The Technological Republic of Palantir Needs Reactionary Thought to Self-Justify

The Technological Republic of Palantir Needs Reactionary Thought to Self-Justify

By Alessandra Ciattini

Various journalistic sources from both the right and the left have commented in recent days on the "Manifesto" published by Palantir Technologies. Some have correctly judged it to be a political manifesto, one that outlines a new conception of society embodied in a particular trajectory of digital capitalism, leading to what some have already called "technological slavery." The projects of the Palantir corporation clearly demonstrate how baseless the claim of the neutrality of science and technology truly is, since both are always developed and constructed according to specific political and social objectives. This is the same claim that resurfaced during the period of vaccines used to combat the recent pandemic, producing a simplistic division between pro-vax and anti-vax positions, a matter that today deserves calm and balanced discussion.

For those unfamiliar with it, "Palantir" – a word appearing in The Lord of the Rings meaning "those who watch from afar" – is a major technology company whose products are used in systems of repression and human rights violations. Alongside Palantir, the various Big Tech corporations engage in these activities as well. Palantir has at least two formal condemnations to its name: one from Amnesty International and another from Human Rights Watch.

It is hardly surprising that this company, launched by billionaires belonging to the far right, maintains close relations with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, all implicated in the same espionage activities. It has collaborated with them by supplying data to the Israeli army to devastate Gaza and exterminate Palestinians, by assisting ICE in accelerating the capture of immigrants targeted for deportation, and by helping arrest participants in the major protests in Minneapolis.

The aforementioned manifesto, also presented in Rome by Peter Thiel on March 26, outlines a project for a digital fascist alliance that employs artificial intelligence to analyze the data we ourselves provide for free, in order to produce tools of manipulation, combat ideological nonconformity, and keep populations under surveillance and control, precisely as power has always done once detached from social organization, albeit through different methods.

According to the writer Rezgar Akrawi, Kurdish by origin, a member of the Iraqi Communist Party, and founder of the "Electronic Left," a group aimed at advancing the left's understanding and use of modern technologies, the manifesto emerges from the alliance between far-right nationalism and the technological elites associated with the much-celebrated Silicon Valley. This understanding has unified the so-called "technological accelerationist" movement, which seeks to impose no limits – especially ethical ones – on technological innovation, and which includes all those billionaires present at the grand celebration of Trump's election, such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and others, together with the contradictory MAGA movement. As the Musk/Trump rupture revealed, the two sides do not agree on everything, but they are fully aligned in abolishing any political or legal mechanisms that place limits on capitalist accumulation, which today requires the proliferation and refinement of instruments of control.

Multiple reasons have made this choice necessary: the emergence of powers capable of competing with the transatlantic core, which over the years absorbed important countries previously outside it, such as Japan; the crisis inherent in the capitalist system due to its financial turn; the decline of profits in the productive sphere; weak control over raw materials indispensable above all to the military-industrial complex; and the hollowing out of so-called democratic systems.

Only the blind today could claim that so-called liberal democracy still exists within advanced capitalist societies, now in decline, where "the people" are supposedly meant to exercise power through their representatives. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly evident that the current transnational class – technocratic and the exclusive owner of the digital world – is openly hostile both to international law and to liberal democracy, for the simple reason that both, despite having been emptied of substance, still impose limits on its power and domination over the world. This power has for decades been concentrated in an increasingly narrow transnational oligarchy.

As we have seen recently, this oligarchy, thanks to its privileged position, continues to accumulate wealth despite the atmosphere of catastrophic crises, because it benefits from the war policies of states and because it knows how and when to speculate on the stock market, having advance knowledge of the delirious declarations of the new messiah called Donald Trump. One should not believe that these choices are merely the result of Trump's madness, though he is certainly not mentally sound. Rather, they stem from the radical contradiction between the unrestrained ambitions of this oligarchy and the principle of reality with which those ambitions must inevitably come to terms, unless it wishes to disappear together with all of us in a nuclear holocaust. This contradiction, which they seek to resolve, leads to irrationalism, just as happened in the past during another severe inter-imperialist crisis, namely the period preceding the Second World War, when entirely irrational arguments were employed to support the unquestioned domination of the upper classes, such as Friedrich Nietzsche's assertion that "slavery is necessary for every true civilization."

Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and one of Trump's financiers, belongs to the camp of supporters of "accelerationism" and the "Dark Enlightenment." He has distinguished himself by disseminating the ideological foundations of this political project identified with the new "Technological Republic," whose aim is to accelerate the development of military applications through artificial intelligence so that the United States may maintain its domination over the world.

Palantir's Manifesto, which has garnered millions of views, should be read with the aim of exposing the interests it seeks to pursue and discovering on behalf of which elite group it has been elaborated, while also taking into account that the transatlantic elites no longer possess a common objective, as demonstrated by the US/EU split. This capitalist faction, rooted in transnational corporate and financial capital, is itself waging an existential struggle, because if it cannot guarantee continuous expansion – the condition of its existence – whether through today's most absurd demands or through demands previously presented as "rights," it seriously risks being swept away.

For precisely this reason, it requires an ideological apparatus founded upon affirming inequality among human beings, the supremacy of the "Christian West," and the sacred and unquestionable role of the leader. And obviously, it can find these old ideological relics, always useful in certain circumstances, in the most genuine right-wing thought.

The principal inspirer of the Manifesto is believed to be Alexander Karp, Palantir's CEO and co-author, together with Nicholas Zamiska, of the book The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Beliefs, and the Future of the West (2025), which he considers a new form of social organization suited to the era of the digital revolution.

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The 22 Points of the Manifesto

The Manifesto consists of 22 points, some of which appear tolerant and moderate, such as those speaking of respect and understanding, but only toward politicians, who are not supposed to be criticized, naturally in order to preserve their political and moral supremacy intact. The obvious aim of such statements is to place politicians on a pedestal, rendering them immune from the loss of credibility and contempt aroused, for example, by the Epstein affair, which has still not led to serious investigations into those responsible and their miserable appendages. This concept is repeated in point nine, which states that we should show greater clemency toward those devoted to public life. Here reappears the theme beloved by twentieth-century irrationalism: the abyssal difference between aristocracy and the masses.

I will limit myself to commenting on only a few points of this disturbing Manifesto. The first point contains the following statement:

"The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has a moral obligation to participate in national defense."

It is immediately evident that when one invokes a "moral duty," and in this case even the defense of the "homeland," objections cannot be tolerated, there is no room for dissent, and all scientists must enlist in this insane battle.

Point five states instead that:

"The question is not whether AI-based weapons will be built, but who will build them,"

thus taking for granted that only one path exists: that of the military and aggressive option. They clearly tell us that no other options exist, as can also be inferred from the following sixth point, which reiterates that military service must be compulsory and universal. This is precisely the direction toward which many European countries are moving, above all Germany, which seeks to construct the largest army in Europe, perhaps comparable to the one once launched in pursuit of "living space."

Unfortunately for them, and above all for us, this frustrated and delirious ruling class does not understand that waging war – permitted under international law only in the case of aggression – requires an industrial and financial potential that neither the European Union collectively nor even the United States possesses. And when I use this expression, I refer not only to technical means and crude money, but also and above all to the so-called "human material," which is finally beginning to understand what lies behind the concepts of "homeland" and "national security": namely, the spectacular enrichment of a few, the subordination of enemies who are not ours but theirs, and the tight control of the population in order first to convince it to sacrifice itself, renouncing "superfluous" things so that scarce resources can be directed toward military investments, and later to provide the indispensable cannon fodder.

We are speaking of populations partly raised within the so-called "consumer society," accustomed to following their fleeting desires and avoiding every form of discipline, whom they now wish to send to fight in the mud carrying fifty-kilogram backpacks, without real determination and devoid of any "warrior spirit," the absence of which some lament in prestigious newspapers.

This operation requires not only violent coercion but also the creation of subtle consent with the assistance of the mass media and its figures. Moreover, it is no coincidence that Palantir pressures everyone to enlist in their battle, because the corporation itself will earn billions from the reintroduction of compulsory military service. As Akrawi writes:

"Duty for everyone, profit for the few."

Point eight is particularly illuminating, sketching the contours of a slave society when it declares:

"Public employees should not be our priesthood. Any company that compensated its employees the way the federal government compensates public workers would struggle to survive,"

that is, it would struggle to guarantee the desired profits.

Another significant point is point twelve, which declares that the age of deterrence and the atomic age are approaching their end, making way for a new era of deterrence based on artificial intelligence, the control of which will lie in the hands of the proponents of the Manifesto – fortunately not entirely.

Points thirteen and fourteen are truly unbearable. Who can claim that no country in world history has promoted progressive values more than the United States? Or that the United States has offered greater opportunities to fortune seekers than any other country? And then comes the most blatant lie of all:

"American power has made an extraordinarily long peace possible."

Yes, apart from the wars it unleashed across every continent, from Korea to Iran; apart from the policies of "creative chaos," fragmentation, destabilization even within Europe, and class war against workers and migrants. According to some acceptable estimates, the wars resulting from US policy since the end of the Second World War have caused 40 million deaths, without even counting the victims of sanctions, resource plunder, the wounded, the mutilated, and those forced into migration.

One may say that the United States has attacked only those countries incapable of responding forcefully, unlike what Iran is doing now, and even in those cases it has failed to achieve victory. Nor did it launch direct war against the Soviet Union, despite constantly provoking it.

Point seventeen of the Manifesto states that:

"Silicon Valley must play an important role in addressing violent crime,"

thereby strongly reaffirming the use of violence against those perceived as criminals, as seen in the tragic case of the Palestinian people.

But there is more. Just as Trump did with his personal peace council, the Technological Republic aspires openly to place the coercive role of the state into private hands, even though the state itself, as we know, has never been neutral, despite politics once possessing a certain degree of autonomy until a few decades ago. We are moving from the minimal state directly to the private state, which by its nature will guarantee no rights and no protections, only the impunity of its owner.

Point twenty, which calls for respect toward religious beliefs, should not be interpreted as a defense of freedom of expression – a position contradictory to all the other points of the Manifesto – but rather as a declaration of the necessity of alliance with religious fundamentalism, whether Protestant, Catholic, Zionist, or otherwise. The reason is simple: fundamentalism is authoritarian, aggressive, and fascistic, just like technological ideology.

This essential affinity appears clearly in point twenty-one, which distinguishes between cultures that have generated vital progress and cultures that are "dysfunctional and regressive," exactly as the ideologues of colonial empires have always done.

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Capitalism, Continuity and Rupture

The contents of the Manifesto invite reflection on an entire series of extremely important questions concerning the capitalist system and its evolution. Some believe we are facing a profound rupture between the current phase, embodied in Trump, and previous capitalist phases such as neo-Keynesianism and neoliberalism, and from this reading they derive hope for a return to the previous phase, namely so-called "humane capitalism." The same approach had already been adopted in the 1960s when people began speaking of post-industrial society as opposed to the previous industrial society.

From my point of view, it is undeniable that recent decades have witnessed radical transformations, but these have taken place within a deeper continuity and represent the explosive outcome of contradictions inherent in the capitalist system, such as deindustrialization, chosen in order to reduce labor costs and, in some cases, to find disciplined and qualified workers.

In other words, we are facing a scenario very similar to that described in detail by Georg Lukács in his celebrated work The Destruction of Reason (1959 Italian edition), in which he outlines the rise and consolidation of Nazi-fascist regimes nourished by extensive philosophical literature dramatically reflecting upon the contemporary crisis of imperialism and the unavoidable threat posed to it by rival powers and the mass of workers.

Those regimes did not possess the refined instruments of surveillance, manipulation, and control available to digital capitalism today, but they made extensive use of every means at their disposal: radio, cinema, grand public rituals, and the various apparatuses of the state, from culture and education to leisure itself.

Indeed, the great turning point came when commodification no longer concerned only labor and the production of goods essential to social reproduction, but invaded all of daily life and leisure time as well, enabling the cultural industry to transform leisure itself into surplus value.

In this sense, I disagree with Rezgar Akrawi – and also with Michel Foucault, though he referred to a different era – when he argues that under digital capitalism control becomes internalized because we ourselves activate these systems of control that we have absorbed through the use of digital tools governed by algorithms unknown to us.

In my view, every system of power has always sought to internalize itself, naturally through the means available in its own era, means that were highly effective precisely because living conditions were different. The very word "propaganda" is around five hundred years old; Vance Packard's book The Hidden Persuaders, devoted to the study of psychological manipulation through advertising, was published in 1957; and Sigmund Freud already addressed subliminal persuasion in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). The examples could be endless.

All this demonstrates that coercive instruments are essential, but they cannot replace consent produced through persuasion, hidden control, and the unconscious identification of the victim with the executioner. Such results can be achieved through different means, whose effectiveness depends upon historical circumstances and context. Today, for example, excommunications by the Catholic Church would have little effect, which is why the Church refrains from proclaiming them.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, technology is not neutral. It can be developed for purposes different from those imposed by digital capitalism, for example to promote equality rather than hierarchy. If wrested from the ownership of the transnational right, it could liberate humanity from alienated labor, reorganize production to satisfy everyone's needs, and transform labor into an interesting and self-transformative activity. The first step in this direction is the abolition of private ownership of digital platforms.

Yet the aristocratic digital republic, in order to justify itself, needs reactionary thought to reaffirm its never-satisfied "will to power," a worldview that clearly reveals its true objectives.

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Translated from Italian: L'Antidiplomatico — The Technological Republic of Palantir Needs Reactionary Thought to Self-Justify
Article by Rezgar Akrawi — Libcom: The Explicit Manifesto of Digital Fascism: «Palantir» and the Alliance between Monopoly Capital and the Far Right