This is Part 2 of my series on Peter Thiel, based on his recent interview with Ross Douthat in The New York Times. In Part 1, I unpacked why what Thiel calls “stagnation” is really just society slowing down to survive, and why that terrifies billionaires.
The Gospel According to Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel positions himself as a reluctant truth-teller in a world that’s supposedly gone timid. He frames Donald Trump not as a solution, but as disruption. “I didn’t have great expectations about what Trump would do in a positive way,” Thiel says, “but I thought… we could at least have a conversation.”
But I have to ask: a conversation about what? And why, exactly, did he think Americans were incapable of having one before Trump?
Disruption as Survival
Disruption is a strategic tool for billionaires. It is rarely about addressing real problems and more often about creating a level of instability that protects their interests. Presenting Trump as a conversation starter makes it sound as though they are inviting public debate. In reality, Trump serves as the country’s wrecking ball, clearing the way for billionaires to operate without the constraints of scrutiny or accountability. The disruption is not an accident; it is the objective.
Billionaires like Thiel use chaos the way a skilled magician uses distraction. The spectacle and noise draw attention in one direction while the real action – the transfer of wealth and the dismantling of public safeguards – happens quietly elsewhere. If the public fully connected the promises of “innovation” to the erosion of labour rights, affordable housing, and public services, the legitimacy of their entire enterprise would be called into question.
For them, chaos functions as a form of insurance. As long as the narrative remains unsettled and the public’s focus is scattered, they can continue to extract money and resources without facing the kind of collective reckoning that could upend their position. It’s not simply about making more money in the short term; it’s about ensuring the system that sustains them is never fundamentally challenged.
The Populism Costume
So they engineer instability. They treat “wokeness” as an existential threat and democracy as a roadblock. Because if we slow down, if we start asking hard questions, we might just realize they have nothing left to offer. No solutions. No vision. Just bunker plans and AI daydreams to keep the pitchforks at bay.
Peter Thiel flirts with populist rhetoric, aligning himself with the right-wing narrative of being an “outsider.” But, it’s theatre – a way to play the rebel while sitting on a corporate throne.
When Thiel rails against institutions, he isn’t calling for democracy. He’s calling for freedom from accountability.
“Woke” has become a weaponized buzzword. It redirects anger away from the real causes of inequality, corruption, and environmental breakdown, and shifts it onto teachers, journalists, scientists, and anyone who dares to think critically about power.
Capitalism Is the Disease
Capitalism without guardrails is the real disease, and both left and right have propped it up. No one in real power is innocent.
For decades, we’ve been offered the same lie: if you work hard enough, you’ll succeed. And a few high-profile “success stories” are trotted out as proof. For every high-profile “success story,” there are thousands who work just as hard and never make it out of poverty. That’s not individual failure; it’s a rigged system.
Here’s the thing people like Peter Thiel can’t, or won’t, accept: the public isn’t against progress when it benefits the human collective. They’re against being exploited in its name. Most of us measure progress by whether we can afford homes, feed our families, and survive disasters, not by how fast we can get to Mars.
Real community-building doesn’t happen in corporate boardrooms. It happens in union halls, food banks, libraries, and clinics.
And it’s here, in the gap between how progress is sold and how it’s actually lived, that Thiel’s billionaire vision starts to show its real cost.
Inside the Cult of Progress – All Three Parts
This series pulls back the curtain on how Peter Thiel and other billionaires frame themselves as visionaries while hoarding power and resources.
In Part 1, “Peter Thiel and the Myth of Stagnation”, we look at how what’s framed as a crisis of innovation is really resistance to inequality and unchecked techno-capitalism.
In Part 2, “How Peter Thiel Uses Populism to Protect Billionaire Power”, we dig into how faux “outsider” rhetoric hides a grab for control.
And in Part 3, “Why Peter Thiel’s Vision Leaves People Behind”, we confront how his so-called progress ignores the needs of the majority.
