Peter Thiel and his potential desire to collapse all things America have been in the US news quite a bit lately. This isn’t the first time I was aware of this overly private person, and I do mean before Hulkamania.
I’m not entirely sure when Peter Thiel and his Yarvin-acolytes began to join this movement to collapse Democracy, but my thinking is it was around the time the Republican party suddenly became pro-Russian. It almost feels too obvious to see J.D. Vance as Peter Thiel’s attempt to purchase his way into the Republican party. Combine Thiel with what I see as the new version of Conservative Warriors (often characterized by a more aggressive, populist, and nationalist stance), and with the concepts within “Putin’s Playbook” (referring to tactics of disinformation, undermining democratic institutions, and exploiting societal divisions), and we have an interesting, and concerning, triumvirate of people who seem to be pushing for the collapse of democracy.
Thiel explained in a 2009 essay that he had come to “no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”, due in large part to welfare beneficiaries and women in general being “notoriously tough for libertarians” constituencies. Personally, I believe we should strive to make sure welfare beneficiaries and women are given those same opportunities.
The conceit of Thiel and his very Calvinistic belief that his wealth and capitalist success is the reason he should be one of the “Tech Board of Governors” – a concept often linked to a desire to replace democratic governance with a technocratic elite, and one that I find incredibly arrogant – is one of the more amazing pieces of mental gymnastics I have ever heard of. It reminds me of the concept of “The Cathedral” (a term often used in online discourse to describe a perceived dominant, progressive cultural and intellectual establishment that Thiel and others oppose), and his desire to tear it all down.