A group of Gandalfs protest outside the home of Peter Thiel in Argentina

A group of Gandalfs protest outside the home of Peter Thiel

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Will Howard Tue 18 August 2026 12:28, UK

A group of protesters, all dressed as the wizard Gandalf from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, gathered outside a home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, belonging to entrepreneur and conservative political activist Peter Thiel. Thiel is an outspoken fan of Tolkien’s work, so much so that he and his co-founders named their software company Palantir after the fictional seeing stones used by characters of Middle-Earth. Several other companies in his orbit also have names lifted from the novel, like Lembas LLC, Rivendell One and Mithril Capital Management, among many others.

Palantir has undergone criticism in recent years due to its work developing AI-assisted surveillance software for the American government. While there is no official statement from the protestors about the nature of their work, they are clearly criticising Thiel for his work in surveillance and crime-predicting software. They sang a set of Argentinian football chants adapted specifically to criticise the Palantir CEO, saying (among other things that can’t be printed here), “You want palantirs to see the future / Look yourself at the mirror, you’re gonna see an idiot”.

It’s also fitting that they were dressed as the character of Gandalf, a character that Thiel himself decried as a “crazy person who wants to start a war” with Mordor, a “technological civilization based on reason and science” in his mind. Gandalf himself never uses the palantiri that Thiel named his company after, not just due to how incredibly dangerous and powerful they are, but also their corrupting nature. It’s actually the dark wizard Saruman who uses them most in the novels, leaving him open to being puppeted by the dark lord Sauron. It’s not just these protestors who’ve used the character of Gandalf as a veiled way of criticising Thiel’s actions either. Pope Leo XIV himself (who Thiel has repeatedly spoken out against) used a quote from the wizard in an encyclical letter that warned against humanity trying to control the world with AI. He said, “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” Una banda de Gandalfs esta tarde en la puerta de la casa de Peter Thiel en Palermo Chico. 😁 pic.twitter.com/g1Yy8PZLb8 — P a i s a j e a n t e (@paisajeante) August 17, 2026

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A group of Gandalfs protest outside the home of Peter Thiel in Argentina

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