The Wannabe Philosopher Kings: How Peter Thiel and the Straussian Tech Elite Butchered Plato
By The American Gadfly | MisinformationSucks.com
I. The Hesitation Heard ’Round the World
When The New York Times asked Peter Thiel if humanity should continue, the man took a long pause. This wasn’t some ambush interview in a noisy café. This was Ross Douthat—softball central—and Thiel, a billionaire philosopher-king aspirant with time to prep. The question? Simple.
“Would you prefer the human race to endure?”
And Thiel couldn’t answer. He stalled. Squirmed. Blinked. Finally coughed up a limp: “Uh—yes.”
The silence was louder than any reply. In that vacuum, you could hear the ghosts of Plato, Leo Strauss, and maybe a few ex-neocons cracking their knuckles.
Because that moment—awkward, telling, grotesque—wasn't just weird. It was emblematic. It revealed a fatal crack in the throne room of Silicon Valley’s self-anointed ruling class. The ones who think they've inherited Plato's Republic, who see themselves as philosopher-kings in Patagonia vests and Neuralink implants.
But here’s the truth: they read the first few pages of the Republic and skipped the rest. They took Strauss’s cloak-and-dagger interpretation of Plato as a license to rule without transparency or virtue. What we’re left with is a generation of tech oligarchs who call themselves philosophers but flee from the most basic questions of human purpose.
So let’s burn this temple down, shall we?
II. Plato’s Real Republic: Not For Sale
Plato did not write the Republic to hand the keys of society to billionaire data miners. The text isn’t a utopian blueprint—it’s a philosophical pressure cooker, a dramatized conversation that pushes its characters (and readers) to consider what justice actually is, and what kind of soul should lead the city.
Socrates, Plato’s mouthpiece, insists that the ideal ruler is a philosopher—not because he’s smart, but because he’s been trained to renounce wealth, ego, and private interest. In Plato’s Kallipolis, philosopher-kings:
Live communally.
Own no private property.
Abstain from marriage and family.
Undergo decades of moral, mathematical, and dialectical training.
Rule only because they’re compelled to do so, for the good of the city.
Let me repeat that: They don’t want to rule.
That’s the whole point. They’re the opposite of today’s power-hungry elites. They rule because someone has to, and they’ve been shaped by philosophy to hate power, not chase it.
If you’re a billionaire hoarding doomsday bunkers and prepping AI god engines while funding lawsuits to silence critics (hi, Peter), you're not a philosopher-king.
You’re just a king.
III. Enter Strauss: The Prophet of the Hidden Few
Leo Strauss didn’t see Plato as an idealist. He saw him as a master of subtext. Strauss argued that Plato and other great thinkers wrote esoterically—meaning they hid their real beliefs between the lines to avoid persecution and to protect the unprepared public from dangerous truths.
That’s the core of Straussian thought: philosophers must lie to survive. And maybe to rule.
According to Strauss, Plato’s Republic isn’t a literal proposal—it’s a coded text. One that says, when read “correctly,” that society must be ruled by an elite who know the truth but keep it hidden. The noble lie? Not just one story, but a system of thought: a justification for hierarchy, manipulation, and intellectual rule-by-stealth.
For Strauss, the masses are vulgar. They can’t handle philosophical truth. So the philosopher’s duty is to:
Write in riddles.
Disguise subversion as piety.
Shape society from the shadows.
This isn’t Plato’s philosophy. It’s counterinsurgency dressed as wisdom.
And that’s what Peter Thiel and his ilk picked up—not the humility, not the communal virtue, not the dialectical rigors—but the cloak, the smirk, and the sword.
IV. The Silicon Oracle Misfires
Thiel studied philosophy at Stanford. He name-drops Strauss in essays like The Straussian Moment. He’s donated millions to think tanks obsessed with the decline of the West, the decay of “reason,” and the need to recapture ancient wisdom.
But let’s be clear: Peter Thiel is not a philosopher. He’s a CEO in a toga.
This is a man who:
Funded secret surveillance systems (Palantir) for authoritarian governments.
Bankrolled lawsuits (Gawker) in total secrecy to punish free press.
Preached about technological transcendence while preparing for civilizational collapse.
Supported far-right political candidates under the guise of “rationalist critique.”
In the recent New York Times interview where he hesitated on humanity’s survival, Thiel waxed poetic about immortality, apocalypse, and AI. He worried about global government. He alluded to “Antichrist” scenarios. He framed modern institutions as decadent, unworthy of faith.
It’s the kind of rhetoric that sounds ancient, but collapses under the weight of its own cynicism. What’s missing? Any commitment to civic virtue. Any belief in reform. Any desire to stay in the city and fight for it.
Straussians would say he’s speaking in riddles. I say he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth and ducking the most basic responsibility of a thinker: moral clarity.
V. The Noble Lie, But Without the Noble
Plato’s “noble lie” in the Republic is the myth of the metals: that people are born with gold, silver, or bronze souls. It’s a fictive way to justify a rigid class structure—but one that Plato uses as a philosophical tool, not a policy endorsement.
Strauss took this concept and turned it into a philosophy of rule-by-deception.
To Strauss:
Truth is dangerous.
The people are weak.
Order requires lies.
His followers took that and ran wild. The neoconservatives of the 2000s—Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, Allan Bloom acolytes—justified wars and nation-building on the backs of narratives they didn’t necessarily believe.
Fast forward to today, and the tech elite are doing the same:
Build AI. Warn it will destroy us. Sell the antidote.
Buy land in Hawaii. Promote climate apocalypse. Build survivalist fiefdoms.
Preach liberty. Fund authoritarian candidates.
It’s noble-lie logic without any trace of nobility. Just myths deployed for profit, influence, or legacy management.
VI. Philosophers Without a Cave
Let’s remember Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Most people live chained in darkness, watching shadows on the wall. The philosopher breaks free, sees the light, and returns to rescue the others—even though they might kill him for it.
That’s the model. Self-sacrifice. Truth as burden. Philosophy as public duty.
Thiel’s version? Escape the cave, buy the land the cave sits on, mine its lithium, then sell VR goggles to the chained for “immersion therapy.” And when they revolt, install drones.
There is no duty in their version of philosophy. Only distance. Only disdain.
They didn't read Plato as a guide. They read him as a license.
VII. Power, Paranoia, and the Anti-Democratic Temptation
Here’s the dark truth: the wannabe philosopher kings don’t trust democracy. Not because they believe in a better system—but because democracy requires them to answer to people they think are beneath them.
They don’t want to abolish the republic. They want to rule it silently. Through capital. Through algorithms. Through immortal ideologies.
This isn’t a love of Plato. It’s a lust for Schmitt. A dash of Nietzsche. A fantasy of Roman grandeur held together by apps and offshore accounts.
It’s not that they misread Plato. It’s that they weaponized the parts that excused what they already wanted to do.
VIII. The True Cost of Esotericism
Strauss's idea of esoteric writing wasn’t just a reading technique. It became a worldview:
Don’t say what you mean.
Say it in a way that the few will get.
Let the rest believe what keeps them docile.
That sounds clever—until it metastasizes into:
Foreign policy based on fake threats.
Domestic policy based on culture war theater.
Technological regimes ruled by obscure math and inaccessible models.
Now we have a society where power is opaque, language is weaponized, and the truth has been buried under a thousand press releases and Substacks.
This is what Strauss wrought—not because he was evil, but because he trained the wrong students in how to hide.
IX. What Plato Actually Demanded
You want to follow Plato? Here's what it takes:
Love truth more than status.
Despise wealth.
Submit to rigorous intellectual training.
Accept governance only if compelled by justice.
Live communally, without ego, without legacy obsession.
That is not Peter Thiel. That is not Marc Andreessen. That is not any of the moneyed futurists who quote Plato between investment rounds.
They want the robes, not the vows. They want the title, not the training. They want to rule the cave while pretending they burned it down.
Plato would laugh them out of the city—and then accuse them of corrupting the soul.
X. The Real Fight: Not Between Classes, But Between Readings
This isn’t about left vs. right. It’s about the difference between philosophy as liberation and philosophy as justification.
Plato wrote to elevate the soul.
Strauss wrote to protect the philosopher.
Thiel reads to arm the technocrat.
Each layer drifts further from the cave.
But we still have a choice: Read Plato as a guide toward justice, or as a toolkit for manipulation.
The Straussians made their choice.
What’s yours?
Final Word: Dismantle the Throne
We are ruled by men who want to be gods.
Who cloak their fear of death in theological musings about transhumanism.
Who call themselves philosophers because they took one class on Plato and twenty seminars on war.
We don’t need more philosopher-kings. We need philosophers who refuse to be kings.
And we need to call out every Straussian smoke bomb for what it is: a desperate attempt to keep power in the hands of those who’d rather hesitate over humanity’s survival than surrender the throne.
At misinformationsucks.com we promise that you will never have to read in between the lines for coded messages. Everything we have to say, we say it with our chest.
Written by The American Gadfly. Dedicated to everyone who made it out of the cave and came back swinging.
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