
Silicon Valley's Shameful Purging of Peter Thiel - altstar
http://theweek.com/articles/655825/silicon-valleys-shameful-purging-peter-thiel
======
rtpg
This article is fun

>Great innovators, great thinkers, great inventors — they are almost always
weirdos

Yeah, oh boy, racism! Those crazy thinkers, up to their own sillyness!

Now onto a real point the article tries to make:

> And the thing that is unmistakable about the rise of the National Front —
> now the most popular party in France — is that what is now referred to in
> the press as "the demonization strategy" has not only failed but contributed
> to the National Front's rise.

This is categorically and provably false. When the National Front actually
made it to the second round of elections, their score went from 17% of votes
to.. 18% of votes. of the 60-odd percent of people who had to change their
vote between two rounds, only 1% decided to go full-fascist. This was entirely
due to a massive media campaign pointing this out. The demonization campaign
was a massive success!

The only reason the National Front is ahead today is because of a massive, 10
year "de-demonization" process, that went up to full exclusion of the former
parter leader.

You see the same trope with Trump. "Oh, pointing out he's awful does
nothing!".

But polls show that going over Trump's scandals over and over actually cause
his numbers to fall! Demonization campaigns have worked for a long time, and
won't stop working for a while.

~~~
Hondor
How can anyone possibly show causality between demonization and votes? Where's
the control group? Have you got any scientific evidence for your claims or are
they really just rationalization?

Increasing from 17% to 18% sounds like an increase to me, not a decrease. Or
am I misunderstanding how the French election works? Some people _have_ to
change their vote?

~~~
vertex-four
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-
round_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system)

Basically... 17% of people voted for the National Front as their first vote,
and when the first vote failed due to no party having a majority, and all
parties but those two with the highest number of votes were excluded, there
was a second vote.

In the second vote between two parties, 18% of people voted for the National
Front - only a 1% increase - despite 60% of people having voted for minority
parties in the first round and thus having to switch their vote (or abstain).
That is, the vast majority of people who had voted for minority parties
decided to vote against the National Front in the second vote.

(For exact numbers - the National Front got 4,804,713 votes in the first
round, and 5,525,032 in the second - a jump of 720,319 votes - and Rally for
the Republic got 5,665,855 votes in the first round, and 25,537,956 in the
second - a jump of 19,872,101 votes.)

------
nikhiljoisr
I wrote in defence on Sam Altman and YC regarding this topic.

[https://medium.com/@suar4sure/please-let-ycombinator-sam-
alt...](https://medium.com/@suar4sure/please-let-ycombinator-sam-altman-and-
paul-graham-be-b1b78c5c12c0#.lz9vsqmac)

------
arkitaip
I guess it needs to be said a billion times more: Thiel isn't just any Trump
supporter, he's a powerful billionaire who has donated millions as a Trump
surrogate. Thiel deserves all the criticism he is getting precisely because
there a huge asymmetry at play here, one that he is taking advantage of to
campaign for a con man, racist, chauvinistic sexual predator.

I fear this is just the beginning of Thiel's radicalization, that we can
expect several decades of his alt/far right advocacy and I find the harm he
can cause to be very troubling and disheartening.

~~~
grosbisou
Since when people cannot chose their favorite candidate without being
ostracised?

~~~
manish_gill
They're free to choose whoever they like. Others are free to criticize that
choice. Especially when that choice is The Donald.

~~~
ebalit
Criticize != Ostracize

It's possible to criticize someone without wanting him to be bared from
participating in society.

