There just isn’t enough ‘masculine energy’ in the world, according to the (male) billionaire co-founder of a software company benefitting from massive government contracts.
The masculine energy has been lacking even despite Trump becoming president, again. And even still, since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg put on a chunky gold chain to appear on the Joe Rogan podcast and declare that good workplace cultures “celebrate the aggression”.
Palantir CEO Joe Lonsdale took to the social media platform X on Friday to note that “our society needs balance. It’s time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable.”
To help demonstrate the Make Masculinity Great Again agenda, Lonsdale has also called for public hangings, stating that if he happens to be in charge of things at some point in the future, public executions will be swift and immediate.
“If I’m in charge later, we won’t just have a three-strikes law. We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others,” he said.
Lonsdale is worth around US$3.6 billion, according to Forbes. He founded Palantir alongside Peter Thiel, and started his career as an intern at Paypal, founded by Thiel and Elon Musk.
He shared his world domination plans as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was copping public backlash online for boasting about sinking “another narco-boat” (and murdering those on board).
Lonsdale’s vision for the future is just the latest in a lineup of dystopian fantasies being publicly shared by the tech broliarchy.
Peter Thiel recently offered an apocalyptic dream of destroying democracy and humanity in a bid to rid the world of “the antichrist”, which seems to be anyone and anything from anti-AI regulation to Greta Thunberg.
Another Palantir co-founder, Alex Karp, proudly told investors in February that the company can help the government “kill” and “scare” perceived enemies. Palantir has also been accused of creating the tools for the Trump administration to create a surveillance state and harass and spy on those who oppose it.
Just last week, Karp has declared he’s undeterred by media criticism of his company, because he has the affection of millions of American men. “You know who does like me? About 10 million people — primarily dudes — in this country,” he told The New York Times’ Dealbook Summit. “And you know what? I’m gonna use my whole influence to make sure this country stays sceptical of migration and has a deterrent capacity that it only uses selectively.”
These fantasies are as childish and immature as they are disturbing, but they’re becoming more radical and more frequent in support of Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rule.
For the men of Palantir and other dominant tech firms, these fantasies go beyond ambition to stay close to the president’s power and source of government contracts – extending into messiah-like beliefs in themselves to save the world according to their own warped values. They’re propped up by an army of sycophant supporters who work for and financially benefit from their tech bro masters, alongside the perceived “millions of dudes” (many of which are bots) who follow them.