Way back in 2009 — right after Barack Obama took office, back when serious thinkers were solemnly prophesying the end of both racism and the Republican Party — Thiel wrote an essay for the Cato Institute titled “The Education of a Libertarian.” In it, he laid out almost everything that Trump and his followers are putting into practice today.
In his essay, Thiel argued that the great task facing the world was “to find an escape from politics in all its forms.” For Thiel, that doesn’t just mean bad government — it means any government, even the democratic kind. He blamed what he viewed as the sorry state of things on two culprits — “the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries” and “the extension of the franchise to women.” The growing ranks of poor and female voters, he lamented, had made it virtually impossible for libertarians to prevail at the ballot box. The solution? Reject the “unthinking demos” and create a world “not bounded by historical nation-states.”
Think I’m exaggerating Thiel’s position? Here’s the money quote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Who would build this new, democracy-free world? Why, tech entrepreneurs, of course.
Thiel’s vision of a world freed from the tyranny of democracy proved influential. His essay helped jump-start the creation of the “intellectual dark web,” a loose affiliation of techno-libertarian online forums, podcasts, nonprofits, and academic institutions, many of which Thiel helped to launch.
Thiel was the “alpha throughline” of the new movement, according to Gil Durán, a journalist who has reported on the tech industry for years. Thiel mentored the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, founded the military contractor Palantir, and handed out $100,000 checks to hundreds of “Thiel Fellows.” He funded the entries into politics of Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, as well as Vice President JD Vance. He was a major donor to Trump, and it was the sale of PayPal that launched the fortunes of Musk, the techno-libertarian fellow traveler who is now grinding up the entire notion of government — just as Thiel prescribed. As [Dave] Karpf recently wrote, “Musk and Thiel’s latest acquisition is, effectively, the United States government.”
One step toward this government of, by, and for corporate interests was what Thiel sought to create with PayPal: “a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution — the end of monetary sovereignty, as it were.” Take away government-backed money, and you take away government’s power of the purse. It’s easy to see in this sentiment why the Trump administration is touting the deregulation of cryptocurrencies. The connection is direct: David Sacks, now serving as Trump’s crypto czar, went to college with Thiel and was a cofounder of PayPal.
“The fate of our world,” he wrote, “may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.”
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