The Fellowship of Silicon Valley - Frodo Vance Makes the Perilous Journey With the One Ring of Power to the White House - Part 2

The rise of JD Vance and how the Lord of the Rings is influencing American politics

* In part one I looked at Vance’s rise to power and Peter Thiel’s background. Now, I will look at some of their beliefs and try to explain what has been happening. *

Rene Girard

Whilst Thiel was at Stanford University, he listened to philosopher Rene Girard speak. His lectures had a profound impact on Thiel, who often referenced Girardian analysis in his own work, especially when looking at Western social order and crises. Thiel also used Girard’s ideas to grow his companies. So what are these ideas?

Girard’s most well known idea, mimetic theory, tried to explain human behaviour and culture. He claimed that all human desire was mimetic in nature. This means that humans never create their own desires but merely copy the desires of others. We imitate the desires of others and then confuse them for our own. Desires are not based on our own choices or preferences but on societal influence.

For example, imagine a toddler entering a room full of toys. The toddler has free will to choose whatever toy he wants to play with but sees another child in the room playing with a racing car. Suddenly, the first toddler starts to mimic the second toddler and begins to desire the racing car. He thinks that out of all the toys in the room, the racing car is the one he has always preferred but in reality is merely emulating his peer.

Girard and Thiel believe that we all act like these toddlers. None of our desires are our own, merely a repetition of what we see around us. You can see how Thiel has used these ideas in companies such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Social media is constantly playing on this mimetic desire idea by making us crave the holidays, jobs or lifestyles of our friends, families and people we follow online, making Thiel and his friends very rich in the process.

But Girard takes this even further with his scapegoat mechanism. He says that mimetic desires lead to rivalries which eventually escalate into conflict. Competition over the same objects or statuses lead to violence and have done so since primitive human societies began to emerge. The only way to resolve these conflicts is with a scapegoat.

The scapegoat would be a single individual, who would often have nothing to do with the conflict, but would unite the community into blaming that person for their collective problems. The community as a whole would then murder the scapegoat which would temporarily resolve the conflict and restore peace. Because peace is restored for a while, the community is convinced that the scapegoat was actually responsible for the initial conflict. However, this conceals the underlying mimetic rivalry and the original sin of violence against an innocent person.

Often, over time, the scapegoated individual is worshipped or turned into a god and people worship the sacrifice made. However, the original sin, that peace can only arise from violence, is hidden from the masses. Mimetic desire creates violence but equally violence mimetically quells it.

Lord Of The Rings

Thiel (and maybe mimetically, Vance) is obsessed with Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of the books were filmed in New Zealand and may be one reason why Thiel’s doomsday bunker is located there.

As a result of this obsession, Thiel (and Vance) has named many of his companies after Tolkien creations.

Palantir Technologies, which was a member of the Covid-19 Health Coalition and, as discussed above, collects vast amounts of data for intelligence agencies, is named after the all-seeing stones that are used for communication and intelligence gathering in Middle-earth. Initially, palantiri (plural) were not dangerous but after one was captured by Sauron, users could be ensnared by the Dark Lord.

Valar Ventures, a venture capital fund, is named after powerful spirits who give order to the world by battling evil. They refer to each other as “brother” or “sister” (or tech bros). They became known as the “Powers of the World” and sometimes referred to as gods.

Mithril Capital, where Vance once worked, is a lightweight but immensely strong metal used as armour. The metal has the ability to both protect and be transformative at the same time.

Lembas LLC, is named after a nutritious Elven bread which is offensive to creatures corrupted by evil.

Rivendell One LLC, gets its name from an Elven stronghold. It was a refuge during the Elves’ first war with Sauron but, in the third age, became a peaceful haven.

Anduril is another company funded by Thiel. This defence technology company which manufactures unmanned swarms of suicide drones used in places such as Ukraine, is named after a sword also known as the ‘Flame of the West’. After a secret meeting to determine the fate of the One Ring, held in Rivendell, the Elves reforged the shards of another sword, Narsil, into Anduril. Narsil was used to cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand.

Narya Capital, the company founded by Vance is also a Lord of The Rings reference. Narya was one of the three rings of power originally made for Elves. This ring had the power to inspire others to resist tyranny, domination and despair, as well as having the power to hide the wielder from remote observation and giving resistance to the weariness of time.

Pulling it all together

Thiel’s “Straussian moment” occurred on 9/11, when he wondered how such an event could happen in an enlightened, liberal 21st century society. To him, Girardian mimetic theory not only explained why it had happened but why it will occur again, but this time, with nuclear weapons, on a scale like we have never seen before.

He thinks that liberals hold on to the Enlightenment view of the natural goodness of humanity whilst ignoring the history of violence that society was built on. Equally, he is of the view that conservatives believe they can contain unlimited human violence with the nation-state, even though it is rooted in this sacred violence.

I refuse to believe, that with his insider information, he still actually believes 9/11 was purely the result of a few inexperienced, jihadist pilots. He probably did at the time but it was still a defining moment for Thiel, with PayPal being the first company to announce its IPO, weeks after the 9/11 attacks and when the financial markets were still volatile with all other companies afraid to make a move.

Sticking with Tolkien references - following Thiel’s “Straussian Moment” after the tragedy of the Two Towers on 9/11 (three including building No.7), he believed worse was to come when the world learns about the truth of human history for the first time. I wonder whether here Thiel is referencing the revelation of whom was behind 9/11 or the fact that all societies are built on the original sin of violence. Perhaps both.

Either way, he wonders “whether any sort of politics will remain possible for the exceptional generation that has learned the truth”. Thiel asks, “when will this highly disturbing knowledge burst upon general awareness, render all politics impossible, and finally bring the city of man to an end?”

His fears, possibly combined with his peak oil concerns, mean that he thinks the West needs reforming quickly before it is too late. But it seems he has held onto the ring of power for too long and it has corrupted him. He has had to make a pact with the devil (the intelligence services) and in doing do, has become part of the system he hates. The ring of power must be destroyed, ensuring the establishment that it has created will collapse, but it can’t be done by him.

Instead a Fellowship of the Ring has been created, consisting of the PayPal Mafia and other tech bros. Now, with Vance, they have found the man to destroy the ring for them. A man of the people, who they think has the humility and innate goodness to resist the ring of power’s pull.

Or that’s what they want you to think. They have sculpted Vance to be this salt of the Earth character to ensure The Return of the King (Trump). Vance dressed like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, cleanly shaven with jeans, jacket and no tie before he entered the 2021 Senate race. Then, from that point on, he started wearing a full suit with a red tie and grew a beard to look stronger and more masculine. Who would you vote for, someone who looks like they’ve just fought a battle in the civil war or another rich tech bro?

As you probably know, Vance never even liked Trump. He called himself the “never-Trump guy” and called Trump “reprehensible”, “an opioid of the masses”, “noxious” and even questioned whether he was “America’s Hitler”. Then, around the time he started his venture capital firm with Thiel, his views started to change. Perhaps he just had a change of heart or perhaps the plan all along was for him to run for vice-President.

It seems that the Silicon Valley fellowship believes they are characters from The Lord of the Rings, trying to rescue humanity from an evil system which has been grappling to remove individuality. They have entrusted Vance with the Ring of Power, to take to the White House and to try to change the system. Or are they intentionally trying to collapse the system, so that they can hide in their doomsday bunkers and emerge once the Great Reset has taken its course and they can start again, creating their own Utopia?

They may have begun their journey thinking that they were rescuing humanity from the system but have ended up actually creating a possibly more dangerous nouveau-system, serving the same masters but this time with a massive range of technological powers on their side. Their fears of terrorism have created a surveillance state with safetyism that morphed into lockdowns and masks.

Thiel also wants real technological progress, seeing transhumanism as not radical enough “because it’s only seeking to transform our bodies and not our souls”. The Silicon Valley lot are obsessed with biohacking, biotech and mRNA - I wonder how much influence they had in the pandemic which ensured mRNA and biotech saw massive progress in an incredibly short time, after being tested on billions of people.

Vance has been selected so that you think he and his fellowship will destroy the ring of power and drain the swamp. But the ring won’t be destroyed, it will be passed on to new masters and the swamp will be refilled as soon as it is drained. This battle for the ring, between the old establishment and the new, is creating turmoil in the real world with crisis after crisis occurring as secret Lord of the Rings inspired battles take place.

We are in for an interesting few months before the US election in November. It seems that, as I suggested, the UK and France needed their elections out of the way to create some Western stability before Biden dropped out. Kamala Harris is clearly not popular enough to lead, so will Michele Obama or Hillary Clinton suddenly pop up to battle Trump/Vance? Whatever happens, there is an almighty battle taking place under our noses with the old establishment fighting for dear life whilst the newly forming silicon valley establishment is quickly finding its strength.