To understand Thiel, I think you have to look at how he is a dark inversion of his philosophical mentor, Rene Girard.
Girard's primary thesis is that human desires are imitative, but we refuse to acknowledge this through a repeated, romantic lie about how our desires for an "object" are authentic vs. being rooted in imitation of another. This dissonance leads to periodic eruptions of violence that are themselves too imitative and escalatory, and which are only resolved through redirecting the violence onto a scapegoat:
"If two individuals desire the same thing, there will soon be a third, then a fourth. This process quickly snowballs. Since from the beginning desire is aroused by the other (and not by the object) the object is soon forgotten and the mimetic conflict transforms into a general antagonism. At this stage of the crisis the antagonists will no longer imitate each other's desires for an object, but each other's antagonism. They wanted to share the same object, but now they want to destroy the same enemy. So, a paroxysm of violence would tend to focus on an arbitrary victim and a unanimous antipathy would, mimetically, grow against him. The brutal elimination of the victim would reduce the appetite for violence that possessed everyone a moment before, and leaves the group suddenly appeased and calm. The victim lies before the group, appearing simultaneously as the origin of the crisis and as the one responsible for this miracle of renewed peace. He becomes sacred, that is to say the bearer of the prodigious power of defusing the crisis and bringing peace back."
Girard's solution to this problem is a kind of atheistic Christianity. It's essentially incumbent on each person acknowledge the truth of these structures in human society, The innocence and subsequent false deification of scapegoats (relative to the origin of mimetic violence), and walk away from them by modeling themselves after the example of Jesus' disciples.
What I think Thiel instead calculated using this philosophy is that scapegoats are the true origin of political and economic power in all forms. Since humans want to believe the romantic lie about the sincerity of their desires, they'll willingly accept false idols and their promise of transcendence through human sacrifice. Allying yourself with a political movement based on these principles is a path to wealth and power.
By the way, this is Girard's definition of Satanism.
Girard's primary thesis is that human desires are imitative, but we refuse to acknowledge this through a repeated, romantic lie about how our desires for an "object" are authentic vs. being rooted in imitation of another. This dissonance leads to periodic eruptions of violence that are themselves too imitative and escalatory, and which are only resolved through redirecting the violence onto a scapegoat:
"If two individuals desire the same thing, there will soon be a third, then a fourth. This process quickly snowballs. Since from the beginning desire is aroused by the other (and not by the object) the object is soon forgotten and the mimetic conflict transforms into a general antagonism. At this stage of the crisis the antagonists will no longer imitate each other's desires for an object, but each other's antagonism. They wanted to share the same object, but now they want to destroy the same enemy. So, a paroxysm of violence would tend to focus on an arbitrary victim and a unanimous antipathy would, mimetically, grow against him. The brutal elimination of the victim would reduce the appetite for violence that possessed everyone a moment before, and leaves the group suddenly appeased and calm. The victim lies before the group, appearing simultaneously as the origin of the crisis and as the one responsible for this miracle of renewed peace. He becomes sacred, that is to say the bearer of the prodigious power of defusing the crisis and bringing peace back."
Girard's solution to this problem is a kind of atheistic Christianity. It's essentially incumbent on each person acknowledge the truth of these structures in human society, The innocence and subsequent false deification of scapegoats (relative to the origin of mimetic violence), and walk away from them by modeling themselves after the example of Jesus' disciples.
What I think Thiel instead calculated using this philosophy is that scapegoats are the true origin of political and economic power in all forms. Since humans want to believe the romantic lie about the sincerity of their desires, they'll willingly accept false idols and their promise of transcendence through human sacrifice. Allying yourself with a political movement based on these principles is a path to wealth and power.
By the way, this is Girard's definition of Satanism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard