- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
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I’ll believe that Palantir employees are turning against their masters when their quiet sabotage starts crashing their company.
Palantir employees, do you want to be American heroes? Get to work destroying your company from the inside.
The company is named after the corrupting all-seeing surveillance orb from Lord of the Rings.
Wait, seriously? I thought this was a coincidence.
That would be one hell of a coincidence!
Ok, admitely.
I Work For an Evil Company, but Outside Work, I’m Actually a Really Good Person
I love my job. I make a great salary, there’s a clear path to promotion, and a never-ending supply of cold brew in the office. And even though my job requires me to commit sociopathic acts of evil that directly contribute to making the world a measurably worse place from Monday through Friday, five days a week, from morning to night, outside work, I’m actually a really good person.
Let me give you an example…
Capitalism is the art of making compliant sheeps out of middle-classniks who are afraid to lose their jobs. More specifically, they are not afraid of speaking out, or refusing orders, because that would threaten their livelihood, but because the could not afford their current lifestyle anymore.
Two weeks ago, we wrote about Palantir going mask-off for fascism, specifically about CEO Alex Karp’s company posting a 22-point manifesto that included some genuinely ugly stuff about how “certain cultures” are “regressive and harmful” and how pluralism is a “shallow temptation.” I argued that this kind of public ideological positioning was both morally bankrupt and strategically suicidal. The moral bankruptcy part should be obvious (if it’s not, go do some soul-searching). But doing so at a time when American-style fascism is historically unpopular basically everywhere, including within the US, just seems like you’ve bet on the losing team at a time when it’s clear they have no chance of coming back to win.
I keep seeing this logic that:
- If a movement is unpopular it will fail in short order
- In the US, the current fascist movement is unpopular
- Therefore it will fail soon
That may be true of a lot of movements, but fascism doesn’t work like that. They don’t need popularity, they just need control over the levers of power. The Heritage Foundation and many, many other conservative groups have been working for decades, some since the 1950s, to seize control of those levers of power.
Palantir aligning with this fascism is not nearly the clearly failing strategy the author believes it to be. There’s a very real chance they are successful for years or even decades aligning with the current fascist regime. It has a lot of momentum, and I haven’t seen good evidence that that momentum is reliably ebbing. It’s seeing speed bumps, but I haven’t seen any kind of turning point. I really hope the midterm elections are that turning point. Either conservatives lose Congress or the public realizes they can’t stop it by working within the system anymore.
The “opposition” party are certainly doing their part. They oppose doing anything remotely meaningful turn away from genocide and genocide/colonizer money to actually govern for the good of their citizens of their state, and other states.
Authoritarian regimes need to.care about popular opinion too. Sure, unlike a democracy they can survive going under 50% approval for longer but if Anger boils over it gets ugly.
Yes, but on average what is the minimum percentage of support needed for an authoritarian regime to remain in power? 30%, 20%, 10%, 5%? Currently, less than 30% of Americans seem to support MAGA. Will that be enough to break this tyrannical trend?
And that anger is potentially going to boil over soon.
Trump’s well know for being a pedophile, gas has gotten ridiculously expensive (and so has everything else), and he’s ruined the American economy. Few people are willing to go to bat for the Republicans right now
But wait! Look over there!
Wholeheartedly agree. The point I’m more trying to make is that they can survive much longer without popular support than other kinds of movements. So Palantir can be very successful for a long time aligning with the regime, even if it will ultimately fall. They can (and probably plan to) jump ship before that fall, like German companies that aided the Nazis did after WWII.
Yeah, these people probably know and are ok with the harms they’re doing, they just don’t want the quiet part said out loud. That’s why the breaking point is the manifesto and the impact it has in their ability to sell, and nothing to do with the objectively evil actions they support and perform themselves.
Internal propaganda is strong.
I’m sure they’re told that they’re on the side of good guys and they’re SAVING THE CHILDREN(well, the white ones anyway) or some other such nonsense.
Just standard defence contractor shit. How will we keep the country safe if we don’t make a new more efficient baby grinder? The existing baby grinding machines we have are losing their edge to these newfangled Chinese baby grinder 8000s, if we can’t make a baby grinder 10,000 soon our civilization will be destroyed
Our new product, the Torment Nexus, will be available next quarter!
It’s the same as working for Google, Meta/FB, Micro$lop, *gas/electric, * Pipeline, * slumlord/acquisition property management, etc. Not that everyone just refuses to live without a few treats. For more than a handful, their job at Evil Inc. is the first, perhaps only break and lifeline they had in a decade. But yes, the bulk of those people, many of whom post on Lemmy, don’t wanna give up their venti soy latte.
You’re completely correct, there is no ethical consumption in capitalism. If you look closely enough you’ll find that we’re all made hypocrites in one way or another every time we buy anything.
We can, however, avoid techno-totalitarian fascism with a liberal application of shame and ridicule directed at the educated professionals who make these companies able to operate.
It’s a long, slow awakening. Or as Tillie Olsen said,
It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion and in pain than to live untouched. Yet how will you sustain?
Ah yes, you accepted work in PALANTIR FFS. If you seen lotr even ONCE you know how dangerous it is to use, even if you don’t understand the metaphor.
Accepts job for Luciferia, manufacturer of the Orphan Crusher 3000, then complains they had no idea it was an evil company.
You’ve got to understand though, Luciferia is a company that’s going places. Obviously people are going to want to work there when you see all the cutting edge research they’re doing. I mean they literally just built the first actual Torment Nexus… it used to only be purely science-fiction, like in that book “Don’t create the Torment Nexus” but they managed to make it a reality! Isn’t that incredible?
Fully agree but kind of a side note,
I’ve seen lotr several times and had no idea the name was from that until people pointed it out.
Its harder to miss in the book because it is in print, spelled the sane and capitalized and everything.
They have always known, they are just trying to wash the guilt away.
This is 2026 version of “We were only following orders”
I hope they have some Nurembergs on their ways, then.
