>thiel (as someone who likes him and his ideas)

It blows my mind the opinions that people can have.

Did the same. Summarizing the summary:

René Girard’s ideas about mimetic theory of desire and scapegoating are being misappropriated and distorted by Thiel, who participated in Girard’s Stanford study group, and Vance, who didn’t.

Girard’s core concept is that human desires are imitative, leading to rivalry and conflict, which societies historically resolve through scapegoating, unifying around the victim to restore order. Girard believed the Judeo-Christian tradition exposes and challenges this mechanism, fostering awareness and rejection of violence. Both Vance and Thiel twist these ideas.

Vance claims to have learned from Girard to avoid scapegoating but then engages in scapegoating immigrants.

Thiel interprets Girard’s ideas to support a worldview rooted in conflict, rivalry, and the necessity of decisive, often authoritarian action. Thiel’s 2004 essay “The Straussian Moment” reveals his fascination with figures like Carl Schmitt and Strauss, advocating for a post-liberal order that recognizes human violence, promotes elite control, and considers dismantling democratic norms.

Thiel’s use of esoteric, Straussian techniques allows him to hide radical intentions beneath a veneer of philosophical caution. Thiel’s interpretation of key concepts, such as the friend/enemy distinction, reveals a tendency to conflate external enemies with internal moral questions, leading to a dangerous cycle of escalation and dehumanization. His admiration for Schmitt’s political theology, combined with his hostility toward political correctness and victim culture, underscores a worldview that seeks to simplify human nature into inherently violent terms, often dismissing Girard’s more nuanced view of mimetic desire as fundamentally good and capable of positive development.

Thiel’s true political aim is a move toward a post-democratic, authoritarian order aligned with Spengler’s fatalism. His fascination with “Caesarism” and rejection of liberal institutions suggest he envisions a society governed by strong, charismatic leaders, bypassing constitutional checks, which is an outcome that Girard’s theories warn could lead to chaos and violence.

Overall, Thiel and Vance’s use of Girard’s ideas is shown to be a form of intellectual manipulation, serving their ambitions for power and societal transformation under the guise of philosophical insight.

Thiel actively attributes his entrepreneurial success to Girard’s ideas. I don’t disagree it would be nice to have less explicitly political topics but the reality is that the ideas of those who historically are the discussion of HN, Silicon Valley, and tech in general are ascendant in politics. It doesn’t strike me as off topic to critically evaluate those ideas.

How can this be avoided when the tech companies themselves, as well as their founders, are engaging in political agitprop? Of course Peter Thiel has been very active in politics for a long time. In fact the whole "PayPal mafia" is now. Elon Musk was the largest campaign contributor in the 2024 elections and has become a political appointee of sorts in the US government. Not to mention his acquisition of Twitter. Jeff Bezos acquired The Washington Post and has undermined its editorial independence. There are many other examples I could list.

The days of obscure geeks are long gone. The "geeks" have inherited the Earth. Tech has eaten the world. With great power comes great responsibility... or irresponsibility, as the case may be.

Sad seeing people not recognizing that this is actually the kind of topics that HN is not shy about. The site is for "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", so critiquing someone for using the knowledge that come from that pursue, to weaponize it must be discussed. As the other commenter points out, Girard's tesis is used for political convenience. Also, if anyone saw Girad's work as apolitical, I don't think the understanding of the work was acquired.

Could it be Peter Thiel doesn't know how to generate love. What does he or anyone similar then do when love is suggested as a solution to complexity?

misuse is the central point...

> 2. "B" interpreted "X" as "Y" and used that as a guide to action.

This is missing something essential: did B correctly or incorrectly interpret X as Y?

The argument is that if B had correctly interpreted X, and used X as a guide to action, then B's actions would have been quite different from what they are.

It would be strange to say, "Who cares about what Jesus said? We're only interested in what contemporary Christians are doing." It's strange because contemporary Christians themselves claim that they are following Jesus and care what Jesus said. If they've grossly misinterpreted Jesus, then that's a legitimate criticism of their beliefs and actions.

Then how are we supposed to discuss these kinds of misinterpretations then? The central point is that Girard was proposing that a maxim like "protection of the victims" was used to dispense violence against the innocent, to then someone using that as a template to further the violence against the innocent, by portraying some kind of in-group victim (usually, the victim is the same that dispenses the violence).