He's part of the REAL, fully convinced neofascists and continues to play a crucial role in turning the GOP into a neofascist party.
Yes, like quite some other neofascist ideologues, he's not entirely happy with how Trump is implementing Project 2025. Yarvin Curtis, one of his main sources and also a neofascist, often writes about how they believe that this is NOT the smartest way to install neofascism.
Still, these guys ARE the real deal. Contrary to Trump, they ARE real believers.
Thiel already gave lectures against democracy in 2009, and he's not about to change his opinion.
So no, his financing of Trump and Vance was never "selfish", in the sense that he'd be an average GOP donor trying to donate out of personal greed, in order to increase his own wealth. Just like Musk, Andreessen, Sachs and Vance himself, these people are truly convinced that democracy is bad and should be destroyed and replaced with neofascism - globally.
It's also what makes them so much more dangerous than Trump or Kennedy, mere grifters who are motivated by corruption and fame and that's it.
Please read NYT bestseller "The Nerd Reich" by Gil Duran (former Diane Weinstein aide), who has been researching the neofascist tech billionaire world for a long time already.
The LAST thing we need today is for people to begin to imagine that Thiel is just a businessman misled by personal greed!
We also should acknowledge the likes of Leonard Leo, Russell Vought, Ginni Thomas, Newt Gingrich, and the many, many other traitors, who have helped destroy this country for years and years and years. Without them, the heinous Project 2025 could never have been conceived, written and implemented.
We have a malevolent cabal in this country that has worked to destroy our constitutional republic for decades, well before Thiel and the other technocrats reared their ugly heads.
Project 2025 was created by the GOP's main think tank, the Heritage Foundation, together with Hungarian neofascist Orban's Danube Institute, an organization created to help foreign democracies transition to neofascism by learning how Hungary has done it.
The Heritage Foundation has delivered almost half of the senior WH staff since 2025. Those are the people writing the executive orders that they then explain on camera to Trump before asking him to sign them - the same executive orders that GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said a GOP Congress will now "codify into law" rather than keeping their vow to the Constitution and protecting Congress' independence from the executive branch of government by following the democratic process, which consists of writing and negotiating bills in Congress rather than subordinating Congress to the WH.
So yes, there are different pillars inside the current neofascist GOP. Neofascist tech billionaires constitute only one pillar. The other is made up of self-declared "Christian" nationalist neofascists.
Read Kevin Roberts' book "Dawn's Early Light", published in 2024, with a foreword by none other than JD Vance. Roberts is currently president of the Heritage Foundation. Already on the first pages of the book, he calls for a "burning down" of all major government institutions and universities. This is exactly what DOGE then implemented. None of this is about creating a better-functioning democracy. It's all about getting rid of BOTH pro-democracy Democrats and pro-democracy Republicans (what Roberts calls the "Uniparty") and replacing them all (including civil-service career employees and military leaders) with pro-neofascism ones.
Or as Kamala Harris repeated during her book tour: this has been DECADES in the making, and it won't disappear anytime soon.
I totally agree with you on underestimating Thiel. He’s a selfish person and is only interested in the money. At the next turn in the chaos he’ll be back along with Russ Vought and Stephen Miller. As far as MTG, she’s just playing a cool. I don’t trust any of them and they are all cowards. And as you say, they’re only speaking out now because they have nothing in the game.
My guess (entirely subjective) is that neofascist billionaires pay MTG to create an alternative neofascist option if GOP voters ever completely drop Trump and, therefore, their neofascist dream would be destroyed. To be verified...
In the meantime, for anyone who still needs to discover who Thiel actually is, the NYT explained it in 2021:
That being said... how does publicly stating that you're against democracy turn you into a coward? I cannot disagree more with Adam's analysis here. These people, again, are true believers and willing to stand up for their beliefs. That does require some dosis of courage. Also and even more importantly, nothing indicates that these are "selfish" people. Neofascists are IDEOLOGUES. They are on a mission to create a better world, only for them, that means destroying democracy and installing neofascism. As long as we ignore this and imagine that it's a mere problem of a handful of "selfish" individuals, they will always be one step ahead and will continue to defeat us.
If anything, they are what the leader of Iceland at the UN General Debate called "moral cowards", as all neofascists are, but that then refers to the fact that they're convinced that human nature is essentially bad, the masses too mediocre to allow them to have a say in how a country is governed, and they themselves are the few "elites" who get it and therefore should have all the freedom needed to govern as they want.
Who can forget the "concern" shown by Senator Susan Collins, who voted for Brett Kavanaugh, who then made a woman's right to choose history? Or Senator "Doctor" Cassidy from Louisiana, who helped appoint Pete Kegsbreath and Worm Boy both as members of the Cabinet, now taking digs at RFK's failure to stop a flu outbreak at a USAF earlier in January, who now claims the Iran war was a "mistake?"
Nothing like a self-righteous hypocrite and phony suddenly taking a moral stand....long after anybody cared. And with or without a sombrero, Senator Kennedy will still resemble a giant bowl of melting cottage cheese without the bowl. And listening to him this morning gyrate and pirouette at Jack Smith, you know the man will always be nothing but a pathetic, performative asshole.
As we al know, you, Adam, are not one of those people. 👍
One man (you, Adam) speaks for us all, inspiring us to step up and do what’s right. I admire your conviction, Adam, and thank you for helping us defend ours.
Speaking up may have come at a price for you Adam. But you can sleep at night and hold your head high in any room. Your son can be proud and has the best role model. Peter Thiel has bankrolled democracy’s undoing. The small voices whining about Trump now are pathetic. Whatever the outcome one of the midterms and 2028, one thing remains certain: It will take decades to repair the damage done by this Administration.
Thiel isn't jumping off at all. His only complaint is that the neofascists in the WH aren't efficient enough when it comes to the methods used to install neofascism in the US and around the world!
EUWDTB, if Peter Thiel is stepping back from the biggest lever of control in the world: the US federal government, what else can he do to further his neofascist ambitions? In other words, it feels a bit like PT sees the writing on the wall and is taking steps to insulate himself from the coming fall. Do you see it differently?
His criticism of Trump and the administration. Prior to this, he not only spoke well of JD Vance and the like he funded their campaigns. To now say that Trump’s cabinet is populated by incompetent loyalists seems like a big change no?
He's not referring to Vance - another ideologue whose career he bankrolled first as a venture capitalist and then as a politician. Vance converted to Catholicism mostly because of his mentor Thiel.
There is a REAL disagreement about how to install neofascism in the US AMONG neofascists.
There are those who believe in the current approach, those who believe that the destruction of democratic institutions should have been implemented much faster, and those who wanted it to be implemented using neofascist technocrats such as Russell Vought rather than hollow Fox anchors such as Hegseth.
So when they complain about Trump loyalists, they simply state their disagreement with those who'd rather listen to Trump than to them, that's all.
Most of the real ideologues wanted COMPETENT neofascists in DC from the very beginning - starting with Vance. Not the bunch of incompetent clowns coming over from Fox.
Adam, your convictions early on spoke courage to those of us who watched in horror at the actions of Jan 6th. Thank you to both you and Liz Cheney for stepping up. It took courage. Your losses were a stiff price to pay for the defense of democracy. Thank you , thank you!
How come he STILL doesn't know that Thiel is not a tiny corrupt man who's in it to make his personal wealth even bigger, but instead one of the founding fathers of neofascism in the US, hellbent on installing it asap and just not happy with how the current neofascists in DC are trying to do so... ?
Thiel has been giving lectures arguing why democracy needs to be destroyed for almost two decades now.
Part of the problem is clearly that even pro-democracy, well-intentioned Republicans such as Adam STILL don't see what's actually going on in the GOP and in the US.
"If you wait until it’s safe, you’ve waited until it doesn’t matter." I will give you credit for each use - but I plan to make that a battle cry. Brilliant. Succinct and on point.
Throughout Trump’s horror show of a Presidency, I am constantly reminded of JFK’s Profiles In Courage - individuals who cast their hard earned political capital on justice and truth. Sadly, and tragically , there have been relatively few coming from the GOP in recent years. You are among those few who have exhibited that courage. Thank you for continuing to stand to speak and spread the truth.
That may be true of the sycophants and followers, but I totally agree with EUWDTB that people like Thiel and Vought were never sycophants, they think they are building their new empire, of which they will be the leaders.
I keep thinking of "The King Has no Clothes (children's fairy tale)." The little boy was the only one brave enough to make the declaration. Those in the king's court who were in a position to speak to the king would not criticize him or his actions if they thought they might lose their jobs (or their heads!). Truth is stranger than fiction. We have an entire Congress and SCOTUS who are afraid to speak out. Where is the brave little boy?
Beautifully written... Theil, above all, surprised me.. going for the US contracts and winning getting them and proud of his openly gay marriage this cannot exist with the other except all his money allows him to live the life he loves, while the rest of preople would be thrown in hiding for being in a same sex marriage or threatened prison using a morning after pill... the hypocrisy list is long..but only 2 columns... those with money and those without
Neofascists have nothing against the LGBTQ community. The leader of the German neofascist AfD is a lesbian. They're actually also not racist. They simply need to spread racism and homophobia to keep their sheep ignorant and fired up to vote for them, that's all.
Thiel has been giving PUBLIC lectures arguing that democracies globally need to be destroyed and replaced with neofascism since 2009 already. So you can blame him for many things, but definitely not for hypocrisy.
This is also why today's neofascist GOP hired Scott Bessent as Sec. of Treasury. He's openly gay and married.
As always with fascism, there is the RHETORIC, which is there to keep people ignorant and voting for them, and then there is what they themselves truly believe. THAT is what we should focus on, rather than STILL not seeing the truth and imagining that they're all just a bunch of not-too-clever, greedy pro-democracy businessmen... !!
Well, AMEN to that! Best things for us to remember and live by:
"It’s the friend getting insulted in the group chat while everybody else goes quiet. It’s the school board meeting where the loudest people in the room are pushing something cruel, and you’re deciding whether it’s worth giving up your Tuesday night to stand up and say no. It’s a coworker, a neighbor, a relative at Thanksgiving.
Speaking up in any of those moments costs you something. Maybe your comfort. Maybe a friendship. That cost is exactly what makes it count. If you wait until it’s safe, you’ve waited until it doesn’t matter."
You're strongly underestimating Thiel here!
He's part of the REAL, fully convinced neofascists and continues to play a crucial role in turning the GOP into a neofascist party.
Yes, like quite some other neofascist ideologues, he's not entirely happy with how Trump is implementing Project 2025. Yarvin Curtis, one of his main sources and also a neofascist, often writes about how they believe that this is NOT the smartest way to install neofascism.
Still, these guys ARE the real deal. Contrary to Trump, they ARE real believers.
Thiel already gave lectures against democracy in 2009, and he's not about to change his opinion.
So no, his financing of Trump and Vance was never "selfish", in the sense that he'd be an average GOP donor trying to donate out of personal greed, in order to increase his own wealth. Just like Musk, Andreessen, Sachs and Vance himself, these people are truly convinced that democracy is bad and should be destroyed and replaced with neofascism - globally.
It's also what makes them so much more dangerous than Trump or Kennedy, mere grifters who are motivated by corruption and fame and that's it.
Please read NYT bestseller "The Nerd Reich" by Gil Duran (former Diane Weinstein aide), who has been researching the neofascist tech billionaire world for a long time already.
The LAST thing we need today is for people to begin to imagine that Thiel is just a businessman misled by personal greed!
We also should acknowledge the likes of Leonard Leo, Russell Vought, Ginni Thomas, Newt Gingrich, and the many, many other traitors, who have helped destroy this country for years and years and years. Without them, the heinous Project 2025 could never have been conceived, written and implemented.
We have a malevolent cabal in this country that has worked to destroy our constitutional republic for decades, well before Thiel and the other technocrats reared their ugly heads.
Others have led the way.
Project 2025 was created by the GOP's main think tank, the Heritage Foundation, together with Hungarian neofascist Orban's Danube Institute, an organization created to help foreign democracies transition to neofascism by learning how Hungary has done it.
The Heritage Foundation has delivered almost half of the senior WH staff since 2025. Those are the people writing the executive orders that they then explain on camera to Trump before asking him to sign them - the same executive orders that GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said a GOP Congress will now "codify into law" rather than keeping their vow to the Constitution and protecting Congress' independence from the executive branch of government by following the democratic process, which consists of writing and negotiating bills in Congress rather than subordinating Congress to the WH.
So yes, there are different pillars inside the current neofascist GOP. Neofascist tech billionaires constitute only one pillar. The other is made up of self-declared "Christian" nationalist neofascists.
Read Kevin Roberts' book "Dawn's Early Light", published in 2024, with a foreword by none other than JD Vance. Roberts is currently president of the Heritage Foundation. Already on the first pages of the book, he calls for a "burning down" of all major government institutions and universities. This is exactly what DOGE then implemented. None of this is about creating a better-functioning democracy. It's all about getting rid of BOTH pro-democracy Democrats and pro-democracy Republicans (what Roberts calls the "Uniparty") and replacing them all (including civil-service career employees and military leaders) with pro-neofascism ones.
Or as Kamala Harris repeated during her book tour: this has been DECADES in the making, and it won't disappear anytime soon.
So we better wake up...
The time to wake up was long ago. We will pay the cost of our lack of awareness for generations to come, I fear.
Totally agree
Perfection, EUWDTB, absolute perfection!!
I totally agree with you on underestimating Thiel. He’s a selfish person and is only interested in the money. At the next turn in the chaos he’ll be back along with Russ Vought and Stephen Miller. As far as MTG, she’s just playing a cool. I don’t trust any of them and they are all cowards. And as you say, they’re only speaking out now because they have nothing in the game.
My guess (entirely subjective) is that neofascist billionaires pay MTG to create an alternative neofascist option if GOP voters ever completely drop Trump and, therefore, their neofascist dream would be destroyed. To be verified...
In the meantime, for anyone who still needs to discover who Thiel actually is, the NYT explained it in 2021:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/books/review/the-contrarian-peter-thiel-max-chafkin.html
That being said... how does publicly stating that you're against democracy turn you into a coward? I cannot disagree more with Adam's analysis here. These people, again, are true believers and willing to stand up for their beliefs. That does require some dosis of courage. Also and even more importantly, nothing indicates that these are "selfish" people. Neofascists are IDEOLOGUES. They are on a mission to create a better world, only for them, that means destroying democracy and installing neofascism. As long as we ignore this and imagine that it's a mere problem of a handful of "selfish" individuals, they will always be one step ahead and will continue to defeat us.
If anything, they are what the leader of Iceland at the UN General Debate called "moral cowards", as all neofascists are, but that then refers to the fact that they're convinced that human nature is essentially bad, the masses too mediocre to allow them to have a say in how a country is governed, and they themselves are the few "elites" who get it and therefore should have all the freedom needed to govern as they want.
Well said , Adam . Thank you for your courage and convictions .
Who can forget the "concern" shown by Senator Susan Collins, who voted for Brett Kavanaugh, who then made a woman's right to choose history? Or Senator "Doctor" Cassidy from Louisiana, who helped appoint Pete Kegsbreath and Worm Boy both as members of the Cabinet, now taking digs at RFK's failure to stop a flu outbreak at a USAF earlier in January, who now claims the Iran war was a "mistake?"
Nothing like a self-righteous hypocrite and phony suddenly taking a moral stand....long after anybody cared. And with or without a sombrero, Senator Kennedy will still resemble a giant bowl of melting cottage cheese without the bowl. And listening to him this morning gyrate and pirouette at Jack Smith, you know the man will always be nothing but a pathetic, performative asshole.
As we al know, you, Adam, are not one of those people. 👍
One man (you, Adam) speaks for us all, inspiring us to step up and do what’s right. I admire your conviction, Adam, and thank you for helping us defend ours.
Speaking up may have come at a price for you Adam. But you can sleep at night and hold your head high in any room. Your son can be proud and has the best role model. Peter Thiel has bankrolled democracy’s undoing. The small voices whining about Trump now are pathetic. Whatever the outcome one of the midterms and 2028, one thing remains certain: It will take decades to repair the damage done by this Administration.
The rats jump off...only when the ship is sinking.
Thiel isn't jumping off at all. His only complaint is that the neofascists in the WH aren't efficient enough when it comes to the methods used to install neofascism in the US and around the world!
EUWDTB, if Peter Thiel is stepping back from the biggest lever of control in the world: the US federal government, what else can he do to further his neofascist ambitions? In other words, it feels a bit like PT sees the writing on the wall and is taking steps to insulate himself from the coming fall. Do you see it differently?
Uh... what makes you imagine he's stepping back from controlling the US government... ??
His criticism of Trump and the administration. Prior to this, he not only spoke well of JD Vance and the like he funded their campaigns. To now say that Trump’s cabinet is populated by incompetent loyalists seems like a big change no?
No, it's perfectly sincere.
He's not referring to Vance - another ideologue whose career he bankrolled first as a venture capitalist and then as a politician. Vance converted to Catholicism mostly because of his mentor Thiel.
There is a REAL disagreement about how to install neofascism in the US AMONG neofascists.
There are those who believe in the current approach, those who believe that the destruction of democratic institutions should have been implemented much faster, and those who wanted it to be implemented using neofascist technocrats such as Russell Vought rather than hollow Fox anchors such as Hegseth.
So when they complain about Trump loyalists, they simply state their disagreement with those who'd rather listen to Trump than to them, that's all.
Most of the real ideologues wanted COMPETENT neofascists in DC from the very beginning - starting with Vance. Not the bunch of incompetent clowns coming over from Fox.
I see. Thank you. Very helpful.
Maybe not unlike the Russians on Telegram who think Putin isn’t being aggressive enough?
Adam, your convictions early on spoke courage to those of us who watched in horror at the actions of Jan 6th. Thank you to both you and Liz Cheney for stepping up. It took courage. Your losses were a stiff price to pay for the defense of democracy. Thank you , thank you!
Adam you are a model of courage for us all.
Albeit an at times extremely naive one.
How come he STILL doesn't know that Thiel is not a tiny corrupt man who's in it to make his personal wealth even bigger, but instead one of the founding fathers of neofascism in the US, hellbent on installing it asap and just not happy with how the current neofascists in DC are trying to do so... ?
Thiel has been giving lectures arguing why democracy needs to be destroyed for almost two decades now.
Part of the problem is clearly that even pro-democracy, well-intentioned Republicans such as Adam STILL don't see what's actually going on in the GOP and in the US.
Adam - one of your closing statements:
"If you wait until it’s safe, you’ve waited until it doesn’t matter." I will give you credit for each use - but I plan to make that a battle cry. Brilliant. Succinct and on point.
Thank you Adam. Aim High Brother!
-Doug
Throughout Trump’s horror show of a Presidency, I am constantly reminded of JFK’s Profiles In Courage - individuals who cast their hard earned political capital on justice and truth. Sadly, and tragically , there have been relatively few coming from the GOP in recent years. You are among those few who have exhibited that courage. Thank you for continuing to stand to speak and spread the truth.
Well said. Great article.
Took these individuals long enough to find some courage. A whole lot more need to find courage too. If they do, then perhaps things won't be as crazy.
Thiel is a convinced neofascist. This isn't about "courage" at all. It's about an internal disagreement among "believers".
That may be true of the sycophants and followers, but I totally agree with EUWDTB that people like Thiel and Vought were never sycophants, they think they are building their new empire, of which they will be the leaders.
I keep thinking of "The King Has no Clothes (children's fairy tale)." The little boy was the only one brave enough to make the declaration. Those in the king's court who were in a position to speak to the king would not criticize him or his actions if they thought they might lose their jobs (or their heads!). Truth is stranger than fiction. We have an entire Congress and SCOTUS who are afraid to speak out. Where is the brave little boy?
Right on Adam! I have never trusted chameleons any more than snakes! Reptiles are reptiles period!!!
Beautifully written... Theil, above all, surprised me.. going for the US contracts and winning getting them and proud of his openly gay marriage this cannot exist with the other except all his money allows him to live the life he loves, while the rest of preople would be thrown in hiding for being in a same sex marriage or threatened prison using a morning after pill... the hypocrisy list is long..but only 2 columns... those with money and those without
Neofascists have nothing against the LGBTQ community. The leader of the German neofascist AfD is a lesbian. They're actually also not racist. They simply need to spread racism and homophobia to keep their sheep ignorant and fired up to vote for them, that's all.
Thiel has been giving PUBLIC lectures arguing that democracies globally need to be destroyed and replaced with neofascism since 2009 already. So you can blame him for many things, but definitely not for hypocrisy.
This is also why today's neofascist GOP hired Scott Bessent as Sec. of Treasury. He's openly gay and married.
As always with fascism, there is the RHETORIC, which is there to keep people ignorant and voting for them, and then there is what they themselves truly believe. THAT is what we should focus on, rather than STILL not seeing the truth and imagining that they're all just a bunch of not-too-clever, greedy pro-democracy businessmen... !!
Well, AMEN to that! Best things for us to remember and live by:
"It’s the friend getting insulted in the group chat while everybody else goes quiet. It’s the school board meeting where the loudest people in the room are pushing something cruel, and you’re deciding whether it’s worth giving up your Tuesday night to stand up and say no. It’s a coworker, a neighbor, a relative at Thanksgiving.
Speaking up in any of those moments costs you something. Maybe your comfort. Maybe a friendship. That cost is exactly what makes it count. If you wait until it’s safe, you’ve waited until it doesn’t matter."
You betcha, Adam!