Who is Peter Thiel?

Why should I care about who Peter Thiel is? 

Because he owns you. He owns your life. He owns, to a great extent, the product of your labor many times over: capital. Thiel is a member of the very real PayPal Mafia (along with Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Roel Botha), one of President Donald Trump’s close allies, and has become very involved in American politics in the past decade. Although he was born in Frankfurt, Germany, he spent his childhood in South Africa before attending Stanford University. Since then, he has built a net worth of 26.9 billion USD. You might also know him as the co-founder of Palantir, a data analytics and software company that’s competing for government contracts for the “Golden Dome” — a rehash of Reagan’s Star Wars program (Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI) from nearly 50 years ago. 

Despite the increase in gun-mediated political violence, Thiel doesn’t enforce his will in this manner. In what manner, then, can Thiel unabashedly exercise the influence that he has bought with his capital?  He can dress this ambition in ideology, crafted so that it is inherently subservient to his demographic — white, male, and financially influential. He gave 1 million to a pro-Trump Super PAC in 2016; 2 million more dollars to an “America First” PAC in 2020; and close to 20 million dollars to races in favour of conservative candidates in Ohio and Arizona, each, giving through organizations he founded or co-founded. And that’s just what he himself has given. 

The purpose of this piece is to examine one formative part of Thiel’s life that is also relevant to most readers: his college years. College is a time of intellectual development during which one’s ideas about duty and tradition that were previously accepted with closed eyes are challenged; however, in college, Thiel only doubled down on his teenage beliefs of libertarianism. He struggled to find his place in the Stanford scene, writing that his years there were plagued by “multiculturalism,” which he says is equivalent to the “wokeness” or diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts of our generation, also calling it an “anti-Western” agenda. In his book, “The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Intolerance of Politics at Stanford,” co-authored with David Sacks, Thiel objects to many facets of Stanford’s culture, including the strict policy against sexual assault: 

But since a multicultural rape charge may indicate nothing more than belated regret, a woman might ‘realize’ that she had been ‘raped’ the next day or even many days later. Under these circumstances, it is unclear who should be held responsible. If the alcohol made both of them do it, then why should the woman’s consent be obviated any more than the man’s? Why is all the blame placed on the man?

I hope all can recognize the pejorative language with which Thiel trivializes sexual assault (calling it a construct of multiculturalism – whatever that’s supposed to mean), and his intent to victim-blame by moving the goalpost on what qualifies as rape. Thiel has since apologized for these writings; nevertheless, they reveal the character of the inculcation of his specific breed of libertarianism. 

During these years, Thiel co-founded the Stanford Review, a newspaper that has a legacy of boosting renegade students to Silicon Valley affluence, with the original purpose of “present[ing] alternative viewpoints,” “creat[ing] a rational forum for debate,” and legitimizing the alternative viewpoints that he and his fellow libertarians held. The Review rode the tide of conservatism heralded by Reagan, and in 1995, it successfully sued to overturn a part of Stanford’s speech code barring bigoted speech. While free speech is a prerequisite to rational forums, Thiel and The Review abused it in the academic setting in order to spread “alternative viewpoints” that are difficult to merit debate, given Thiel’s assertion that “the purpose of the rape crisis movement seems as much about vilifying men as about raising ‘awareness.’” 

Was Thiel deserving of the isolation and vilification he claims he faced during his time at Stanford because of his so-called “alternative viewpoints”? Should we entertain a “contrarian position” to the condemnation of rape? Despite these questionable ideas, The Review continues to thrive with the help of Thiel. He hosts dinners with them, and many of the board members on the paper, with the help of Thiel’s connections, often find their way into lucrative Silicon Valley companies. Now, wouldn’t it be convenient if every college or university had such a paper for the “vocal minority,” so that the outspoken conservatives and libertarians could signal their commitment to their cause, so that they could write and speak out against liberal values, such as consent, that are attacking Western hegemony? We should all be aware of who the power brokers on the right are, who else knows who they are, and how that might influence current college or university students’ speech and publications. 

Thiel directly shaped the political landscape as we know it today by, in addition to shoveling huge amounts of capital into the conservative political machine, targeting colleges; for example, the Thiel fellowship — a $200,000 grant awarded to “young people who want to build new things” and are willing to drop out of or skip college. He is also known for giving talks on campuses to proselytize the next generation of conservatives and libertarians. One talk he gave has certainly paid off — as a Yale Law School student, Vice President JD Vance met Thiel when the latter was giving a talk at the university. Vance then went on to work at a company called Mithril Capital, which was founded by Thiel, and it’s rumored that Thiel brought Vance to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago.  

It is at these junctures where Thiel’s ideological artifice is vulnerable and transparent. He does not respect women and derides provisions to protect and enfranchise them. In other publications and the rest of “The Diversity Myth,” his disregard for historically marginalized groups is made clear, on one occasion calling attention to diversity “both very evil and very silly.” Who, or what, does he care about? Politics? In his essay for the Cato Institute, he champions technology over politics precisely because he believes the latter may still be swayed by the “choices of individuals.” To the libertarian Thiel, politics is a construction for instituting his will onto the population in the same manner he buys or sells stocks — with accountability stemming from profit margins and GDP, not the value of human lives. 

What is to be done about Thiel and his ultimate goal to make “the world safe for capitalism”? Much of it can be deconstructed by doing exactly what we do at Amherst College: thinking. If we think about how libertarian and right-wing ideologies are constructed, we can recognize how the true realization of their goals — limiting and discrediting higher education — leads to the destruction of their proponents and contradicts their being. Thiel, like Vance and many others of the MAGA coalition, is quick to decry the evil indoctrination and wastefulness of college, yet each of them has attended the most exclusive institutions in the country.

In order to combat Thiel and his efforts, the college campus ought to remain critical, and not fall into the trap that is relativizing all values to be equally valid; we cannot accept that one's ignorance is equal to another’s knowledge; that one’s bigoted speech is equal to free speech or even welcome in rational debate. Such speech does not deserve to be and should not be afforded a platform. Thiel has been the latest to lead a movement debasing dialogue in academia, and it has been very successful, due in a large part to the wealth he projects onto his position. But what is to be done? Nothing more than continuing to trudge through and speak out against hate disguised as “alternative viewpoints” whenever they surface. I believe that in the long run, education that cultivates critical thinking will annul the libertarian and far-right, however much it has enabled Thiel in the short term.