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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

I think I agree in part, though the framing of it in the Gizmodo piece that he seems "less" worried about Facebook is concerning. Google I get, Amazon sure, but why not Facebook? That seems like the most massive surveillance vector to ever exist and a company which might have a penchant for what's not too different from mind control.

Edit: after reading the Vanity Fair essay (which is much better than this Gizmodo thing) I'm I think more skeptical, though it's more explicitly stated that Facebook is viewed in a more nefarious light.

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> but why not Facebook?

Early investor, made him untold millions, tight with zucc, who's sacrificed personal capital to keep him on the board (despite his far-right politics).

Can you explain how his politics are "far-right"? I don't really consider Libertarianism an element of what's become the emergence of right wing authoritarianism.

- He believes that capitalism and democracy are incompatible.

- He is strongly opposed to multiculturalism, and attributes many evils to it. Though when put under pressure to justify some of the views he published in his book on the subject (such as that women reporting rape is an organized leftist conspiracy to undermine white men), he simply said he never thought them. Genius!

- He promotes political figures on the far right of US politics, like race-baiter Ann Coulter.

Whether you consider him a libertarian or not, I can't do much about. Normally I'm against Americans abusing words with perfectly well established meanings for marketing purposes, but I fear this one is a lost cause.

On your first point, that doesn't seem like an idea unique to the Far Right at all. Plenty of Left Wing friends of mine don't think Capitalism works within a Democracy (though I'm sure for different reasons than Thiel).

On your second, I think the virtue of Multiculturalism is at least worth debating. If he calls it "evil" that's not something I'd agree with, but that would align with a lot of Far Right thought.

As for Coulter, she's just as much of a race baiter as any of the others on the Left that seem to attribute any problem they see to some race-based variable. I don't know of any instance where Theil has actively promoted her or her ideas but I'm ready to be proven wrong.

Not sure what to make of that last paragraph. My guess is you're taking issue with "Libertarian" and implying that Thiel is in fact not one, and is using it to appeal to nominal "actual" Libertarians by hyjacking the word. This is of course quite possible.

It isn't that Thiel thinks 'Capitalism and Democracy are incompatible' that makes him right-wing, it is that given he believes they are incompatible, he concludes Democracy should be discarded to preserve Capitalism, rather than the other way around. This is a far-right view.

Not necessarily far-right because the political spectrum has more than one dimension.

So first, this retort is vacuous because the whole point of Thiel's supposition is that the dimensions are not orthogonal. The meaning of the quote is that he is willing to move right on others (political structure, social issues, surveillance state, etc) to be able to move right on another (economic policy).

But even putting that aside, on which dimension is Thiel not on the far-right? He's hardcore capitalist who supports (self-described!) monopolist policies; he sits on the board of a public surveillance company and is the chairman of a second military-industrial one; he published a book in which he called a substantial portion of rape victims liars; and we're talking about him getting an appointment in a right-wing movement in the federal government.

Interesting. Can you link something that more explicitly explains this view? I've long been skeptical of the virtue of Capitalism so I'm open to exploring the other end of that spectrum.

The general school of thought (that Thiel is linked to) is called neoreaction or the Dark Enlightenment. Here's a fairly good intro by Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-...

The left used to opposed multiculturalism in favor of promoting cultural globalisation. Its only in recent 40-50 years that majority of the left has swung on that issue, now being in favor of multiculturalism and against cultural globalisation.

And the Republican party defeated the group that fought for slavery. Things change over generations.

Slavery was a 19th century issue.

Cultural globalisation was favored by the left during the 1970's and lost favor during the 1980's and later.

Is slavery and Cultural globalisation a fair comparison?

[1] Most libertarians agree with this.

[2] "Enforcement of Multi culturalism" is opposed by most libertarians.

[3] This shows he is supporting conservatives, not really far right.

Perhaps your definition of far right is not what I understand.

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