From The Verge:
Tom Perkins, one of the co-founders of the Silicon Valley powerhouse venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, is afraid the next Kristallnacht — a night of violence against Jews before the start of World War II — will happen in the Bay Area.Perkins, who is 81, perceives a "rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent" that mirrors the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, he says in a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal.Class tensions in the San Francisco Bay Area recently flared up over the area's skyrocketing rent and "Google buses," private luxury coaches that shuttle wealthy tech workers to the office. Perkins specifically calls out the Occupy movement and the San Fransciso Chronicle for perpetuating anti-one percent rhetoric. This "progressive radicalism" is just like the fascist backlash against the Jews, Perkins argues.
The letter is short but rather bizarre. The WSJ notes that the letter was a reaction to an article about censorship on college campuses, although the connection is oblique. Perkins also gives a shoutout to his ex-wife who he refers to as "our number-one celebrity," the romance writer Danielle Steel who has been criticized for the giant hedges around her San Francisco mansion.The letter immediately provoked the outrage and disbelief that typically follows tenuous invocations of the Holocaust.Perkins has penned pro-capitalist editorials in the past. In 2012 Perkins told the Journal, "I'm called the king of Silicon Valley. Why can't I have a penthouse?"
The letter to the Journal:
Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?
I would call attention to the parallels of Nazi Germany to its war on its "one percent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich."Regarding your editorial "Censors on Campus" (Jan. 18): 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."From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these "techno geeks" can pay. We have, for example, libelous and cruel attacks in the Chronicle on our number-one celebrity, the author Danielle Steel, alleging that she is a "snob" despite the millions she has spent on our city's homeless and mentally ill over the past decades.This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?San FranciscoMr. Perkins is a founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
