JD Vance, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, and Nick Land

Why the mysterious backer of Trump's running mate bodes well for America.

Shortly before Donald Trump announced that Senator JD Vance would be his running mate in the 2024 election, I started hearing concerns from people about Vance's ties to a mysterious ultra-wealthy figure. Someone named teal? Something like that. "Peter Thiel," I responded. "He's a good guy." Many people do not know very much about Peter Thiel, who he is, and what he stands for.

Before he was in politics politics, Vance was a co-founder of Narya Capital in Cincinnati. Narya Capital received financial backing from Peter Thiel. In his 2022 Senate campaign, Peter Thiel donated $10 million to the Protect Ohio Values super PAC, which supported Vance's candidacy. The two first met in 2011 when JD Vance attended a talk by Peter Thiel while he was in law school at Yale. Vance wrote in 2020:

Peter’s talk remains the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School. He articulated a feeling that had until then remained unformed: that I was obsessed with achievement in se—not as an end to something meaningful, but to win a social competition. My worry that I had prioritized striving over character took on a heightened significance: striving for what? I didn’t even know why I cared about the things I cared about. I fancied myself educated, enlightened, and especially wise about the ways of the world—at least compared with most of the people from my hometown. Yet I was obsessed with obtaining professional credentials—a clerkship with a federal judge and then an associate position at a prestigious firm—that I didn’t understand. I hated my limited exposure to legal practice. I looked to the future, and realized that I’d been running a desperate race where the first prize was a job I hated.

He also stated that Peter Thiel was the smartest person he had ever met. Meeting Thiel changed the course of JD Vance's life. Vance got into venture capital, and then politics, with the support of Peter Thiel. Now Vance is on a presidential ticket that is, at the time of writing, running unopposed.

So who is Peter Thiel, and should we be worried about him? I say that we should not. Peter Thiel is a force for relative good. His views broadly align with my own, as well as with most writing in this Substack space. In this piece, I will note some objections to Peter Thiel. Then I will look at some of his writings to elucidate this mysterious figure and understand his views.

Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk. Walter Isaacson gives an interesting account of this story in his Elon Musk biography. Peter Thiel spearheaded the "PayPal Mafia," which ousted Elon Musk from the company. Some object that Thiel has guilt-by-association for being a co-founder of the company because over two decades later PayPal changed their user agreement to fine people who engage in 'intolerance'. I think this is a silly objection to Peter Thiel and does not show that he is a secret libtard or something like that. Such allegations will be increasingly hard to make as we review his writings. Peter Thiel was CEO of PayPal until 2002, 20 years before they changed their user agreement in this objectionable way.

Peter Thiel was also the first major investor in Facebook. In 2004, Thiel invested $500,000 into the fledgling social media platform. Once again, some argue that he has a guilt by association for having a stake in Facebook. Facebook is a censorious company that has done much harm to political discourse in the United States, actively siding with the deep state to cover up important information during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election. Did Peter Thiel have a hand in this censorship? There is no evidence that he would have. Peter Thiel has been actively decreasing his influence in the company since 2012. As it stands, he owns approximately 3% of Facebook. Thiel sat on the board of Facebook until 2022, but he reportedly made Zuckerberg uncomfortable with his unapologetic Trumpism. He stated "I will take QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories any day over a Ministry of Truth" regarding Facebook's censorship efforts.

Another objection that many on the right have to Peter Thiel is his marital status. He is "married" to a man. This is frankly of no concern to me. He donates to pro-gay rights organizations. I would prefer he not, but Thiel's other political activities outweigh this in my mind. The benefits are greater than the costs of having a powerful man like Thiel on our side. Something interesting did come from his sexual orientation, though. The now-defunct Gawker magazine outed Peter Thiel as gay in 2007. He did not forgive this sin. He would have preferred to keep it a private matter. So he got to work behind the scenes, looking for how he could take his revenge. When Gawker published a video of Hulk Hogan cheating on his wife, Thiel decided he would step in and secretly fund Hogan's legal proceedings against Gawker. The jury decided in favor of Hulk Hogan, and the settlement ended up destroying Gawker. Thiel and others observed this as a flashpoint moment in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Thiel believed that the people had chosen Hulk Hogan, a Trump-like figure, over the frankly evil media. He predicted that this was a microcosm of what would happen in 2016. He was correct, and he put his money behind Trump in the 2016 election. Ryan Holiday has a great book about this story called Conspiracy. It is a good read and I recommend it.

There is one last qualm with Thiel I want to discuss. Leo Hohmann published a piece last week, in which he states:

Vance is a prominent figure in the Thiel network, and a significant investor in Rumble, the conservative digital-media platform. Thiel reportedly bankrolled Vance’s successful run in the Ohio Republican senatorial primary two years ago, contributing a whopping $10 million to super PACs working to get Vance elected.

Thiel is the co-founder and chairman of Denver, Colorado-based Palantir Technologies, which provides surveillance technology for intelligence agencies and the U.S. Department of Defense. That places him right smack in the middle of the military-industrial complex and the surveillance state.

Thiel is also on the steering committee of the shadowy Bilderberg Group, a major promoter of elitist one-world government fantasies.

Who is J.D. Vance?

I am no fan of the Bilderberg Group. The Bilderberg Group was founded in 1956 to foster a strong relationship between Europe and the United States in the aftermath of World War II. The group meets annually. All the public receives from the group is a list of attendees and where it is held. There are no press allowed, and no notes are released. In her work, A Choice Not an Echo, Phyllis Schlafly describes the Bilderbergers as the Kingmakers. They pick heads of state, including U.S. Presidents. It is hard to pinpoint a specific agenda because they purportedly do not have one, but I would bet that most members lean towards globalism as a positive goal. With Thiel being on the steering committee, this certainly raises questions. Is Peter Thiel a secret globalist who somehow forced Donald Trump into picking a VP that was beholden to the Bilderbergers? I do not think there is evidence to support this claim. The ideological alignment of both Vance and Thiel seems to run contrary to such a claim. Peter Thiel's Free Forever PAC emphasizes strict border control, restrictive immigration policy, and anti-interventionism as primary issues necessary for them to support a candidate for office. These aims run directly against globalism. If we are trying to deduce where he stands on the issue of globalism versus nationalism, the chips only fall one way. Sure, he is on the steering committee of an organization that holds meetings with many globalists. But he puts his money towards counter-globalist causes. He contributed a large sum of money to Donald Trump, the anti-globalist and anti-kingmaker candidate whom Phyllis Schlafly was early to endorse. He was even on Donald Trump's Presidential transition team in 2016. Did those who are raising alarms about Thiel being some shadowy globalist overlord have the same unfounded concerns in 2016? I do not remember conservative alarmism about Thiel back then. Alarmism about Thiel has only really ever come from the left, because he is a powerful enemy of the left with the money and influence to get people they loathe elected.

The Kingmaker label is interesting. In 2022, the New York Times ran a piece describing Thiel as a conservative kingmaker. In the piece, the author lists all of the ways that Thiel has promoted MAGA candidates since 2016.

Thiel has been an enemy of DEI for nearly 3 decades. He co-authored The Diversity Myth, which was published in 1995.

Until at least late last year, Thiel had distanced himself from Trump after a falling out with the former President. I do not know if this has changed since a close associate of Thiel's has joined the ticket.

So far, this essay has been quite different than what I usually post on Substack. I prefer to get into the theoretical meat of things, so that is what we will look at now.

The Education of a Libertarian

Peter Thiel can be most aptly described as a post-libertarian. He is very well-read on libertarian theory and ideas. A post-libertarian can take the concepts learned from libertarian domains, such as Austrian Economics, and continue to apply them, even if the values or goals have shifted. Curtis Yarvin, to whom Thiel is connected, could also be considered a post-libertarian. I also fit into this camp. My undergraduate degree is in economics. I studied at Hillsdale College, so economics means Austrian economics.

Thiel's post-libertarianism begins to come through in his essay 'The Education of a Libertarian', published on April 13, 2009. He starts the essay:

I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”

But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible

Freedom and democracy are doubtlessly incompatible. Hans Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed explores this concept. Hoppe is an Austrian economist. His book is the discovery that Austrian first principles when applied to politics, show distinct and unavoidable dangers of democracy. Hoppe contrasts elected representatives with hereditary monarchs, specifically analyzing the time-preference incentives of individuals in both positions.

A hereditary monarch will have a low time preference, meaning he plans long into the future. If his children and his children's children are going to inherit the state, long-term economic prosperity is a high priority. Because if the economy falls apart, the tax base falls apart. On the other hand, elected representatives have a high time preference. They focus on quick and easy economic stimulus to please the constituents in the short term. Little attention is given to long-term consequences.

The citizens also have a higher time preference under representative democracy. Thiel recognizes this, understanding that the electorate will not vote for economically sound policy. "Those who have argued for free markets have been screaming into a hurricane," Thiel writes. "The events of recent months shatter any remaining hopes of politically minded libertarians. For those of us who are libertarian in 2009, our education culminates with the knowledge that the broader education of the body politic has become a fool’s errand."

Peter Thiel cares deeply about technological progress. He often points out that technology is lagging. On an old podcast episode I listened to a few years ago, he mentioned little looks different if you look at the office in 2016 versus 1996. Sure, the computers are sleeker, and the processors are quite a bit faster, but that's the only real technological progress we have seen. There are no flying cars and there is no nanotechnology. True economic prosperity is a prerequisite for actual technological expansion. In the 21st century, even when the economy is booming, that mostly means there are more spreadsheet grinders and office job thumb-twiddlers. In essence, most of the economy is fake. We are in a period of slow and mostly painless civilizational decline.

Thiel states, "In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world." He advocates that the future of humanity be grasped outside of political domains. We should seek power and progress in the economy and technology, not just in the political sphere. Progress in cyberspace, outer space, and seasteading are three avenues he identifies as potentially productive. Our government does little to help these domains move forward, though. Instead, we get endless wars to ensure that Trans rights and BLM ideology reaches the most remote parts of the Earth.

This essay was cited by Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land, two seminal Neoreactionary thinkers. Thiel's supposition that democracy is a minus, rather than a plus, is cited in Land's 2012 essay The Dark Enlightenment. Land argues that "democracy is not merely doomed, it is doom itself."

Fleeing it approaches an ultimate imperative. The subterranean current that propels such anti-politics is recognizably Hobbesian, a coherent dark enlightenment, devoid from its beginning of any Rousseauistic enthusiasm for popular expression. Predisposed, in any case, to perceive the politically awakened masses as a howling irrational mob, it conceives the dynamics of democratization as fundamentally degenerative: systematically consolidating and exacerbating private vices, resentments, and deficiencies until they reach the level of collective criminality and comprehensive social corruption. The democratic politician and the electorate are bound together by a circuit of reciprocal incitement, in which each side drives the other to ever more shameless extremities of hooting, prancing cannibalism, until the only alternative to shouting is being eaten.

Yarvin is also a noted critic of democracy for similar reasons. It is significant because this post-libertarian emphasis that human flourishing is both good and stymied by liberalism is a concept Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance is doubtlessly familiar with.

The Straussian Moment

Another interesting aspect of Peter Thiel's thought comes through in his 2004 essay titled ‘The Straussian Moment’. In this essay, Thiel assesses of the American political moment through the lens of Leo Strauss's philosophical project. Thiel argues that we are in a crisis of modernity and that there is a loss of meaning and purpose in the liberal democratic world order. Writing in 2004, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the start of the war on terror to destroy what seemed to be the last enemy of the West, it seemed as though history had come to an end.

At Stanford, Peter Thiel studied under Rene Girard. In the essay, he pits Girard against Strauss in this essay. Thiel states, "In spite of the inspiring sweep of the Straussian project, there remains a nagging suspicion that perhaps it is missing something fundamental altogether. And if the French literary theorist René Girard is even partially correct in his extraordinary account of the history of the world, then the Straussian moment of triumph may prove to be brief indeed."

Drawing on Carl Schmitt, Rene Girard, and Leo Strauss, Thiel showcases the drawbacks of Enlightenment liberalism. We live in "the long twilight of the modern age," he says, and our best bet is to put a Christian statesman in power to be a wise steward to get us through the postmodern time. Thiel rejects archaic traditionalism, stating that we can obviously not simply turn the clocks back and return to an earlier regime. Instead, we must persevere with wisdom and peace. Thiel states:

The Christian statesman or stateswoman must diverge from the teachings of Strauss in one decisive respect. Unlike Strauss, the Christian statesman or stateswoman knows that the modern age will not be permanent, and ultimately will give way to something very different. One must never forget that one day all will be revealed, that all injustices will be exposed, and that those who perpetrated them will be held to account.

I wonder if Vance has read this essay. I wonder what Vance thinks about the concept of a Christian statesman being a steward to get the nation through harrowing times.

Conclusion

Peter Thiel is also pretty good at Chess. He is rated 2199 in standard over-the-board Chess. Because Chess is a complex game of tactics. There is a delicate push and pull and you must always be on guard, looking at how each decision will impact future outcomes. In Chess, nothing matters except winning. Chess is a Machiavellian game.

Thiel is also familiar with Machiavelli, as is Curtis Yarvin, who has done much to popularize James Burnham's fantastic book The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom. At this moment in political history, a Machiavellian understanding of the science of politics is necessary. Sometimes, the supposedly sacred bounds of our system must be crossed for the good of the nation, even if this means leaving liberalism by the wayside for a little bit.

The two critical issues of this decade, the outcomes of which will shape the rest of the century and maybe more, are how we handle the left and what we do about immigration. Thiel's money funds candidates who are defending our border. Thiel's funding of the Gawker lawsuit also demonstrates that he is not interested in debate, he is interested in defeating his enemies.

And when the fate of nations is at stake, nothing matters more than defeating your enemies.