Iron Sky: Peter Thiel and the Rise of Gay Space Fascism

It’s over. 

Such was the final admission of political theorist Francis Fukuyama in a recent column for the Financial Times, in which he surveyed the permanent and likely irrevocable damage done to the liberal order by Donald Trump’s stunning triumph in the 2024 Presidential election. 

The man who is single-handedly the most responsible for the narrative construct that has ungirdled the liberal triumphalism of the post-Cold War era has thrown in the towel. 

His famous ‘End of History’ story was false from the beginning, a ‘noble lie’ which he created as a necessary mythology by which newly empowered liberal elites could narrate the story of their own power in an emotionally and intellectually satisfying way.

In an echo of Marxism's 'science’ of dialectic materialism, by which history is explained as the natural working out of impersonal laws, Fukuyama posited that western liberalism was the final stage of human development, and an inevitable one at that. This was allegedly so for both material and spiritual reasons. No other system, argued Fukuyama, could result in such material abundance, allowing liberalism to inevitably outcompete any and all of its potential rivals in both the economic and military domains. Likewise, no other system allowed so many individuals to achieve their spiritual self-actualization so completely—what Fukuyama called, again borrowing from Hegel, the drive for 'thymos’ or recognition. 

The only problem? None of it was true. While Fukuyama’s liberalism did allow nations to radically increase their level of consumption and topline GDP numbers, it also gutted their manufacturing base, a process that led to social decay amongst the western middle classes as well as the castration of their defense industries, making them simply unable to meaningfully compete in conflicts with peer adversaries. In addition, while liberalism vastly expanded the scope of its citizens’ personal and sexual freedom, the cost to many was the obliteration of community life along with any kind of greater sense of metaphysical meaning. The resulting epidemic of mass atomization, loneliness, and ennui have eaten through western societies like an acid, a story compellingly illustrated in recent years in the fiction of Michel Houellebecq.

But that’s all over now. The ‘arc of history’ that liberals insisted inevitably bent ‘toward justice’ turns out to have been little more than a transparent fantasy, a bedtime story they told themselves to scare away the boojums as the darkness closed in, vise-like, around their necks.

In recent years, it has become somewhat cliche amongst students of end-stage liberalism to observe that while we can see the end of this age, we cannot yet fully make out the contours of what comes next.

This was largely true, until November fifth that is. Thanks to President Donald Trump’s victory and the rise of the tech elite that powered it, we now can say with confidence what comes after progressive liberalism in the United States. It is a compelling new ideology that will serve as the guiding light for America’s new elite class in the years and decades to come: Gay Space Fascism.

A potent mixture of technophilic transhumanism, social traditionalism (within limits), and Nietzschean vitalism, the rise of Gay Space Fascism can ultimately be traced back to one man: Peter Thiel.

In fact, it is less than a secret at this point that the vast majority of the American Right, at least the part worth having, is, in one way or another, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Thiel and his various networks of influence.

Thiel and his ambassadors were instrumental in kickstarting the growth of the early Alt-Right in 2015 and 2016. Thiel himself was so interested in the nascent movement that he took the risk of personally meeting in secret with one of its most prolific and extreme leaders in the run up to the 2016 election (an act which, at the time, carried enormous risks).

In the wake of that movement’s self-immolation in 2017, Thiel and his allies at the Claremont Institute and throughout the broader intellectual right-wing ecosystem began the process of carefully reconstructing it. 

This ideological necromancy gave birth to today’s so-called ‘Dissident’ or ‘New’ Right. An entirely new movement similar to the old alt-right in its focus on the genetic and IQ differences between races and its Nietzschean critiques of liberal society but jettisoning the old alt-right’s bizarre and off-putting optics in exchange for a kulak-friendly embrace of traditional American symbols and mythos. Additionally, the alt-right's anti-semitism was traded in and replaced by an earnest, almost militant, embrace of Israel and its Zionist social and political project. A project which is now touted as a model worthy of emulation by far-right forces in the United States.

This new dispensation began with Michael Anton’s decision to promote the now famous ‘Bronze Age Pervert’ in the pages of The Claremont Review of Books, a move which resulted in a remarkable synthesis between the forces of traditional conservatism and the remnants of the old alt-right. The hybrid vigor was undeniable, and the energy that was then unleashed led to a remarkable growth in the movement in the subsequent years. 

Perhaps the most crucial moment in the growth of the dissident right in the years since was its acquisition of the popular then-socialist ‘Red Scare’ podcasters Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan. Though initially an odd pairing (both hosts were exactly the kind of opinionated middle-aged women the online right had long preached hatred and contempt for), the new recruits managed to even further supercharge the movement, bestowing it with a new sheen of genuine coolness and even going so far birthing its own social scene in the form of the now (in)famous ‘Dimes Square’ (with non-insignificant financial assistance from Thiel and his network, it should be noted).

This final move likely succeeded beyond even Thiel’s most optimistic projections, coinciding as it did with the surge and popularity of podcasts as a medium. A fact that appears to have now contributed significantly to a shocking kind of far-right cultural revolution that culminated in the reelection of Donald Trump in 2024.

This story now brings us to the heart of matter: what Thiel himself actually wants and believes.

Thiel is the most important man in the anglophone right, and it’s not a close contest. As Tyler Cowen, the sage of the Koch funded Mercatus Center, observed: “Who is today the most influential conservative intellectual with other conservative and libertarian intellectuals?...It seems obvious to me that this is Peter Thiel.”

Cowen’s line from this particular conversation has been quoted before in other pieces on Thiel, however, what has gotten far less attention are the remarks he made to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, in a separate conversation on the same subject.

Cowen pointed out that much of Thiel’s ‘teaching,’ such as it is, exists purely on the “Straussian plane,” (by the “Straussian plane” here Cowen simply means the oblique, coded, and indirect way of speaking favored by Leo Strauss, one of Thiel's primary influences).

“And if thus more powerful,” Cowen added.

“…maybe the ideas are most powerful in the Straussian realm, where notions are hinted at, and you have to put the pieces together for yourself.” Cowen continued shortly after in the same exchange.

“There’s a certain power to all of the ideas not being fully spelled out, and they also can evolve more freely in a dynamic way, which reflects the dynamism,” he concluded.

Of course, attempting to see through Thiel’s cipher is fraught with all the hazards inherent, by design, in the Straussian method itself. Not the least of which being the almost unassailable fallback position of plausible deniability it tends to grant its practitioners, thus frequently making pinning down exactly what Thiel means in all cases almost impossible. 

The problem is that Thiel leaves clues for close readers—too many clues, as it turns out. So much so that it actually isn’t that difficult to suss out the implications of his political project with a little work.

Sadly, performing a full textual exegesis of Thiel’s writings is beyond the scope of a short essay. However, a far simpler approach that can shed almost as much light is simply to look at exactly what Thiel has built and see exactly what ideas are being put forward most consistently. 

While Thiel’s network of allied influencers is quite expansive and Thiel’s own personal views are by no means fully identical with most, if not all, of them, there are certain themes that are promoted over and over by the personalities Thiel and his network associate with.

It’s actually quite shocking how much figures as diverse as Bronze Age Pervert, Curtis Yarvin, Richard Hanania, and Simone and Malcolm Collins (to name only a few of the more prominent members of Thiel’s vast influencer network) agree on considering their various idiosyncratic focuses and obsessions, and that in and of itself is quite significant.

Firstly, there seems to be a general consensus regarding sexuality, which expresses itself in a general opposition to both woke liberal shibboleths as well as traditional Christian ones. Though all these figures would likely agree on the social utility of religion and its sexual teaching for controlling the worst instincts of the masses, they all oppose any attempt to impose such morality on the creative and vibrant elite strata (what Hanania refers to as ‘Elite Human Capital’) of their ideal society (which it is assumed they themselves are a part of). For the coming dispensation’s elite aristocracy, there will be few restraints; almost anything goes: from BAP’s admiration for the bodies of young boys to Thiel’s documented history of taking ‘kept’ male lovers and birthing children via surrogate (documented in Chafkin’s biography of Thiel, The Contrarian) to the Collinses' obsession with performing eugenic selection on their own embryos in order to create genetically superior offspring.

Indeed perhaps one of the most significant changes to the Republican party since 2016 has been its sudden shift on both gay marriage and abortion. Pre-2016 the party officially opposed both, but since Trump’s ascendency has now officially switched 180 degrees on both issues, becoming simultaneously pro-gay marriage and pro-choice. A fact which Thiel, as the first openly gay man to speak at a GOP convention, played no small role in. 

This cultural revolution has also trickled down, with important organizations like The Daily Wire and The Claremont Institute now being openly affirming of homosexuality and gay marriage, with both of them employing and vigorously promoting Spencer Klavan, a charismatic, young conservative intellectual who is married to a man and has been relatively open about his sexual orientation. This is actually a major development for both The Daily Wire, long seen as a bastion of traditional GOP social conservatism, and The Claremont Institute—whose intellectual lodestar, Harry Jaffa, once wrote a detailed, natural-law based argument condemning homosexuality. It marks a significant break with traditional American conservatism. 

Most fascinating of all is that Klavan, a well read and eloquent scholar himself, has been promoted by both organizations as an expert on conservative Christianity, in what appears to be an attempt to create a new hybrid version of the faith that is simultaneously “traditional” and queer affirming.

As Jeff Giesea, the well known gay Thiel associate and early backer of the Alt-Right noted in a Substack article reflecting on his own child’s birth via surrogate:

This was in early December, and the Madonna made me think of Christmas, the time of year when we celebrate the birth of Jesus. As I studied the relief, a realization struck me like football stadium lights turning on at night. For the first time in my life, I internalized how Jesus was born. Words took shape in my mind: Jesus, the divine surrogate child.

The second consensus is an agreement on adopting a generally technophile outlook (whether implicitly or explicitly expressed). While certain innovations may be more or less desirable depending on their observed performances and ability to contribute to the development of a new Uberman, technology that advances this goal is always to be at least heavily considered, if not always completely fully embraced. Everything from neural implants to advanced AI, radical life extension technology, genetic engineering, and eugenics (both positive and negative forms) are to be promoted.

Aside from his aforementioned personal connection to it, Thiel has also invested significantly in companies offering surrogacy services as well as genetic screening of unborn children. Screenings for which there is only one real use: to allow the selection of those with traits deemed to be desirable and for the liquidation of those without them.

Lastly, we come to the overwhelming rejection of liberal democracy. This is by far the most obvious and well documented of Gay Space Fascism’s implicit and explicit tenants and the one that enjoys the most wide agreement among its devotees, to the point of being almost too self-evident to debate.

Although only having come into its own in recent years, via the direct management and promotion of Thiel himself, today’s Gay Space Fascism resembles nothing if not the utopia envisioned by the now largely forgotten far-right thinker of France’s Nouvelle Droite movement, Guillaume Faye. A movement, it should be noted, that Thiel is almost certainly quite familiar with, as he himself wrote a book blurb in 2018 promoting a collection of essays by the famous ND thought leader Alain de Benoist (and if one is familiar with de Benoist, one is also almost certainly familiar with Faye.)

In his now classic and, in many ways, prophetic work 'Archeofuturism,’ Faye both takes aim at the dying world of Western liberalism while also simultaneously painting a haunting vision of what comes next: 

A society that, after having relegated the values of the dead world of enlightenment liberalism to the dustbin of history, has moved on and, in the process, gone simultaneously both forward and backward, embracing many pre-modern virtues while also accepting the benefits of advanced technology. 

Faye dreamt of a world that was able to grow after an inevitable “convergence of catastrophes” due to environmental, economic, and social pressures that eviscerated the old liberal civilization. A vision, which he outlines in great detail at the end of ‘Archeofuturism,’ in a section entitled ‘A Chronicle of Archeofuturist Times.’ In he sketches a new world in which a small elite, specially bred and genetically engineered to be superior, enjoy the fruits of a technologically advanced globe-spanning civilization. Faye’s Ubermensch, comprising only a small percentage of earth’s population, travel at lightning speeds between shining cities of the future while enjoying almost unbelievable luxuries and witnessing technological wonders, from electromagnetically suspended airships to globe-spanning high-speed rail systems to ongoing Martian colonization to the development of human-animal chimeras for the production of spare organs and body parts. Meanwhile, most of the population lives on in the hinterlands, having regressed to the much more primitive state of technological and societal development to which their genetically and intellectually inferior personages are naturally more suited.

This vision is the exact same one shared by Thiel and his network, who after years of careful planning have now come within a hair’s breadth of the absolute power and control they have desired for so long. And with progressive liberalism now discredited and exhausted, paralyzed by its own corruption, internal contradictions, and simple inability to effectively govern there is little that stands in their way.

Thiel’s official net worth is currently estimated to be somewhere around the 15 billion dollar mark. Over the next four years this number is likely to easily triple or quadruple. Especially in light of the fact that much of it is now tied up in his company Palantir and other related defense contractors like Anduril, who will have no shortage of business now that Trump is in power and has already appointed many of Thiel’s close allies to key positions within the administration. Furthermore the Trump administration’s bellicosity toward China and Iran, which could easily spill out into open war in the years ahead, represents another potentially limitless gold mine for Thiel’s defense companies, who will all be at the forefront of such conflicts (and the financial windfalls which go along with them).

Already Palantir and Anduril are reportedly in talks with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Sam Altman’s OpenAI to form a consortium to cooperatively bid for new defense contracts. A move which will solidify Thiel and his allies as a foundational and indispensable part of the U.S. defense industry, and thus also a de facto shadow government and “deep state” unto themselves. One which could remain in power indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of any future U.S. elections.

And, now, having finally seized power, all that now remains is for them to carry out their vision, as Faye advised: “The enemy is no longer outside but inside the City, and the ruling ideology, paralysed, is incapable of spotting him. It stammers, overcome by its own moral disarmament, and is giving up: this is the time to seize the reins!”

You will live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.