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Thiel and Bannon: “Yellow Peril” in Silicon Valley

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COMMENT: There has been much com­men­tary about anti-Asian racism in the U.S. fol­low­ing numer­ous, some­times lethal attacks on Asian-Amer­i­cans in the wake of the pan­dem­ic.

Aside from the full-court press against Chi­na that we have cov­ered extensively–including and espe­cial­ly the dis­turb­ing evi­dence that the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic was delib­er­ate­ly engi­neered by the U.S.–this should come as no sur­prise.

Peter Thiel–lynchpin of pow­er in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, the top dog in Palan­tir (the alpha preda­tor of the elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance milieu), a key play­er in Facebook–has dis­sem­i­nat­ed anti-Chi­nese vit­ri­ol about the “yel­low per­il” in Sil­i­con Val­ley.

He has been joined in that effort by Steve Ban­non, a coor­di­na­tor of anti-Chi­na activ­i­ty in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

” . . . . The bil­lion­aire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “trea­son” and called for a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of the search engine’s par­ent com­pa­ny. He spec­u­lat­ed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has invad­ed its employ­ee ranks. A Ger­man immi­grant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeat­ed asser­tions of the rab­ble rouser Steve Ban­non that there are too many Asian CEOs in Sil­i­con Val­ley. These claims, com­bined with sim­i­lar charges of wrong­do­ing against stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of Chi­nese ori­gin on cam­pus­es across the coun­try, are as omi­nous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evi­dence, Ban­non dis­plays ample prej­u­dice. They are inspir­ing para­noia about every­one of Chi­nese her­itage. . . .”

Ban­non’s state­ments and actions are par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic in light of his cyn­i­cal use of rem­nants of “the old Chi­na” in his “Gold Farm­ing” busi­ness the first decade of this cen­tu­ry.

“. . . . From 2007 to 2012, he had been the CEO of a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar video-game gold-farm­ing scheme. “Gold farm­ing” was a term for let­ting third-world labor­ers to do; the same repet­i­tive tasks in mas­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er online role-play­ing games (MORPGs) to acquire in-game cur­ren­cy. . . . . The self-pro­claimed anti-glob­al­ist Ban­non ran the scheme by sub­con­tract­ing Chi­nese labor. Accord­ing to Wired writer Julian Dibbel, who vis­it­ed one of the Chi­nese busi­ness part­ners who employed min­ers for Bannon’s com­pa­ny in 2009, the dig­i­tal labor­ers “slept upstairs on ply­wood bunks, day-shift work­ers sat in the hot, dim­ly-lit work­shop.” They earned about four dol­lars a day with eighty-four-hour work­weeks. . . .”

1.    “Peter Thiel and Steve Ban­non fuel a new Yel­low Per­il over Google and Chi­na” by Frank H Wu; The Guardian; 07/17/2019

The bil­lion­aire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “trea­son” and called for a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of the search engine’s par­ent com­pa­ny. He spec­u­lat­ed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has invad­ed its employ­ee ranks. A Ger­man immi­grant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeat­ed asser­tions of the rab­ble rouser Steve Ban­non that there are too many Asian CEOs in Sil­i­con Val­ley.

These claims, com­bined with sim­i­lar charges of wrong­do­ing against stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of Chi­nese ori­gin on cam­pus­es across the coun­try, are as omi­nous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evi­dence, Ban­non dis­plays ample prej­u­dice. They are inspir­ing para­noia about every­one of Chi­nese her­itage.

At a Sun­day appear­ance which opened the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton DC fol­lowed by an appear­ance with the Fox TV host Tuck­er Carl­son, Thiel, the founder of the Pay­Pal finan­cial ser­vice, relied on rhetor­i­cal ques­tions. He asked Google who was work­ing on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, whether “senior man­age­ment con­sid­ers itself to have been thor­ough­ly infil­trat­ed” and if the Chi­nese would steal the infor­ma­tion any­way.

Google answered by reit­er­at­ing that “we do not work with the Chi­nese mil­i­tary”.

Thiel left Sil­i­con Val­ley last year in protest over its lib­er­al­ism. He is also behind Palan­tir, the secre­tive sur­veil­lance firm, and has been a sup­port­er of tar­iffs. Google had been report­ed to be devel­op­ing a Chi­na-com­pat­i­ble search engine code­named Drag­on­fly. They stopped due to employ­ee objec­tions.

The open hos­til­i­ty to Chi­nese peo­ple, as dis­tinct from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, vio­lates norms inte­gral to Amer­i­ca itself. On the face of these utter­ances is the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty, named by ances­try, as a prob­lem. Last year, the FBI direc­tor, Christo­pher Wray, char­ac­ter­ized it as a “whole of soci­ety” threat to Amer­i­can val­ues.

Guilt by asso­ci­a­tion is not what the Amer­i­can dream has promised to those who have sac­ri­ficed every­thing for that prover­bial oppor­tu­ni­ty. What­ev­er the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment may be up to, their poli­cies should not com­pro­mise the sta­tus of Chi­nese peo­ple, almost all of whom are ordi­nary folks, not spies, “sleep­ers”, agents of influ­ence or oth­er­wise con­spir­a­tors.

Although in this new Yel­low Per­il, a spe­cif­ic eth­nic­i­ty is tar­get­ed as a group, no line is drawn between cit­i­zens and for­eign­ers. The orig­i­nal Yel­low Per­il was the notion, pro­mot­ed by Germany’s Kaiser Wil­helm II in the late 19th cen­tu­ry and by the Amer­i­can author Jack Lon­don, that Asians might con­tend against Euro­peans and white Amer­i­cans in a con­test of racial supe­ri­or­i­ty. Pro­pa­gan­dists such as Lothrop Stod­dard wrote titles that would sum­ma­rize the the­sis: The Ris­ing Tide of Col­or Against White World Suprema­cy was a 1920 best­seller.

Nowa­days as ear­li­er, the peo­ple who fear an Asian takeover of Sil­i­con Val­ley do not both­er to add that Asians who become Amer­i­cans are accept­able. They can­not dis­tin­guish by look­ing at a line­up of ran­dom Asians, whether the one is a vis­it­ing schol­ar “fresh off the boat” in that pejo­ra­tive phrase being reap­pro­pri­at­ed, the oth­er a sixth-gen­er­a­tion Cal­i­forn­ian “banana” (yel­low on the out­side, white on the inside, in anoth­er deroga­to­ry term). If they did clar­i­fy that they meant no dis­par­age­ment of those whose fam­i­lies came before their own, at least they would be pure nativists rather than also racists.

The con­fu­sion of Asians over­seas and “Asian Amer­i­cans” (a con­cept coined dur­ing the social jus­tice move­ments cir­ca 1968) has been a recur­ring theme through­out his­to­ry. Dem­a­gogues suc­ceed­ed in per­suad­ing Con­gress to pass the Chi­nese Exclu­sion Act of 1882. They argued the “Ori­en­tals” would out­com­pete Occi­den­tal rivals but remain loy­al to a for­eign empire. The pro­hi­bi­tion was then expand­ed to an Asi­at­ic Barred Zone intend­ed to main­tain eth­nic pro­por­tions favor­ing white Anglo-Sax­on Protes­tants in the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion (even Catholics, Jews and Euro­peans too south­ern and east­ern were to be lim­it­ed albeit not as strict­ly). Japan­ese Amer­i­cans were locked up dur­ing the sec­ond world war no mat­ter that they were bona fide Unit­ed States cit­i­zens two gen­er­a­tions removed from Tokyo and base­ball-play­ing Chris­tians.

Civ­il rights and nation­al inter­est are com­pat­i­ble. For those who fear Chi­nese will help Chi­na in achiev­ing glob­al dom­i­nance, there is a rem­e­dy: turn those Chi­nese into Chi­nese Amer­i­cans who will con­tribute to the Unit­ed States, or who will embrace a con­cep­tion of belong­ing that is cos­mopoli­tan instead of nation­al­is­tic. There could be no greater gift for Shen­zhen and Shang­hai, the per­ceived usurpers of west­ern cen­ters of tech­nol­o­gy and finance, respec­tive­ly, than to dri­ve out Chi­nese who oth­er­wise would be stake­hold­ers on this side of the Pacif­ic Ocean.

Google relies on Chi­nese, Chi­nese immi­grants and Chi­nese Amer­i­can engi­neers, along­side numer­ous Indi­ans and oth­er Asians, as do oth­er tech­nol­o­gy firms. Only a few of those experts are pro­mot­ed to exec­u­tives.

So it is true that there are many Chi­nese, Indi­ans, oth­er Asians and entre­pre­neurs from the world over who are attract­ed to these shores. That is to be cel­e­brat­ed. If they were to leave, how­ev­er vol­un­tary their depar­ture, that would ruin the econ­o­my. Thiel and Ban­non expose the real con­flict: between those who val­ue democ­ra­cy and diver­si­ty and those who do not.

2.  It Came From Some­thing Awful: How a Tox­ic Troll Army Acci­den­tal­ly Memed Don­ald Trump into Office by Dale Beran; All Points Books [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Dale Beran; ISBN 978–1‑250–18974‑5; p. 161.

. . . . From 2007 to 2012, he had been the CEO of a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar video-game gold-farm­ing scheme. “Gold farm­ing” was a term for let­ting third-world labor­ers to do; the same repet­i­tive tasks in mas­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er online role-play­ing games (MORPGs) to acquire in-game cur­ren­cy. Even­tu­al­ly, the vir­tu­al gold, min­er­als, armor, real estate, or what­ev­er it may be can be sold for real Amer­i­can dol­lars to gamers who don’t want to work to earn in-game items. The self-pro­claimed anti-glob­al­ist Ban­non ran the scheme by sub­con­tract­ing Chi­nese labor. Accord­ing to Wired writer Julian Dibbel, who vis­it­ed one of the Chi­nese busi­ness part­ners who employed min­ers for Bannon’s com­pa­ny in 2009, the dig­i­tal labor­ers “slept upstairs on ply­wood bunks, day-shift work­ers sat in the hot, dim­ly-lit work­shop.” They earned about four dol­lars a day with eighty-four-hour work­weeks. . . .

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