By Gabriel Squitieri

Peter Thiel: He’s the Elon Musk of the right. Such a designation is irrelevant now, considering the obsequious billionaire Musk has joined forces with the right as well. Nevertheless, I wish not to harp on Mr. Musk. Instead, I find it pertinent to recount and analyze the actions of Peter Thiel as long as we are living in this era. A relatively obscure figure when compared to his fellow tech tycoons, Mr. Thiel is somewhat of an enigma. The co-founder of PayPal does not post on Twitter and is seldom in the news. Not only has that allowed him to go mostly unnoticed, but he has also been able to influence the American political landscape, making friends in the halls of Congress and funding his acolytes in key races with little noise.

Thiel’s start in politics began as an undergraduate at Stanford University, where he founded a publication that placed himself and like-minded students in the intensifying culture war. As he rose in the technology sector to become a Silicon Valley tycoon, his political beliefs began to raise eyebrows. In a 2009 essay, arguing in favor of monopolies, he wrote that he “no longer believe[d] that capitalism and democracy are compatible.” Such views – at least the former – come into conflict with his newfound distaste for Big Tech.

While suspicion for Big Tech has become fashionable among conservatives in recent years, few have harped on it as much as Thiel. Formerly a member of Facebook’s board of directors, Thiel left in 2019 and has since become increasingly critical of Big Tech. “The consensus view is again, that it is about large centralization, Google, Google-like governments, that control all the world’s information, in this super centralized way,” Thiel said in a 2021 interview. “Silicon Valley is probably way too enamored of AI, not just for technological reasons, but also because it expresses this left-wing centralized zeitgeist.”

The roots of Theil’s vendetta can be traced back to 2007, when Gawker published an article with the headline “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.” While the article was a combination of disdain for venture capitalist culture that catered to straight white men and praise for Thiel’s success in a sector of the economy that famously shied away from LGBT-run business ventures, the Silicon Valley magnate was furious that he had been outed. A decade later, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape was leaked, and the wrestler, funded by Thiel, filed a lawsuit that would bankrupt the publication. Thiel insisted that the suit was first and foremost a matter of an individual’s right to privacy. While such a view should not be dismissed without consideration, it is especially ironic that Thiel, who claims to be launching a war for free speech and privacy, has aligned himself with the most authoritarian elements of the Republican Party.

His most recent protégé (and former employee), the Trump-endorsed GOP nominee for Arizona’s Senate seat, Blake Masters, has received over $10 million from PACs backed by Thiel. Like his former boss, Masters is a critic of Big Tech, regularly lambasting platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google, claiming they are unfairly targeting conservative voices while catering to “the radical left”, and attacking free speech and privacy in the process. 

However, there is a blind spot in Masters’ outlook: he is no defender of these principles. In a tweet from May 7th, Masters all but stated that Griswold v. Connecticut – which established the right to purchase and use contraception on the basis of privacy – was an overreach by the Supreme Court, which had, in his words, “made up a constitutional right to achieve a political outcome.”

While views such as this are finding newfound popularity on the right, they are not the primary stances that made the Thiel acolyte appealing to so many conservatives, including Donald Trump. Like many conservatives, Masters has made unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. “I think Trump won in 2020,” he stated in a YouTube video. He has embraced a range of explanations for why the former president lost, including ballot harvesting, last-minute changes to election laws in swing states, and Big Tech censorship. Each assertion has gained traction among right-wing circles since 2020.

What sets Masters apart from older Republicans is his attunement to the New Right. A burgeoning conservative movement with a large online presence, the New Right is rapidly gaining adherents among the GOP rank-and-file. The New Right, at least to some extent, chafes at the ideas embraced by so-called RINOs (“Republicans In Name Only”). Viewing figures like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell as part of a bygone era, its members somewhat eschew traditional conservative talking points such as free-market economics and government downsizing, hoping instead to inflame the raging culture war. Their motivation to fight the latter is based on a combination of America’s glorified past and grievances pertaining to what they view as the country’s economic, social, and moral decay.

Masters’ campaign is a perfect microcosm of the movement he represents. Tall, slim, and just 35 years old, Masters bears little, if any, resemblance to the “Country Club Republicans” who used to make up the rank-and-file of the party and continue to comprise much of its donor base. An incessant poster on Twitter and Instagram, he has used the platforms to disseminate his message, a combination of populist economic nationalism, extreme social conservatism, and disdain for political correctness. His campaign announcement video laments globalization, Big Tech, and Critical Race Theory, saying that “the country [he] grew up in was optimistic. People thought all you had to do was go to school and work hard. You’d be able to buy a house and raise a family, but it hasn’t worked out that way”.

Masters is right to criticize the political class for its inability to minimize the effects of globalization, including deindustrialization, a decline in living standards, and rising wealth inequality. However, he has also demonstrated a willingness to attack the same downtrodden Americans he claims to represent. His plans to privatize water and Social Security, while extreme, do not deviate from Republican orthodoxy. In this sense, he is a standard GOP candidate.

Master’s plans for Social Security should concern every American, but it pales in comparison to the assault on freedom that has become a crucial tenet of his campaign. Radically anti-choice, Masters has gone further than most “moderate” Republicans in his rhetoric. In addition to celebrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade, he has called abortion “demonic,” advocated for a national ban on abortion, lent his support to Arizona’s 15-week ban (with no exceptions for rape and incest), and backed a fetal personhood bill.

None of these views on a woman’s right to choose conform with the libertarianism to which Thiel and Masters formerly subscribed. Even more worryingly, Masters has flirted with the “Great Replacement Theory,” a far-right conspiracy theory that warns of forced demographic changes through mass immigration that will ultimately produce a majority-minority country. The theory’s proponents maintain that all of this will be brought about by cultural and political elites intent on destroying America and its way of life.

Granted, the version of the conspiracy theory Masters promotes is sanitized in that it contains fewer references to George Soros and the white race specifically, but it is nonetheless concerning. Masters has accused the Democratic Party of trying to change the ethnic composition of the country as part of its larger plan to achieve a permanent hold on power. The alleged plan is simple: provide amnesty to illegal immigrants and use their votes to win elections.

While the most notable among his cohort, Masters is not the only GOP candidate hoping to ride an anti-immigrant wave to victory. Ohio’s J.D. Vance, who is also Trump-endorsed and Thiel-funded, has used similar rhetoric in his race. In a television ad, Vance accused Joe Biden of implementing an open borders policy that allowed fentanyl and illegal immigrants, whom he referred to as “Democrat voters,” to pour into the country. In an interview with Gateway Pundit, Vance asked, “If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl?”

Vance’s rhetoric is less extreme than that of his Arizona counterpart, but the Thiel acolytes are both propagating the same idea: Unless someone stops Joe Biden and the left, they’ll use their power to bring about demographic changes and marginalize white Americans. Both candidates, as well as others funded by Thiel, are using a combination of economic populism and far-right talking points on immigration to justify a brand of authoritarian politics that defines the New Right.

To understand this movement and the political hopefuls representing it, one must understand Thiel. Like those he is funding, Thiel’s public persona is that of a culture warrior launching a crusade against liberal bodies, namely corporations and governing institutions, and the social and political agenda that they purvey. The image he and his acolytes have crafted of themselves, however, is a trojan horse for an agenda that combines the GOP’s traditional eagerness to dismantle popular government programs with reactionary and far-right positions on social issues as well as an increasingly obvious authoritarianism.