uganda, Yemen, India or the US, direct cash support has shown that when people living in poverty receive money, they know best what matters to them, and they invest in that.”

Rather than waiting for theoretical benefits to “trickle down” through multiple economic layers being centralized by a few elites, the effects of direct cash to the poor are direct and measurable. Nobody should argue with a 48% reduction in infant mortality, and doubled business revenues for local shopkeepers.

The economic logic is straightforward: poor families have a marginal propensity to consume near 100% – they spend almost everything they receive immediately in their local economy. Wealthy individuals and corporations, by contrast, have vastly more options to save, invest offshore, or hold assets that don’t circulate locally – exactly what we’ve observed in practice for decades.

What makes this particularly compelling is the comparison to medical interventions. When unconditional cash transfers rival vaccines and antimalarial drugs in reducing child mortality, it reveals something profound: poverty itself is often the underlying condition that makes other critical interventions less effective.

Peter Thiel’s “Antichrist” Struggle: Nazism Dressed as Religion

People are asking me questions about the recent unhinged rants of political extremist Peter Thiel, setup by the Acts 17 Collective.

The Acts 17 Collective apparently promote Nazism, not to be confused with The Acts 17 Apologetics who publish anti-Islam content and inflammatory rhetoric.

What do I think?

Thiel is clearly backwards and ignorant, inverting history.

The real Luddites, for example, were technology experts who opposed undemocratic deployment that stripped workers of power and dignity. His depiction of them was completely wrong. Thiel himself opposes democratic oversight of technology deployment because elites like himself gain from being above the law.

The reasons for his false telling of history should be obvious.

When he calls critics “legionnaires of the Antichrist,” he’s not making an economic argument. It’s a worldview shaped by his father’s lifelong flight from democratic accountability. Getting all dressed up in religious language is a simple trick to seem profound and hide their authoritarian desires.

Once again his rants sound like the son of a Nazi still denying history, on the run from accountability, because that’s exactly who Thiel is.

Consider Peter’s life story of his father fleeing denazification in 1967 Germany for apartheid Namibia, then fleeing approaching majority rule in 1977 for Reagan’s vision of white rule over California. Peter himself bragged at Stanford that apartheid “works” and is “economically sound,” referring to his father’s illegal uranium mining operation where Black workers died from radiation exposure while white managers enjoyed country club privileges.

Most revealing is Thiel’s resentment toward the very accountability mechanisms designed to document horrible crimes and prevent their return. When directly asked about Nazi accountability he openly expressed nostalgia for summary executions over due process:

I think there was certainly a lot of different perspectives on what should be done with the Nuremberg trials. It was sort of the US that pushed for the Nuremberg trials. The Soviet Union just wanted to have show trials. I think Churchill just wanted summary executions of 50,000 top Nazis without a trial. And I don’t like the Soviet approach, but I wonder if the Churchill one would have actually been healthier than the American one.

The Nuremberg trials created an undeniable historical record, established international law for crimes against humanity, and built the framework for holding authoritarian regimes accountable.

Thiel argues it would have been “healthier” to execute Nazis quickly without trials because that would avoid creating exactly the documentary evidence and legal precedents that prevent fascist ideology from being laundered across generations.

Given his father’s 1967 flight from denazification, this isn’t abstract philosophy. It’s personal resentment of the accountability framework that threatens to expose what he represents.

The illegal apartheid uranium mining background is especially chilling given the current push for unfettered AI development. Same pattern: extract maximum value, externalize the risks onto vulnerable populations, resist any democratic input.

This isn’t intellectual contrarianism, because it’s simply Nazism.

Once you see the multigenerational fascist ideology underneath his Silicon Valley success, you see exactly why someone who studied Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt explicitly rejects democracy as incompatible with his vision of the future. The continuation from his father’s laundering of Nazism means he wields enormous influence over American politics while the genealogy remains conveniently masked-even as he maneuvers pawns like JD Vance into positions to end democracy.

Floppy Copy Party at Cambridge

Floppy “experts” are standing by at Cambridge to copy your floppy.

On the afternoon of Thursday 9 October, Cambridge University Library are hosting a floppy disk workshop where experts will attempt to copy the data from your floppy disk onto a modern format.

We can handle most common floppy disk types and systems, but there are a few limitations, and we require you to book a slot in advance. This ensures we have the right equipment ready for your disk and can give each one the best possible chance of being read.

The experts will aim to look at one floppy disk per person.

They make magnetic media sound so exciting and exotic. I have a lot of them, so the idea of a single slot that has to be booked in advance sounds very… retro. You would think by 2025 someone could show up to a copy party with more than a single floppy at a time. They also describe the formats as if varied or extensive, when just 5.25 and 3.5 are coming, because nobody is going to show up with an 8.