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Peter Thiel at a 2016 US Republican event
Photo:
Carolyn Kaster / AP
At first glance, it is easy to mistake Peter Thiel for a caricature, an ongoing Silicon Valley cliché.
The 54-year-old American, born in Frankfurt am Main, has become a billionaire as a co-founder of the payment service PayPal and the highly controversial data analysis company Palantir, as well as a former Facebook investor.
Since then he has been saying and doing things that sound more or less absurd.
"The great unsolved task of the modern world is to turn the death of a part of life into a solvable problem" - quotes like this one, scriptwriters of a parody of start-ups could hardly think of better.
But Thiel is serious, he's investing millions of dollars into researching (dubious) life-extending technologies.
For years he also pursued the idea of constructing artificial islands for empires in open waters so that they would no longer be bound by the laws and taxes of nation states - that was "absolutely necessary," he said in 2009. A rather absurd notion.
And anyway: Which adult would seriously name several of his companies using terms from the world of "Lord of the Rings"?
It is just as easy to think of Thiel as a dangerous man.
Anyone who writes things like "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" need not be surprised at such a characterization.
But Thiel probably doesn't either, at least he likes to behave like someone who doesn't care what others think of him.
In this respect, he might be a good fit for Sebastian Kurz, the former Austrian Chancellor who resigned due to various scandals and who, according to media reports, will be hiring as a "global strategist" at Thiel's investment company Thiel Capital at the beginning of 2022.
"Competition is for losers"
"I think there are really reasons to be afraid of Peter Thiel," says his biographer Max Chefkin.
Not only because Thiel once supported the wrestler Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against the gossip blog operator "Gawker" with millions of dollars and ultimately drove the company into insolvency, just because he didn't like the reports about himself.
But also because Thiel's political and economic philosophy "borders on fascism," as Chefkin says.
There are also famous Thiel sentences such as "Competition is for losers" and "A monopoly is the prerequisite for every successful company" and "Monopolists lie to protect themselves".
So Thiel doesn't seem to be a friend of the market economy either.
The result of his activities and statements: Thiel is seen by many as an anti-democrat who does not understand why politics should be more powerful than companies.
But Thiel's image is always that of those around him - and that is shaped by the pursuit of power, both economic and political.
He would not have been declared the mastermind of a new ideology of the US Republicans and "secretly the most important person in Silicon Valley" (Chefkin) if there had not been enough people who willingly listen to him.
Like Mark Zuckerberg, for example, the founder of Facebook, which is now called Meta.
Thiel had "massively influenced" his thinking, said Zuckerberg once.
Or like Donald Trump, whose election campaign Thiel supported loudly and early on, for which he then became an advisor to the President.
Or like Blake Masters, President of the Thiel Foundation and longtime confidante, who is now sponsored by Thiel to win a seat in the US Senate in 2022.
In Ohio, Thiel supports the candidacy of his ex-employee James Vance.
Sebastian Kurz as "Thielist"
Thiel's love for the tech industry on the US west coast has long been considered cold.
“Silicon Valley is a one-party state.
You get into problems if you are on one side politically «he was quoted as early as 2018.
Thiel has also turned his back on Trump.
In the meantime, it has been speculated that Thiel - like other US billionaires - bought a property in New Zealand on which he wanted to sit out the apocalypse if it happens. In fact, Thiel secured New Zealand citizenship as early as 2011 - you could also say: bought it - which only became known six years later. His ranch on the South Island, acquired in 2015, is certainly big enough with 193 hectares to be able to watch a collapse of the well-known civilization with comparatively great calm. But in a report by Deutsche Welle from August this year, it is said that the property has remained largely untouched over the years and Thiel has hardly been in the country for years. Only since September has it been clearthat Thiel wants to achieve a luxury residence there with space for up to 24 guests, against which there are objections from nature conservationists.
"Thielism", as the "New Yorker" calls the investor's ideology, is evidently more complicated and changeable than the well-known quotes by and about Thiel suggest.
It should be all the more interesting to watch the former Austrian Chancellor Kurz as a full-time »Thielist«.
Actually, the two should meet in Berlin in October.
Thiel was awarded the Frank Schirrmacher Prize from the foundation of the same name.
"Regardless of the existing prohibitions on thinking, he uses his intellectual impulses," was the foundation's rationale.
Briefly, at Thiel's request, the laudation should be held.
But it was precisely at this time that the then head of government resigned.
He stayed away from the event, his appreciation for Thiel was only read out.
