Tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel is slamming the place that saw him become a billionaire, calling Silicon Valley a ‘sort of totalitarian’ place where ‘dissenting views are not allowed.’
During a Fox Business appearance on Friday, the 50-year-old Paypal co-founder opened up about what it was like to be a Trump supporter in the notoriously liberal tech hub in northern California.
‘You know, of course, I got heat,’ the only major name in Silicon Valley to back Trump said.
Billionaire Peter Thiel said on Friday during a Fox Business appearance that Silicon Valley is a ‘totalitarian’ place where dissenting views are not allowed
‘When people are unanimously on one side, that tells you not that they’ve all figured out the truth but that they’re in a sort of totalitarian place, that they’re in a one party state where they’re not allowed to have dissenting views,’ he added.
Thiel said the liberal tendencies of the tech hub are not okay because it’s shifted from a large minority thinking one way to almost everyone sharing the same views.
‘I think somehow Silicon Valley shifted from being quite liberal to being a one party state. Those are two very different things.’
He also stated, as he’s done before, that he believes the greatest political problem the country faces is that of political correctness.
‘That’s how we limit the debate, how we aren’t allowed to consider all the possibilities, and certainly I think the universities share a lot of blame for this. The education system shares a lot of blame,’ he said.
Thiel was the the only major name in Silicon Valley to back Trump said, something he got ‘heat’ for in the Bay Area tech hub, he said
When asked what people can do to combat uniformity of thought, Thiel said it’s important to try to go against the norm.
‘I think the pushback is you have to try to push back in every specific context where you find it and say the real debate is not this super narrow debate. There’s a much broader range of possibilities we should be considering.’
Thiel also said Silicon Valley is a ‘tyranny’ because it’s the only place where innovation in the United States really happened.
He said: ‘Even though the internet was supposed to eliminate the tyranny of place, you somehow had all the internet companies happening in one particular place, and I think my judgment is that this will be much more distributed in the future.’
Thiel added that while having all the talent in one place was a good thing at a certain point, the costs of that have outdone the benefits.
Thiel announced last month he was moving to Los Angeles because his views weren’t tolerated in Silicon Valley. He is pictured speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention
‘Perhaps we’ve gotten to a point where the negatives are greater than the positives,’ he shared.
It’s not the first time Thiel has spoken out about what he’s called the ‘one-party state’ of Silicon Valley.
Just last month the billionaire announced he was leaving the tech hub because his right-wing views weren’t tolerated.
Thiel announced he was relocating his residence and main base of operations from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles.
The Facebook share-holder also made the news this week over his Palantir Technologies company – one of five with Lord of The Rings-inspired names.
Outgoing New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced his office would not renew its pro-bono contract with the data mining company.
Palantir and the New Orleans Police Department had partnered in a predictive policy collaboration, in which the department used the company’s network-analysis software to identify possible aggressors and prevent crimes.
The six-year partnership remained unknown until a report by The Verge two weeks ago.