A handful of antidemocratic right-wing libertarian billionaires - not least, Peter Thiel - are primarily concerned with increasing their unimaginable wealth & power, & protecting it from Governments, democracy, & the people.
What's their strategy, & who is Peter Thiel?
Most people know how Big Tobacco denied the link between cancer for decades by deploying 'the dark arts', & most people are aware of how the Koch brothers spent $billions using the same techniques to promote climate change denial & support Right-libertarian political parties.
Most people know that billionaires Rupert Murdoch (Fox News, Times Radio, TalkRadio, Times, Sun (& soon to launch talkTV), the Barclays (Telegraph, Spectator) & Lord Rothermere (Mail) invest heavily in stoking a divisive culture war in order to keep voters distracted & divided.
However, far fewer people know about Peter Thiel (who in terms of individuals rather than ideas) represents of the biggest threats to democracy today.
He's the new darling of the hard/far/libertarian-Right, & he pioneered & got very rich from the ideology of 'disruption'.
A recent book, called The Contrarian, by Max Chafkin, focuses on Peter Thiel.
It reveals the extent of the threat from these individuals to our fragile democracies, & many of the recent developments & techniques resulting in dangerously authoritarian Govts & polarised societies.
This is a short #thread as @moiragweigel's review of Chafkin's book says almost everything I wanted to say.
Thiel pioneered #contrarianism, both as a media strategy & a business strategy: this is crucial to understanding the cultural logic of our time.
The book covers Thiel's formative years, his venture capitalism, & his links to Trump, Zuckerberg & the hard/far/libertarian right, as well as his significant role in the origins of the Silicon Valley culture wars, out of which Thiel has emerged as the best-known figurehead.
Thiel is is a German-American billionaire venture capitalist - a co-founder of PayPal & Palantir Technologies, & the first outside investor in Facebook.
Like the structure of contemporary media, the structure of contemporary venture capital rewards increasingly extreme behavior.
Venture capital investors are not avoiding risk, but managing it: out of every 100 bets, 99 will be wrong, but the one that's right will scale globally, & can pay for the rest & more.
This structure incentivizes more & more outrageous bids, but also maps onto political strategy.
In both the culture wars & investing, contrarianism is presented as heroic.
However, in both cases, if they play their cards right, the contrarian protects themself from risk: be outrageous - it may backfire, but when it works, you can use it to leverage your social capital.
At Stanford University Yhiel founded a magazine of right-wing provocation, which railed against what we would now call "wokeism".
His big successes have come mainly from venture capitalism: eg the early investments that he made in the likes of PayPal, Facebook, Airbnb & Spotify.
A vociferous opponent of 'liberal culture', Thiel was a prominent Trump backer, & is linked to some of Silicon Valley’s wackier concepts eg autonomous sea-based communities, & the anti-ageing therapy parabiosis (“transfusions of blood from young people to older ones”).
Thiel mentored Mark Zuckerberg in the techniques of disruption & libertarianism.
Thiel supported Trump, & found him appealing not only for his political views, but also because his anti-establishment attitude was right in line with how Thiel sees the world.
Peter Thiel is a key player in a global ecosystem of opportunist libertarianism which wants to bypass democracy, funds or supports sympathetic Govts, & invests in contrarian media, with a goal of protecting & enhancing their power by removing human & environmental protections.
There is a “weird personality cult” surrounding Thiel, composed mainly of young, right-wing men. Chafkin’s account suggests that Thiel isn’t a visionary at all, but someone defined only by what he (& other billionaire libertarians) is against: 'liberal elites' & multiculturalism.
Chafkin characterizes Thiel as unable to believe in any basis for human connection other than power, or in relationships that do not boil down to transactions: “Thiel’s life has been full of important relationships, but few that seem to transcend money or power.” Sound familiar?
Peter Thiel is one of the world's most important venture capitalists, with tentacles into everything from MAGA to Facebook to the military-industrial complex.
Max Chafkin's book is a great introduction to who Peter Thiel is, & why we should be very concerned about his influence.
Peter Thiel is of course linked to a wider global network of hard-right libertarians - manifested in the UK in the Tufton St libertarian think tanks - whose dark money poses a threat to democracies across the world - but especially America's & Britain's:
In his co-authored 2014 book 'Zero to One', Thiel emphasises the kind of rule he'd prefer: a heightened vision of what a single leader can do, the veneration for more ancient & direct forms of leadership, the praise for authoritative decision-making, & disdain for bureaucracies.
A network of academics influencing Govt policy on ‘free speech’ in universities is being steered by lobbyists & donors linked to billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel – Chair & co-founder of CIA-backed data analytics giant #Palantir Technologies.
Follow up article from @BylineTimes, warning how the 'free speech in Universities' debate, pushed by the Right, may be being used to rehabilitate Nazi-inspired pseudoscience & enable the uncritical promotion of far-right propaganda at Cambridge University. bylinetimes.com/2021/12/23/cam…
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A few thoughts on Bob Vylan leading the #GlastonburyFestival crowd in chants of "Death to the IDF" (Israeli Defence Force), livestreamed by the @BBC, and the mischaracterisation of the chant by some MPs, news media, and activists.
In England, where #GlastonburyFestival is located, all of us have the right to freely express our criticism of anyone or anything - as long as there is no intent to provoke immediate unlawful violence or there is a reasonable likelihood it will occur as a consequence.
In England, free speech is protected under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998. However, inciting violence is a criminal offence under several laws which attempt to balance public safety with free expression rights.
In many countries, especially since Musk bought Twitter/@X, underregulated online extreme content has been used to groom and radicalise vulnerable people.
Too many cowardly politicians are scared to speak up for fear of being branded 'anti-free speech'.
Some MPs who have been in parliament for many years NEVER appear on any of the @BBC's "flagship" politics shows - but Reform's privately educated shit-stirring 'anti-elite' former Tory Sarah Pochin - an MP for FIVE WEEKS - gets her own special introduction on #PoliticsLive.
Politicians using dangerously irresponsible anti-Muslim rhetoric know their comments are normalising Islamophobia and endanger British Muslim women. Islamophobic incidents rose by 375% in the week after Boris Johnson called veiled Muslim women “letterboxes” in 2018.
#PolitcsLive
Britain prides itself in NOT being the sort of country that tells women how to dress. States that do dictate women’s clothing (eg Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia) are vilified as misogynistic & ultra-controlling: the antithesis of the enlightened, liberal west. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
"Foreigners" DO NOT claim £1BILLION/month in benefits.
This disgusting anti-migrant dogwhistle by shameless liar and former Head of Policy Exchange, Neil O'Brien MP, is just one of several recent dispicable divisive Telegraph front page lies.
WTAF @IpsoNews? @HoCStandards?
The claims that the UK spends £1bn/month "on UC benefits for overseas nationals" (O'Brien) and "Foreigners claim £1bn a month in benefits" (Telegraph) are revealed to be lies in the article: the£1bn relates to "Benefits claims by HOUSEHOLDS with AT LEAST ONE FOREIGN NATIONAL."
The Telegraph claims that (unnamed) "experts suggested the increase reflected a SURGE in the number of asylum seekers being granted refugee status and in net migration."
To evaluate/make sense of this sensational unsourced claim, additional context is needed (but not provided).
Chase Herro, co-founder of Trump’s main crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, on crypto:
“You can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story’s right, because people will buy it.”
Despite crypto being bullshit, & memecoins being consciously bullshit, many – especially angry young gullible men – still invest: 42% of men & 17% of women aged 18-29 have invested in, traded or used crypto (2024 Pew Research), compared to only 11% of men & 5% of women over 50.
“It’s no accident that memecoins are such a phenomenon among young people who have grown immensely frustrated with a financial system that, I think it’s fair to say, has failed them” - Sander Lutz, the first crypto-focused White House correspondent.
🧵In January, Farage said Musk was justified in calling Starmer complicit in failures to prosecute grooming gangs: “In 2008 Keir Starmer had just been appointed as DPP & there was a case brought before them of alleged mass rape of young girls that did not lead to a prosecution.”
The allegation that Starmer was complicit in failures to prosecute grooming gangs is often repeated. But how true is it?
Two Facebook posts, originally appearing in April/May 2020, claimed Starmer told police when he was working for the CPS not to pursue cases against Muslim men accused of rape due to fears it would stir up anti-Islamic sentiment.
In 2022 the posts and allegations saw a resurgence online with hundreds of new shares. They said: “From 2004 onwards the director of public prosecutions told the police not to prosecute Muslim rape gangs to prevent ‘Islamophobia’.