Peter Thiel Addresses Atlas Society in Malibu

A garden party in a chic and discreet Malibu estate. A luminous Ferris wheel and a giant chess set. Two hundred and thirty hand-picked guests. On November 4, 2021, the attendees gathered to hear a speech: that of Peter Thiel. The entrepreneur and investor, an influential star of Silicon Valley, was the guest of honor of the Atlas Society, an organization dedicated to the work of Ayn Rand (1905-1982), whose novel Atlas Shrugged (published in 1957), a dystopia depicting the United States ruined by an incompetent bureaucracy, is the bible of libertarians.

Slender, looking vibrant in his fifties in his open-collared white shirt and suit – the typical uniform of Silicon Valley “venture capitalists” – the co-founder of PayPal, to the sound of ABBA’s Money Money Money, made his entrance before this pre-sold audience. The Atlas Society awarded him a prize for his entire political work, but the president of the association announced the real reason for Peter Thiel’s presence: “To alert us to the fact that we are in a mortal combat between politics and technology.” And, clearly, Thiel has chosen his side: technology.

A curious character, the entrepreneur cuts a figure of an intellectual in a world that is not. When he was still a student at Stanford in the 1980s, a ritual consisted of each student defining themselves with one word in front of the professors. “Intelligent”, that’s the adjective he had chosen. He could have added: “elitist”. Born in Germany, Thiel spent his childhood in South Africa during apartheid. He drew from it the certainty that some individuals are made to lead others, displays an absolute aversion to multiculturalism and progressives, and a frank skepticism towards democracy. He is also, like the assembly that applauded him wildly that evening, a declared opponent of the State.

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