Thread by @capitolhunters

Anyone following this months’ Twitter saga is now hearing a lot about David Sacks and the PayPal Mafia. WSJ asked who pushed Elon to buy: the top 2 were Peter Thiel & David Sacks. WaPo asked who’s advising Elon now: again, Sacks. You should worry. 🧵 1/
newrepublic.com/article/168125…

Thiel organized the influencers who later pulled crowds to the Capitol on Jan 6. His Senators (Cruz, Hawley) delayed the electoral vote. Sacks is now pushing Putin’s talking points - to Elon. The links are ugly. Here’s a try at showing some, and a review. Sources at end 2/

Thiel & Sacks had childhoods in apartheid S. Africa (like Elon); bonded over feeling ‘canceled’ at Stanford. They wrote a book (“The Diversity Myth..”) with insensitive comments on ‘multicultural rape’. There was worse stuff in their 1992 Stanford Review “Rape Issue”. 2/

Tech boomed in the 1990s but Thiel (Philosophy) and Sacks (Econ) weren't coders. Thiel went to Credit Suisse abroad, but wasn’t a rising star. It must have hurt. When he returned for law school, he’d acquired investment money from unnamed “friends and family", put it in PayPal 3/

Thiel brought Sacks along to PayPal. They met Elon Musk when PayPal merged with his company. After PayPal was sold in 2002, Thiel ramped up what biographer Max Chafkin calls his ‘political project’. Key to it are Stanford Review alums - like Josh Hawley and Blake Masters. 4/

Thiel stayed in touch with (& funded) the Stanford Review ever since the 1980s. He used it to built a vast network of ‘libertarian’ protegees, grooming them with jobs and investments. This article from Stanford Politics counted nearly 300. 5/
stanfordpolitics.org/2017/11/27/pet…

In 2009, Thiel announced he “no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible”, and started buying Senators: Ted Cruz from 2009, Josh Hawley from 2015, & this year spent $30M on Blake Masters (AZ) & JD Vance (OH). Hawley, Masters, & Vance all worked directly for Thiel. 6/

2009 seems a milestone year and the start of another Thiel effort, to build US extremism and hate. Just 3 months after James O’Keefe started Project Veritas, Thiel gave him money for a video to prank people of color. At Stanford Thiel did the talking; now he funded others. 6/

7 years later, 2016 RNC was launched the US alt-right. Thiel gave a public speech; his protegee Jeff Giesea quietly arranged a dinner for neo-Nazis and a “Gays for Trump” party for influencers - which spun off the “MAGA3X” operation, the same crowd that later pushed Jan 6. 7/

Thiel pops up in the timeline of Jan 6 figures in odd ways. In 2016, when he announced his support for Trump, propagandist and troll Jack Posobiec was there - and pushed the new antisemitic typography with “Surrounded by (((them))) at Peter Thiel press conference”. 8/

Joe Biggs, ex-‘journalist’ turned Proud Boy who led the march to the Capitol, posted his last news clips in 2019: “Billionaire Peter Thiel makes big move into bitcoin”. His website now redirects to a Swiss-owned Brazilian newspaper with anti-vaxx, pro-Bolsonaro content. 9/

While Peter Thiel is openly far-right, David Sacks has a double game going. He still donates to Republican politicians but now cultivates the far-left. He's a pretend progressive with talking points from Putin: no more aid to Ukraine. 10/

Thiel and Sacks both own social media sites now. Thiel’s Rumble is for the alt-right; it also hosts Trump’s Truth Social. (1 day after this was announced, Trump endorsed Thiel’s protege JD Vance.) Sacks’ new "Callin" is for the tankie left. 11/

https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1589601787396648961

Thiel has pro-Russia friends too - like Sebastian Kurz, a far-right Austrian politician who bribed his way to power, then fell in scandal. In 2021 Kurz visited Russia, said peace is only possible "with Russia, and not against it". Within months he was hired at Thiel Capital. 12/

We don't know exactly why Elon bought Twitter, but the crowd around him are not big on free speech. Thiel famously schemed to bankrupt Gawker in revenge for outing him as gay. It cost him millions of his own money. Getting Elon to destroy Twitter would be cheaper. 13/

Finally - in 2022 Thiel funded a candidate who was totally not his type: not male, no elite college, no long ties. That's Harriet Hageman, Liz Cheney’s opponent. Thiel wanted Cheney gone, and we can guess why. The day she lost, Elon was there in Wyoming too. 14/