Peter Thiel & Abuse of the Public Square

It is surely indisputable, that, right now as of late January 2025, there has never been a better time for journalists, reporters, newsroom editors and columnists. On a daily basis, if not hourly, there is a tidal wave of mind-blowing, cognitively dissonant, crazy, extraordinary events, revelations, accusations, outraged public statements and outright metaphysical disparities that could occupy endless headlining articles. It is therefore imperative that bastions of good journalism not only publish balanced perspectives, but choose, among the multitude of voices, those that best inform the public. It was therefore astonishing to see Peter Thiel’s name prominent among Financial Times news headlines earlier this month.

For those who have not followed this particular venture capitalist’s career Thiel is, among other things, a co-founder of online payments platform PayPal, data-mining company Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, which invests primarily in the areas of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and space exploration. He was also the first outside investor in Facebook. In PayPal’s early days, Thiel is best remembered for his infamous ousting of Elon Musk, whom he replaced as CEO in 2000.

Thiel is widely acknowledged to be a deeply controversial figure, as covered in Max Chafkin’s 2021 book The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power, which has been described as “shocking” and “disturbing” by reviewers. Thiel once wrote in an essay that women winning the right to vote was damaging for democracy. “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,” he stated.

Thiel is also a major investor in SpaceX, which he hopes will one day enable him to escape the political confines of earth, and an enthusiastic supporter of any new measures that may help him achieve immortality. It is unsurprising then, that Thiel was a major donor to Trump’s past campaigns, and a key negotiator between the government and Big Tech.

In short, Thiel is an influential figure at the heart of the financial engine driving Big Tech in America. He is the embodiment of the narcissistic world-dominating thinking that has come to characterise Silicon Valley’s extreme capitalism and greed in recent decades.

His FT opinion piece was entitled “A time for truth and reconciliation”, in what is almost certainly a deliberate misuse of the painful and transformative process that South Africa went through after apartheid. Thiel grew up in apartheid-era South Africa, where his father was involved in uranium mining. What followed was a nonsensical diatribe centring on what he called the apokálypsis or “unveiling” of truth that will supposedly be facilitated under the Trump administration. His contention is that true freedom of information will be made possible following the elimination of the suppressive power of what he calls the “Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC)”.

In Thiel’s mind, these are the traditional institutions governing the flow of information, including media organisations, bureaucracies, universities and government-funded NGOs, which he believes have long censored unfavourable political content, particularly online.

Thiel believes that the liberation of the internet will be of monumental social benefit, lifting the lid on secrets long-held by the American government, including who really assassinated John F Kennedy and the true origin of Covid-19. Most pressingly for Thiel, this great “unveiling” will provide clarity on the Biden administration’s involvement in Brazil’s banning of X and its role in “debanking” crypto entrepreneurs.

The article received over a thousand comments from readers whose opinions were strongly divided. Many attacked FT for publishing such a poorly written piece, riddled with conspiracy theories – some threatening to cancel their subscriptions. Others praised FT for publishing the piece, which they took as confirmation of both Thiel’s derangement and the general delusion afflicting right-wing extremists and techno-libertarians. “Genuinely nuts. Grateful for the FT not censoring the insanity. Maybe this absolutist free speech thing has some merits,” wrote one commenter, while another quipped, “Trying to decide if I should cancel my subscription, or just my passport.” Still, there were others who praised the piece: “Thank you for always standing up to those in power,” wrote one of Thiel’s supporters.

At the very least, however, FT had presented a unique moral dilemma in publishing Thiel unedited. Is it of value to understand how and what Thiel thinks?

Thiel’s article is clearly written in service of the techno-libertarian ethos driving the enormous profits of the firms that he is directly invested in. This was something FT chose not to foreground, including only a perfunctory biographical line stating, “The writer is a technology entrepreneur and investor.” FT also chose to maximise the reach of the article by making it freely available to non-subscribers. While appearing to simply provide insights on his thinking, Thiel’s opinion piece is also a sales pitch for the projects he is directly invested in. Surely a declaration acknowledging this should have been included?

Witnessing the goings on of X, previously Twitter, and the relentless pursuit of political leverage under the cover of free speech, it seems obvious that there is broad danger in providing a platform for the continued propagation of maniacal ideologies.

It is with bewilderment that we witnessed the leader of the free world, just days before his inauguration, issue a memecoin, and then watched his wife issue a rival coin too. The value of Trump’s coin, in which he holds an 80% stake, surged rapidly, briefly reaching a market capitalisation of $14 billion, in what is no doubt an indication of the general farcicality we can expect to see in the coming years. In the whirlpool of broken narratives, post-truth dissonances and the chaos of the idiotic and contradictory pledges made by heads of state and self-elected billionaire leaders, I do believe that every inch of newspaper space taken up by absurdity is wasted space.

By David Buckham

Buckham is founder and CEO of Johannesburg-based international management consultancy Monocle Solutions and author of “Orthogonal Thinking: My Own Search for Meaning in Mathematics, Literature & Life” (Exclusive Books, Amazon)