Weird. Read the New Yorker article about HBO's Silicon Valley with this bit about Tom Perkins. Then googled him to find out who he is and learned he'd just died...
>In 2014, the Wall Street Journal published a letter by Tom Perkins, a billionaire venture capitalist: “Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich.’”
Just learned about Tom Perkins. Definitely was not perfect but Gosh those guys had some guts to try what they tried at a time when everybody was so big on traditional corporate finance and so fearful on new tech companies. RIP
Slightly OT, but I hate it when an article on someone's death shows a fairly recent photo of them healthy and charismatic. It always brings the eventuality of the end of life so close to home. That someone can go from healthy and happy to dead in a few short years is unnerving.
Being aware of your own mortality on a regular basis can spur you on to take more risks and do something positive with your life.
In the midst of life we are in death.
I can't recall the context, but super yachts, of which Tom Perkins is known for, was a big thing in the 90s. James Clark (Netscape founder, alongside the students) was big into his yachts at the time as well.
First, I should say I am sorry to hear he has passed away. Without a doubt he played a big role in growing SV.
I recall the incident below, and I'd like to reflect on it (in positive light, I refuse to speak ill of the dead).
"...he compared the “progressive war on the 1 percent” to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany."
There is without a doubt a problem with the growing divide. But still, the wealthy are humans too, many who have struggled to obtain their position. Many wealthy people are trying to fix the problem of the divide. A growing problem I see is desire to persecute the wealthy, or lump them all into one "evil" class. That is really throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because I think the majority of wealthy people are honest and trying to do good, as opposed to the few dishonest and corrupt individuals among them.
Edit: A lot of people will see the comparison to Jews as ridiculous, but IMO it is not entirely far-fetched. The Jews were an easy target for persecution because they were successful when most others were not (which many attribute to the Jewish work ethic). See: http://writing.uncc.edu/student-writing/nazi-propaganda-effe...
Obviously, I don't think his comparison was referencing genocide, but instead the growing attitude that hates success rather than celebrates it.
Wealthy people are human and they can have persecution complexes just like the rest of us. When the wealthy and powerful believe they're being persecuted by the hoi polloi, that's terrifying because they have the power to do some really crazy stuff "in self defense."
Furthermore, the comparison between saying something mean about people in an income bracket and throwing a whole race of people into gas chambers is beyond offensive. If nothing else it trivializes and normalizes genocide.
Added in a small edit for clarification, but yes, I don't think he was talking about genocide, which is obviously not happening at this point, but rather the attitude of hatred towards success, which was a large part of the propaganda used against Jews.
Hatred against Jews wasn't hatred against success. The Nazis loved wealthy industrialists like Hermann Schmitz who likewise loved the Nazis because they fought the communists and socialists.
The hatred of the Jews has its roots in the blood libel and conspiracy theories but basically boils down to the hatred and suspicion of an "other." Successful Jews were doubly hated because it was evidence of the conspiracies: of course Jews couldn't become wealthy by being Fine Upstanding Germans like Hermann Schmitz.
You could be right, I was not there and only am going off history as I heard it. Here is the relevant bit from the article I linked above:
The economic based hate came from the accusation that they Jews were stealing money from hard-working citizens. This belief was grounded in the fact that despite the depression followed by recession in the early 1930s that crippled the German economy, Jews were relatively well off financially. Because of this, Jews were seen as greedy money mongers who were obtaining their wealth illegally, even though their fortune came from the practice of money lending.
This is part of the negative characterization of Jews, and reflects some historical truth. While German Jews were wealthier than their Polish and Russian counterparts, the majority did not fair better than their Gentile German neighbors. But the most important thing to understand for the Nazi version of jew-hate is the twinned concepts of the "Stab in the Back" Myth and "Volksgeimenschaft", the "People's Community".
Many Germans believed (wrongly) that they were winning WW1, and should have continued to fight– that they were betrayed by their (allegedly socialist, allegedly anti-German) leaders in accepting the Treaty of Versailles. This is the Stab in the Back myth.
This was blamed on the "others" in society the above poster mentioned. In particular, the Jews– in part for their perceived connection with Bolshevism and with international finance, as you mentioned. They were thus the "other" on which the very exclusionary German conception of a "People's Community" was based!
So you're on to something, but as you suggested, the above poster is pretty right. Thanks for reading!
> You could be right, I was not there and only am going off history as I heard it
Personally, for some issues I feel it's important to be sure that we know what we are talking about.
Speculation can lead to widespread misunderstandings. That's no big deal when talking about the latest Chrome update, but it is for serious issues. And consider that in this case and in many others, so many people have suffered based on misunderstandings (sometimes deliberate ones) and people spreading them. For me, it makes a few hairs stand on end!
He also could have chosen any number of other occasions where Jews were persecuted that didn't involve Nazi Germany and industrialized genocide, but he invoked Nazi Germany for a emotive reason.
I don't think any comparison to Jews being persecuted would have been acceptable. It's all emotive and there is no rational basis. Dodgers fans are 'persecuted' in the Bay Area; is that the same too?
Coming from the Bay Area, I think your analogy with the Dodgers is a bit of a stretch. He is talking about people that are hated for being successful. /s
That's true, but I think he invoked Nazi Germany just because he said it without thinking about it much (I am sure if he recognized the backlash it would have caused, he probably would not have said it at all). :)
> attitude of hatred towards success, which was a large part of the propaganda
If success is defined as not working, but parasitically living off the labor time of those of us who do work, as heirs and VCs and their LPs do, then yes, there is a hatred of "success". We who work don't need heirs parasitically living off our work and sweat.
VCs provide a service that is not entirely parasitic (although I do enjoy the term "vulture capital" :) ). They provide funding (good) and they provide an increased ability for you to sell your company at a higher price (good). Take the Oculus situation - Oculus did not need that $75 million off the bat (via VC $), but it did set the bar for their value and acquisition at the order of $2b. Palmer Lucky is now in his early 20s and worth $700m, hard to argue that he did not walk away with a good deal. (And yeah, its not always a good deal, but often times a better deal than founders would get flying solo).
> A growing problem I see is desire to persecute the wealthy, or lump them all into one "evil" class.
I don't see this happening in any substantial way but most importantly, I don't know. What I am sure of is that we need some data indicating a problem exists before we start thinking about its cause and consequences; otherwise it's just speculation built upon the foundation of more speculation about something that may not exist, and if it does exist it may be completely different than what we imagine.
I can think of a story where it doesn't exist, FWIW: Americans love success and praise the wealthy. Many working class people support the Republican Party, whose policies generally are aimed at helping the wealthy (e.g., reduced tax burdens), and its current billionaire presidential candidate who openly celebrates his wealth. A famous book from a few years ago was "What's the Matter with Kansas?", asking why these people apparently vote against their economic self-interest.
I haven't read that book but the voting pattern the American working class exhibits is widespread, and so is unlikely to stem from its unusual love of success alone. This quote from a now-defunct Telegraph blog by Ed West captures the core of the matter (in a somewhat inflammatory style):
>Liberals are baffled and infuriated that poor whites vote Republican, yet voting on tribal grounds is a feature of all multi-ethnic democracies, whether it's Northern Ireland, Lebanon or Iraq. The more a majority becomes a minority the more tribal its voting becomes, so that increasingly the Republicans have become the "white party"; making this point indelicately got Pat Buchanan the sack, but many others make it too. ...
>The Economist recently asked if the Tories had a “race problem”, but it may just be that democracy has a race problem.
I think it happens in equal parts, although on the media side you will rarely, if ever, see critiques of the wealthy. But fish through reddit, youtube, twitter, and facebook, and you won't have a hard time finding people that hate successful people for no good reason (Markus Persson is a good example; I remember the day he bought his house, someone commented "respect lost"), and almost daily you see pointless negativity towards his success on Twitter.
You made the claims before, but can you back them up? The fact that somewhere on Reddit, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook you can find it happening isn't data or evidence, or even a meaningful anecdote. You can find anything and everything expressed in those massive forums.
Isn't a common occurrence meaningful evidence (regardless if someone says it on reddit or in a conversation at a bar)? I am kind of surprised that there are people who have seemingly not encountered this attitude.
We have no idea on how common it is. Common, in your experience is just an anecdote (and humans, including me, are bad at subjectively judging things like that).
Ah, I see :) Yes, I have no measurements or anything like that, just a gut feeling based on how frequently I have seen it, which could easily be biased.
That is really throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because I think the majority of wealthy people are honest and trying to do good, as opposed to the few dishonest and corrupt individuals among them.
That's certainly true, but if you're a poor person the actions of the dishonest few has a far greater impact on your life than anything the good, honest rich people do, because the dishonest ones (generally speaking) do things that are exploitative of poor people. Poor people don't hate success per se, but they hate success when it's at their expense. I imagine the honest rich people also hate that sort of success. I hope so anyway.
I agree with you. This was clearly an over-the-top comparison, and in our politically correct universe that didn't go over well. The "rich" face nothing remotely close to the persecution that Jews faced in Nazi Germany.
That said, as someone who has inadvertently made over-the-top comparisons myself when something bothers me greatly, I don't think he deserved the backlash he received. The problem with the PC movement is that context is completely lost. If you interpret everything you see and hear literally, as the PC crowd does, you will find yourself outraged several times per day over nothing.
He was trying to say that there is a mob mentality when it comes to the richest people in the US. The public seems hate them but have no real justification for it. In that sense, hatred of the rich is no different than the hatred displayed by racists, anti-Semites, and other such closed-minded groups. The results of that hatred aren't as extreme - at least not yet - but the hatred itself is based in the same ignorance and flawed thinking.
I find the dismissal as "PC" of all valid criticism against the privileged offensive.
In what context would his comparison of the rich 1% and the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany make sense? The 1% rule. The Jews were historically persecuted and derided and faced discrimination... real discrimination, not mean words.
The "mob mentality against the rich" is inconsequential. The rich and privileged by definition hold all the cards. You can say mean things against them -- well, as much as the mass media in their power will allow you, anyway -- and what does it matter? They are still rich and you're not. This is like saying that it's mean the slaves are saying bad things about their masters; or that it's mean that the peasants are insulting their king, who after all takes care of them. It's ridiculous. Not only do the rich have everything, we also have to be careful not to offend them? We also have to admire them as heroes?
The public has "no real justification"? Really? Besides this being a tiny group of people who hold the vast majority of wealth and power?
In what context would his comparison of the rich 1% and the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany make sense?
You're making my point for me. If you take that statement literally, it is clearly over-the-top. There are other over-the-top statements in common use today that when taken literally would evoke extremely emotional reactions. Example: "I just went in there to talk to her and she bit my head off". If you took that literally, you might respond with horror or outrage that someone had bitten your friend's head off, and confusion over how they had their head bitten off just moments ago and yet somehow had it sewed back on in time to relay their horrific experience to you. When it came to light that your friend was referring to being yelled at and did not actually have their head bitten off, family members of individuals that have died from decapitation might organize protests against your friend for comparing being yelled at to the terrible deaths that their loved ones experienced. There would be calls for him to be fired from whatever job he had. How far should we carry this?
Tom Perkins didn't literally mean that rich people are being rounded up and killed. The PC crowd, however, apparently had nothing else to be outraged about that week, and jumped all over it, saying that he somehow considered his plight to be similar to that of Jews in Nazi Germany. His point was that the general public has an irrational hatred of the rich, just as the Nazi hatred of Jews was irrational.
I'm not making a point for anyone, I'm asking a question (and please, stop it with "the PC crowd". It's simply a way of dismissing criticism).
I get he didn't mean the rich 1% are being rounded up and gassed, I'm not that literal. This is not an emotional reaction. What I'm asking is in which context does the comparison make sense? Forget about the holocaust... in what sense is persecution of a powerless class comparable to being angry at the rich and powerful? In what sense is criticism of the marginalized comparable to criticism of the entitled?
If the only ground for comparison is "well, they were both about people being angry at other people" I'd say the comparison is so weak as to be stupid. People were right to find it offensive.
Tom Perkins didn't literally mean that rich people are being rounded up and killed.
How on earth do you know what he meant, or didn't mean?
For the sake of discussion: How could an apparently intelligent man pull such an insanely stupid and offensive analogy?
Being Jewish I thought his remark was extremely offensive and an insult to the millions of people killed by the nazis. It is totally and uttely inexcusable.
My rage has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the "pc crowd", which seems to be employed whenever some rich or important person talks shit and then tries to justify it in his or her non-apology (I'm sorry that you're offended about my statement kind of apology).
What is "the PC movement"? "PC" usually has some connotation of sensitivity to racial/gender/ethnic/cultural issues, but I have trouble seeing how that applies to the criticism of Perkins' remarks. Indeed, I would have thought that the kind of people who use the term "political correctness" in earnest would identify spurious claims of oppression as an example of the concept.
Yep, I agree - people have a tendency to focus on what you said rather than what you were trying to get at (the context).
And I don't blame people, its human nature, but I am thankful I've reached a point where I can take a deep breath and think about what someone has said before issuing a gut reaction. :)
One of the popular self-help advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to read obituaries and decide for yourself how your's should be. This guy deserves a great one. Nytimes, don't F this up.
It was a fantastic read. Taught me much about the man, early SV life and, of course, yachts.