The Contrarian

“chavkin i believe is how you pronounce his name uh he wrote that peter teal book uh and he was”

“we just had max chaffin on to talk about the contrarians. i basically got into it a little bit because there were two things in the book i noticed”

“who is the author of a interesting new book the contrarian peter thiel and silicon valley's pursuit of power uh we get into it i challenge him a little bit specifically on his repeated claims in the book”

“all right next up on the program is the author of a new book the contrarian peter thiel in silicon valley's pursuit of power i just finished the book and the book moves briskly through lots of the well-documented life and career of an obviously quirky teal”

“so let's just start with the uh you know obvious question why uh this is your first book or have you been yeah yeah yes it's my first book so why did you pick peter thiel as the subject of your first book”

“was the part i was like huh or that people were scared of him um you mentioned in the book that people feared him uh and i'm curious where that came from because i think over since before trump slightly before trump”

“there seems to be this um repeating accusation and or insinuation in the book that peter is either a white supremacist or likes to hang out with white supremacists or people who've previously been white supremacists let me just ask you outright do you think peter taylor is racist on a white supremacist”

“and and you know he's definitely um yeah i mean he comes up six or seven times in the book specifically around south africa's apartheid in the early days which i didn't actually know that story yeah maybe you could tell that story”

“if this in fact did happen uh the quote from the book maxwell said she was taken aback as he explained matter of fact that the country should not be held to mor the moral standards of american students without any point acknowledging that maxwell as a black woman might find this offensive”

“i think that what you nailed in your book uh and i'll give you credit for on this one explicitly because i witnessed this because i know nick personally i know uh i don't know peter all that personally but you know obviously i'm around him”

“let me ask you knowing what you know you spoke to hundreds of people for this book i think yeah over 150 uh yeah people closely connected to peter in one way or another”

“but from your book charles johnson an increasingly influential figure associated with members of the young alt-right the movement was that once troll is silly and dangerously extreme members of the movement flirted with racism and even nazism anything liberal outrage uh and he seems to have had peter's ear”

“if you're got a phd native speaker whatever you could bring to the system that would be positive we score up a certain number of points to bring you in um so do you think he's xenophobic or as rational as canada and australia about immigration”

“i mean you know this is in the book but um you know peter supported ron paul in 2012 right and that was very interesting yeah yeah yeah and the libertarian was a great part of the book by the way because that was nobody really knows that stuff”

“congratulations on the book it's a great read um and i highly recommend people read it even if you know peter i think it's a good thing to read to kind of see the full picture and i wish you great success with it”

“and I think this is the picture chafkin paints thect picture holiday paints and holiday is the guy who's really seems to have gone into this”

“and I'm going to quote from chafin's book The contrarian here he began telling close friends and then co-workers that he was gay socializing at bars or on the roof of his new house often with the handsome young men he was hiring many of whom were out”

“now teals bi grapher Max chafkin author of The contrarian which is a a book that will be a sizable source for this”

“Now, Teal's biographer, Max Chafkin, author of 'The Contrarian,' which is a book that will be a sizable source for this, although I do have some disagreement—I think Chafkin is a very good writer, a good biographer—there are a couple of areas where I disagree with him that we'll talk about here.”

“so why is he so important that you became you know obsessed in the way that got you to write a book and you know we're about to spend about an hour talking about him”

“i'm curious what you think i mean here's one example that you write about in the book uh let's see about ron paul uh paul paul's supporter preferred the old ron paul”

“so I reviewed the contrarian by Max chafkin and it's a biography of Peter teal”

“flood the system with lawsuits i think maybe he did five or six well it's never been exactly clear how many he fund you'll see in the book it's pretty careful because because we don't actually know”

“and i i think that i want to say two things i mean one is you know as you've kind of hinted in all sorts of ways um the book um i think it's a it's a it's a it's a journalistic book and i think it's fair but it's critical at times of peter”

“and i think um peter if he were going to defend himself uh would sort of say that basically you know he he wasn't he did not embrace like the worst parts at all right as i say in the book he you know of course richard spencer”

“well i tried to not because a lot of people you know feel the book's gotten you know i should say a lot of people a lot of the reviews um or you know some of the feedback has been um you've got an axe to grind”

“no uh you know first of all okay i'm gonna push back a couple things number one uh book's gotten a lot of great reviews uh yes media people in the yeah i know on the east coast too”

“this is kind of a business book mostly um and but but but the but the potential it's a little it's a little worrying when you look at somebody like mark zuckerberg who has i think you know more power than almost any other human being in human history”

“with 10 10 million bucks from uh peter behind him and blake masters who's you know been one of peter's like right-hand guys is running for senate in arizona yeah with another 10 million bucks and and those candidacies are um you know they're they're they're they're running in the trump lane”

“There's a good book by I think Max Chafkin was the journalist or Chafkin, I don't know how you say his last name. Um about Peter Thiel called the Contrarian, which is convincing that Thiel is like actually quite conservative more than libertarian and probably quite religious.”