Introduction
Peter Thiel, a billionaire venture capitalist, is the “quietest” but arguably the most consequential and influential member of the “New Right.” At present, most of his influence within the New Right is exerted through intermediaries—Curtis Yarvin and Bronze Age Pervert constituting the philosophical arm, J.D. Vance representing the political/government arm, and Elon Musk serving as the public affairs/marketing arm. Aside from Elon Musk, with whom he is more of a partner, Peter Thiel functions as a patron for Curtis Yarvin, Bronze Age Pervert, J.D. Vance, and others within the New Right sphere. His role within the New Right is akin to George Soros’ role on the Progressive Left, though one could argue that Thiel is more outspoken than Soros and significantly more effective.
Thiel was born in Germany to German parents but immigrated to the United States when he was very young. He holds citizenship in the U.S., Germany, and New Zealand. In 2011, he was granted New Zealand citizenship under “exceptional circumstances” despite having spent only a total of 12 days in the country. He also lived in South Africa for part of his childhood. Unlike Elon Musk, who only pretended to attend Stanford, Thiel actually attended Stanford University, earning a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
After graduating from law school, Thiel worked as a Wall Street lawyer before moving to California and starting a venture capital firm with generous contributions (exceeding $1 million) from family members. He used that funding to start the company that would eventually become PayPal and acquired Elon Musk’s X.com (decades before Twitter rebranded as X.com). Thiel was also an early investor in Facebook and co-founded Palantir in part with a substantial investment from the CIA. These ventures have made Thiel a billionaire, with his current wealth estimated at around $20 billion.
The Convergence at Stanford University
Thiel’s time at Stanford University marked his first public foray into politics. In 1987, he founded a conservative-libertarian publication called The Stanford Review with funding from the late neoconservative journalist Irving Kristol. In 1995, Thiel co-authored a book titled The Diversity Myth with fellow Stanford alumnus David Sacks. Sacks is a longtime major donor to the Republican Party who, until the summer of 2024, was considered a “Never Trumper” within the conservative movement. During Trump’s 2024 campaign, Sacks raised approximately $12 million for the campaign and now serves in the Trump Administration as the “AI and cryptocurrency” czar. Stanford University was also the mechanism through which Elon Musk entered the United States via a questionable J-1 visa, as detailed in my article on the many scams of Elon Musk.
Stanford University is not the only point of convergence for Thiel, Sacks, and Musk. Sacks and Musk were both born in South Africa, and as mentioned earlier, Thiel lived in South Africa for part of his childhood. All three eventually found their way to PayPal: Thiel as co-founder, Sacks as Chief Operating Officer, and Musk as Chief Executive Officer. All three subsequently became billionaire venture capitalists. Furthermore, all three were prominent financial backers of Trump’s 2024 campaign and now hold roles within the new Trump Administration—though Thiel primarily operates behind the scenes.
The Diversity Myth and Thiel’s Crusade Against DEIA
As mentioned, Thiel and Sacks published The Diversity Myth in 1995. The book critiques “diversity” and “multiculturalism,” focusing on their impact within the university system, particularly based on the authors' experiences at Stanford University. Thiel and Sacks argue that the concept of diversity, as implemented in universities, is fundamentally flawed. Rather than promoting true intellectual diversity, they contend that “diversity” and “multiculturalism” impose narrow limits on acceptable political discourse and enforce a toxic culture of political correctness.
According to Thiel and Sacks, diversity fosters a culture centered on victim status (defined in Civil Rights law as protected categories such as gender, race, sexuality, religion, disability, etc.) and creates what they term “multicultural victimology.” They argue that multiculturalism acts as a gatekeeper for entry into the ruling class or “cognitive elite,” prioritizing victim status over merit. This process, they claim, follows the framework of critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, who advocated for “repressive tolerance”—tolerance for left-wing political movements and intolerance for right-wing ones.
The book did not appear on bestseller lists upon its release and was condemned by Stanford Provost Condoleezza Rice (later Secretary of State under President George W. Bush). However, this does not mean the book lacked influence. It arguably laid the groundwork for many activities of the New Right and Project 2025 under the Trump Administration.
Around 2010, terminology surrounding “diversity” and “multiculturalism” shifted. Supporters began referring to it as “social justice,” while detractors labeled it “cultural Marxism” due to its association with Marcuse’s Marxist influences. Today, it is commonly referred to as DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility).
DEIA was a key priority of the Biden Administration. In response, the Trump Administration launched a campaign to eliminate all traces of DEIA from federal government operations, universities, and private sector policies. Upon taking office Trump placed federal employees allegedly associated with "DEIA" on administrative leave with plans to terminate them. Government employees were instructed to halt their work and purge all contracts, training materials, and policy documents of DEIA-related language—including alleged "code words" masking DEIA concepts. This directive caused chaos within federal agencies; for instance, it led to the removal of all material related to the Tuskegee Airmen from Air Force training materials. The Trump Administration also targeted universities that it alleges are engaged in “DEIA” by withholding federal funding. These actions were pre-planned, as they were outlined in detail in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership publication.
The Diversity Myth contains some curious commentary on redefining rape, which is a sort of strange fixation of the New Right. I will, without commentary, provide two quotes:
Quoting Thiel and Sacks: “The purpose of the rape crisis movement seems as much about vilifying men as about raising ‘awareness’.”
Quoting Thiel and Sacks, in reference to date rape: “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.”
Both Thiel and Sacks have subsequently apologized for the statements and dismissed them as “college journalism” although Thiel was 28 years old at the time of its publication.
Gawker, Hulk Hogan, and Peter Thiel
Gawker began as a sort of online TMZ in the early 2000s, focusing primarily on celebrity gossip. Over the next decade and a half, it expanded into the broader Gawker Media Group, launching several subsidiary websites covering topics such as sports (Deadspin), technology/science (Gizmodo), and video games (Kotaku), among others.
In 2006, Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) was friends with Tampa Bay radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge (real name Todd Clem). At the time, Clem was married to his now ex-wife, Heather, and the couple reportedly lived an “alternative lifestyle.” At Clem’s urging, Bollea had sex with Heather, and the encounter was allegedly recorded without Bollea’s knowledge. Clem made a DVD copy of the recording labeled “Hogan” and supposedly stored it in a desk drawer for several years.
In 2012, this DVD was delivered anonymously to Gawker by a source who sought neither credit nor payment. On October 4, 2012, Gawker published an article revealing the existence of the sex tape. The post included a 1-minute-41-second excerpt from the over 30-minute tape as well as a detailed description of its contents.
Bollea filed a lawsuit against Gawker that same year in federal court, alleging copyright infringement and seeking a preliminary injunction to remove the video excerpt from Gawker’s website. However, because Bollea’s personal life had already been made public through his VH1 reality show Hogan Knows Best (which aired from 2005 to 2007), the federal court ruled that Gawker’s publication of the sex tape constituted fair use and was protected under the First Amendment.
Bollea then filed a lawsuit in Florida state court. While Gawker removed the video excerpt from its article, it retained the written description of the tape’s contents. The case went to trial in March 2016, and a Florida jury awarded Bollea $115 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages. Gawker later settled with Bollea for $31 million. The lawsuit forced Gawker into bankruptcy, and its assets were auctioned off to Univision. While Univision disbanded the Gawker website, it retained other properties within the media group.
In May 2016, Peter Thiel publicly revealed that he had financed Bollea’s lawsuit with approximately $10 million and provided him with legal representation. Thiel had been “outed” as gay by a 2007 Gawker article, which he viewed as a personal attack. Seeking revenge against Gawker, Thiel saw Bollea’s case as an opportunity to take down the media company. In response to criticism that his actions threatened press freedom, Thiel argued that he was protecting online privacy and described Gawker’s destruction as one of his greatest philanthropic achievements.
While this may seem like an unusual episode in Thiel’s career, it is critical to understanding his character as well as his capacity for long-term planning and operational execution. This also marked the period during which Thiel began supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Quoting Thiel in an article in The Atlantic: “For Thiel, the outcome was more than vindication. It was a sign. When the jury came back, “my instant reaction at that point was ‘Wow, maybe Trump wins the election,’” he told me. In his mind, Gawker was a stand-in for the media writ large, hostile to the presumptive Republican nominee; Hogan was a Trumplike figure; and the jury—the voters—had taken his side.”
The Destruction of Politics
“I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.” - Peter Thiel
For most of his adult life, Peter Thiel considered himself a libertarian and tended to support libertarian politicians. Notably, he backed Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 Republican primary campaigns, serving as Paul’s single largest donor in 2012. However, cracks in Thiel’s libertarian ideology began to emerge as early as 2009, when he started exploring a form of anti-democracy nihilism. That year, he authored an essay for the libertarian think tank Cato Institute titled The Education of a Libertarian where he expressed a deeply pessimistic view about the prospects of libertarian politics—and politics in general. According to Thiel, the 1920s were the last decade during which “one could be genuinely optimistic about politics.” He attributed this decline to two constituencies: welfare beneficiaries and women.
Quoting Thiel: “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.”
Thiel then proposes an unusual solution: escaping politics through technology. He envisions a literal escape, involving the creation of new worlds to retreat to. According to Thiel, these worlds could exist in cyberspace, outer space, or through what he calls “Seasteading.” It’s hard not to speculate that Thiel’s Seasteading idea may have been inspired by the 2007 video game BioShock, which is set in an underwater libertarian utopia called Rapture, built by a business magnate.
In essence, Thiel believes politics has failed and seeks to remove it from people’s lives entirely. For many disillusioned or frustrated by American politics, this might sound appealing. However, the critical question remains: what replaces the current political system?
It appears Thiel has come to realize that there is no true escape from politics. Cyberspace worlds are unlikely to materialize, space colonization is not feasible—at least not within his lifetime—and he will not have his own underwater Rapture. At this point, for Thiel, the only way out of politics is through it. Based on his political activities over the past decade, it seems Thiel believes his vision of a libertarian paradise can only be achieved through an authoritarian regime.
This is where Curtis Yarvin enters the picture. Yarvin shares a similar goal: removing politics from the lives of ordinary people and concentrating political power in the hands of a small elite group of businessmen—a CEO-Monarch and Board of Directors, as Yarvin describes it. Achieving this vision would necessitate the complete dismantling of the American democratic-republican political system.
Quoting the Atlantic article about Thiel: “But the days when great men could achieve great things in government are gone, Thiel believes. He disdains what the federal apparatus has become: rule-bound, stifling of innovation, a “senile, central-left regime.” His libertarian critique of American government has curdled into an almost nihilistic impulse to demolish it.”
If you have read my previous articles on RAGE and DOGE and Curtis Yarvin's Butterfly Revolution, you will understand why Thiel, Yarvin, and Elon Musk are now so intertwined. They share the same goal: to dismantle the federal government and replace it with an entirely new political and bureaucratic system. As J.D. Vance put it, “Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people.”
In 2016, Thiel believed that Donald Trump was his best chance to disrupt and destroy the American political system. For Thiel, Trump was not an ideal candidate but rather a useful tool—a battering ram to break down the gates of the American political establishment. After Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, Thiel expressed his disappointment.
Quoting The Atlantic: “Voting for Trump was like a not very articulate scream for help,” Thiel told me. He fantasized that Trump’s election would somehow force a national reckoning. He believed somebody needed to tear things down—slash regulations, crush the administrative state—before the country could rebuild.”
The Atlantic article was written in 2023. Little did Thiel know, however, that Trump’s election in 2024 would give him a second chance at realizing his vision of destruction. Although the Atlantic article suggested that Thiel was “giving up” on American politics, I believe this was actually just a feint.
Combining all of these concepts—Thiel’s opposition to diversity and multiculturalism, his innate libertarianism, and his desire to dismantle the American political system and federal government—leads me to a specific conclusion. It’s not that Peter Thiel doesn’t think government can work; his admiration for achievements like the Hoover Dam and space exploration demonstrates otherwise. Rather, he believes that government currently fails because the wrong people—or at least the wrong types of people—are in charge. In Thiel’s libertarian paradise, there would be no welfare beneficiaries, women, or “diverse” individuals in positions of power.
Peter Thiel and JD Vance
In my article on Curtis Yarvin, I described Peter Thiel as a billionaire patron of both Yarvin and J.D. Vance, but I did not elaborate further on the relationship between Thiel and Vance. According to Vance, he first met Thiel in 2011 while attending Yale Law School after a speech Thiel delivered at the school. Vance described him as “possibly the smartest person I’d ever met.” Vance earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 2013, and just two years later, Thiel made him a partner at Mithril Capital, a venture capital firm Thiel co-founded. Around this time, Vance began writing Hillbilly Elegy and contemplating a future in politics. In 2019, Vance launched his own venture capital firm, Narya Capital, once again with financial backing from Thiel.
By 2021, Vance began seriously considering a political career. However, he faced a significant obstacle: his past as a “Never Trumper” and vocal critic of Donald Trump. Trump was (and remains) the gatekeeper to national Republican politics, and any prospective campaign by Vance would have been doomed without Trump’s endorsement. Once again, Peter Thiel intervened to assist Vance. According to The New York Times, Thiel brought Vance to Mar-a-Lago and helped “smooth over” his relationship with Trump. Subsequently, Vance ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio in 2022 and won with Trump’s endorsement. Thiel also donated $15 million to support Vance’s campaign.
In 2024, Donald Trump selected J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential running mate. Reportedly, Trump made the final decision just 20 minutes before announcing it, influenced by Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, and, of course, Peter Thiel.
Conclusion
The destruction of American democracy and the federal government is Thiel’s ultimate goal. If Donald Trump is his battering ram, then J.D. Vance is his Trojan horse. At present, MAGA remains a largely populist movement, which the Silicon Valley elite will seek to control. Vance appeals to both groups: he comes from a “blue-collar” background but, at heart, remains a Silicon Valley elitist. Trump is too old, too volatile, and too unreliable to enact Thiel’s vision—Vance represents the future. However, Trump continues to favor Elon Musk. If this dynamic persists, a conflict over who will become Trump’s chosen heir seems inevitable.
I will leave you with one final anecdote—an observation recorded by The Atlantic from Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, fellow Stanford alum, and longtime friend of Peter Thiel:
“Time after time, Thiel would espouse grandiose, utopian hopes that failed to materialize, leaving him “kind of furious or angry” about the world’s unwillingness to bend to whatever vision was possessing him at the moment.”
Thiel must be happy right now, as it seems that the world is currently bending to his vision.