Peter Thiel: 'Valleywag is the Silicon Valley Equivalent of Al Qaeda'

Peter Thiel, the Facebook investor and PayPal co-founder, has never been shy about making incendiary statements. Now he's turned his guns on us.

The hedge-fund chief today answered a series of questions about his press on PE Hub, a website for the private-equity industry. Valleywag's coverage of Thiel figured prominently. Some choice quotes:

I think they should be described as terrorists, not as writers or reporters. I don't understand the psychology of people who would kill themselves and blow up buildings, and I don't understand people who would spend their lives being angry; it just seems unhealthy.

Awww, he thinks we're angry!


It's like terrorism in that you're trying to be gratuitously meaner and more sensational than the next person, like a terrorist who is trying to stand out and shock people.

It's odd that Thiel would equate provocative writing with terrorism when the arch libertarian seems so comfortable saying sensational things to get attention. Last month, he wrote that women's suffrage ruined democracy in the early 20th Century. At Stanford Law School, Thiel started a conservative newspaper and is said to have had some kind of noisy fight with campus liberal Rachel Maddow, now of MSNBC fame.

So it's surprising that Thiel is so tight-lipped after saying "what gets written is half right, and half entirely wrong." We'd love to hear specifics. Sadly, as in our past attempts to get comments from Thiel, none have been forthcoming.

Thiel is hardly alone in trying to turn tech blogs into a rah-rah chorus. There is now an entire media ecosystem dedicated to disseminating CEO and investor spin. Thanks to Thiel, anyone who questions the publicist-approved message can now be labeled a terrorist. Whatever: Valleywag will continue to be a place that prints the truths that others are too polite to say out loud.

And Peter, on this my first day as the Valleywag, you couldn't have picked a better welcome gift.