Peter Thiel on Trump, Elon, and the Triumph of the Counter-Elites

Peter Thiel
I mean, look, these things are always very overdetermined, but I would say it tells us that celebrity isn’t what it used to be. And celebrity used to have a certain mystique and it has been somewhat deconstructed. And we think of a lot of the Hollywood celebrities, a lot of the, you know, music celebrities as just these left-wing ditto heads. And, you know, they may be smart people. They’re not allowed to articulate smart things. They’re not allowed to be individuals. And one of the striking thing is, I don’t think there is room for individual thought left on the left. And it’s certainly not in Hollywood. And I think, you know, Hollywood in the 1990s,

Peter Thiel
And we think of a lot of the Hollywood celebrities, a lot of the, you know, music celebrities as just these left-wing ditto heads. And, you know, they may be smart people. They’re not allowed to articulate smart things. They’re not allowed to be individuals. And one of the striking thing is, I don’t think there is room for individual thought left on the left. And it’s certainly not in Hollywood. And I think, you know, Hollywood in the 1990s, it was liberal. But, you know, behind closed doors, you could say very transgressive things. And you realize it was this liberal show you were putting on and then there are parts of it you believed and parts of it that you could question. I don’t think people are able to have conversations even in small groups at dinners behind closed doors in a liberal context. People are not allowed to think for themselves. Same thing for university professors. I know when I was at Stanford in the 80s, early 90s, it was overwhelmingly

Peter Thiel
Feels that way, of course. But I know these things are overdetermined, but I keep thinking part of it is just this sort of straitjacket is not what you all signed up for. This intellectual straitjacket where you’re not allowed to have ideas. Even if you agree with 80%, it’s never enough. You have to be 100%. One of the other metaphors I’ve used is that the left, the Democratic Party, it’s like the empire. They’re all imperial stormtroopers. And, you know, we’re the ragtag rebel alliance. And it’s a uncomfortably diverse heterogeneous group. And you have, you know, I don’t know, a teenage Chewbacca and Princess Leia type character. And then we have, you know, we have a autistic C-3PO policy wonk person. And a ragtag rebel alliance against the empire.
Bari Weiss
I thought a lot about, I don’t know if you were into the Hunger Games in the same way you were into Star Wars, but like a lot of, to me, like the people that I know that were reliable Democrats And liberals who either sat out this election or voted Trump for the first time did not do it because they liked Donald Trump. Most of them find him abhorrent. They did it because they wanted to give a middle finger to the Capitol, like in the Hunger Games analogy, because they felt all of the things you’re describing. And I think one of the things I’m thinking about in the aftermath of the election is, will the Democrats double down on all of the narratives and the

Peter Thiel
And the logic of it would be that if you go with a diverse person, you always have to go with a specific category. Let’s say Kamala Harris is a black woman, but maybe that doesn’t mean that much for myself as a gay guy, or maybe it’s alienating to Latinos or something like this. To a specific person, you lose way more people than you get. I mean, I don’t know, it’s maybe 7%

Peter Thiel
One of the books that I think is always a super interesting one to read was 1910. Norman Angel wrote this book, The Great Illusion. What was The Great Illusion? It was this bestseller, sold books around the world and all the countries that would eventually fight World War I. He ends up getting a Nobel Peace Prize in 1933. But what was the thesis? The thesis, The Great Illusion, was that the Great Illusion was that there could be a world war and there could not be a world war because everybody would lose. And it would make as much sense, according to Norman Angel, for the UK to go to war with Germany as it would make sense for London to invade the county of Hertfordshire, the adjacent county To London, because the stock market in London would go down more than the value of any property could grab in Hertfordshire. In a world that was connected through finance and trade and that felt very global like it was in 1913, it was obviously insane to have a world war. And then it nevertheless happened. And then I think there’s a way that the globalization regime was deeply unhealthy, deeply unstable. And I definitely think there are, you know, you don’t want to be Chamberlain. You don’t want to sort of be doing those mistakes from the 1930s at all. I also think it’s worth thinking very hard about where was Norman Angel wrong? And why did the great

Peter Thiel
They vote on them indirectly, and you elect representatives. And then the Constitution is supposed to be a check on republicanism, where even the legislature can’t just do whatever it wants, and it has to still be compatible with the Constitution. And then that’s kind of the intuition I would have about our society. Now, I do wonder if this is not that accurate as a description of the United States. You know, I don’t think we are too populist or too democratic because, you know, yeah, maybe there’s a mob of voters, but they don’t really get to do all that much on a day-to basis. And the problem, know, I would say is maybe more that we’re less of a constitutional republic than we used to be. And it hasn’t shifted from the constitutional republic to this mob of voters, but it’s shifted from the constitutional republic to this sort of unelected, technocratic bureaucracy, You know, the deep state, things like that. And maybe that’s what you need to have in a technologically advanced society where you need experts, you need a central intelligence agency, you need to have secrets, secrets about Nuclear weapons, secrets about other things. And so there are all kinds of ways that an advanced technological society by its very nature, is far less populist or democratic than the U.S. Was even in its 18th century conception.
Bari Weiss
One of the things I’ve been thinking about since Tuesday, but really over the past few years, is this sort of intramural fight between the elites, what you’ve called the Borg, or the NPCs,

Bari Weiss
From now and someone’s looking back at the story of the late 20th century and then of course the 21st century that I think you would argue sort of started late. If we boiled it all down, is it really just all the story of the technological revolution of the Internet that has fundamentally changed our politics, the tone of it, the language of It, that it led to Trump’s rise, that it has brought the collapse of so many of our institutions. Like, is that the headline story that you think is going to be written?
Peter Thiel
I’m always a little bit hesitant to make it completely about tech because in a way that’s the, you know, when you say that tech is omnipotent, omniscient, you know, if it’s not omnibenevolent, It’s omnimalevolent. And it’s sort of turn it into the Judeo-Christian God or something like that. And then, you know, it’s always my Girardian cut is if you make something into God, you are making it into a scapegoat for all the problems too. And so that’s sort of where I’m always – that’s where I’m instinctively hesitant to do this. But with that qualification, yes, I think it’s an incredibly important change. I think there are ways the internet made things transparent that were not transparent. And there are a lot of things that do not work as well when they’re made transparent. You know, markets become more efficient as they’re made more transparent. And then scapegoating probably works less well if it’s transparent.

Bari Weiss
If we boiled it all down, is it really just all the story of the technological revolution of the Internet that has fundamentally changed our politics, the tone of it, the language of It, that it led to Trump’s rise, that it has brought the collapse of so many of our institutions. Like, is that the headline story that you think is going to be written?
Peter Thiel
I’m always a little bit hesitant to make it completely about tech because in a way that’s the, you know, when you say that tech is omnipotent, omniscient, you know, if it’s not omnibenevolent, It’s omnimalevolent. And it’s sort of turn it into the Judeo-Christian God or something like that. And then, you know, it’s always my Girardian cut is if you make something into God, you are making it into a scapegoat for all the problems too. And so that’s sort of where I’m always – that’s where I’m instinctively hesitant to do this. But with that qualification, yes, I think it’s an incredibly important change. I think there are ways the internet made things transparent that were not transparent. And there are a lot of things that do not work as well when they’re made transparent. You know, markets become more efficient as they’re made more transparent. And then scapegoating probably works less well if it’s transparent.

Peter Thiel
Always a little bit hesitant to make it completely about tech because in a way that’s the, you know, when you say that tech is omnipotent, omniscient, you know, if it’s not omnibenevolent, It’s omnimalevolent. And it’s sort of turn it into the Judeo-Christian God or something like that. And then, you know, it’s always my Girardian cut is if you make something into God, you are making it into a scapegoat for all the problems too. And so that’s sort of where I’m always – that’s where I’m instinctively hesitant to do this. But with that qualification, yes, I think it’s an incredibly important change. I think there are ways the internet made things transparent that were not transparent.