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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. . . .”
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.
. . . . 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. . . .
The Future: Technology, Theocracy and the Thousand Year Reich
Ignoring Charles C. Johnson is generally a sound policy. And yet even trolls can sometimes have something important to say. Even if they’re only ultimately telling us for very trollish reasons. And here we are, faced with having to interpret Charles Johnson’s latest trollish behavior:
There’s a new Business Insider report about a rather bizarre story involving Johnson, long-time ally Peter Thiel, and the FBI. According to Johnson, Thiel became a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI back in the summer of 2021. Johnson goes on to claim that it Johnson himself who put Thiel in contact with Johnathan Buma, an LA-based FBI agent who specializes in investigating political corruption and foreign-influence campaigns. Johnson himself was already a CHS for Buma at the time. This is good time to recall how Johnson reportedly worked with Thiel during the Trump transition period in putting together lists of potential White House recruits.
So what was Thiel helping the FBI with? Well, we’re told that it was explicitly NOT about Thiel’s ties to MAGA world. Instead, it was focused on foreign government influence operations in Silicon Valley. While it’s unclear which governments Thiel may have been informing the FBI about, this is good time to recall how Thiel and Steve Bannon have been fomenting fears in recent years around China’s influence in Silicon Valley.
Intriguingly, Johnson goes on to suggest that he was encouraging Thiel to start this CHS relationship with the FBI — and offer the FBI a window into his contacts with foreign governments — as part of an effort to prove his loyalty to the US. Johnson also described Thiel’s motivation as a kind of hedge in an environment where extravagant wealth no longer affords the safety it use to. Johnson went on to cite the ProPublica reporting on how Thiel unscrupulously used a Roth IRA to avoid billions in taxes...a story that hit the news in June of 2021. Johnson also cited the death of Jeffrey Epstein. So Epstein’s jailhouse ‘suicide’ apparently freaked Thiel out so much they he felt the need to prove his loyalty to the US government. At least that’s narrative Johnson is putting out there.
So why is Johnson coming forward with all this? Well, we get multiple explanations from Johnson. First, he claims that it was retribution for what Johnson perceives to be bad decision-making by Thiel’s Founders Fund. Johnson goes on to describe how he felt betrayed that Thiel didn’t support Johnson’s own startups. Johnson claims he felt like Thiel owed him support in Johnson’s startups in return for Johnson having introduced Thiel to Buma. Yes, becoming an FBI informant is portrayed by Johnson as something so beneficial to Thiel that Thiel owed Johnson a favor in return. What was Thiel so terrified of at this time? How treasonous was his behavior leading up to that point?
But then we get to the other part of Johnson’s explanations for why he’s going public with all this: Johnson claims he want to help agent Buma with his whistleblowing efforts. Yes, it turns out Agent Buma is now an FBI whistleblower and is no longer actively managing his confidential human sources. According to Buma, the FBI shut down his investigation into whether or not Rudy Giuliani was compromised by the Moscow. He even testified about it before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was ordered to cease contact with all his sources in late 2022. It’s not clear if Thiel has been put in contact with a new FBI agent at this point or what his current CHS status is at all.
But Buma’s investigation into Giuliani isn’t the only Trump-related investigation Buma was working on. He was also using a human source codenamed “genius” who was providing information on far-right figures involved with planning the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Yes, “genius” was Charles Johnson. So Johnson has been helping the FBI with the January 6 insurrection. But the FBI headquarters “closed his most valuable sources”, including “genius”, according to Buma.
So that’s the very bizarre story we’re now getting about Peter Thiel becoming an FBI asset in the summery of 2021. We only know about it because Charles Johnson decided to share it with the world for still confusing reasons. But it’s important to note that this story is entirely based on the claims of a known troll like Johnson. Two anonymous sources are confirming Johnson’s account, with one source suggesting that any assistance Thiel might have provided to the FBI should be understood as part of Thiel’s gradual distancing of himself from Trump and the broader MAGA movement. In other words, it’s all part of a rebranding effort. A rebranding effort seemingly intended to allow Peter Thiel to prove to the US government that he’s not a traitor, brought to us by his professional troll buddy who is also now a valued FBI asset:
“Another source close to Thiel told Insider that while they could not confirm that Thiel was a CHS, Thiel did speak to Buma occasionally. The source said that any assistance Thiel might have provided to the FBI should be understood as part of Thiel’s gradual distancing of himself from Trump and the broader MAGA movement, which has vigorously criticized the FBI and other federal law-enforcement agencies.”
Did Peter Thiel really turn himself into an FBI human source as part of some sort of gradual distancing from Trump and the broader MAGA movement? That’s the claim of one of the two anonymous sources corroborating this story. It’s interesting spin, especially given the circumstances of the FBI agent who ultimately served as Thiel’s point of contact: Johnathan Buma, an LA-based agent who specializes in investigating political corruption and foreign-influence campaigns. Thiel has apparently been tasked with feeding the FBI intel on foreign governments trying to wield influence in Silicon Valley. And it was none other than professional troll Charles Johnson who put Thiel in contact with Buma. It’s a bizarre story on many levels. Sure, Thiel has obviously been trying to build up a public reputation as a stalwart against Chinese influence in the US, but that doesn’t explain why he would somehow be in a position to inform the FBI about what are presumably covert Chinese Silicon Valley influence operations. What’s really going on here?
But when it comes to potentially valuable information that Thiel could pass along to the FBI, we don’t necessarily have to ask about Thiel’s personal contacts. The guy still owns 10% of Palantir, after all. Which presumably means he still has access to Palantir’s torrent of information. Could it be that Thiel is passing along to the FBI intel acquired through Palantir? Or maybe one of Thiel’s other tech firms like hacking firm Boldend? It’s part of what’s so puzzling about this story: Thiel’s value as an intelligence asset is obvious when you consider the companies he owns. It’s less obvious why he would be recruited as a human asset based on his interpersonal interactions, especially if this role was explicitly not at all related to MAGA world:
And then there’s the fact that it’s Charles Johnson who appears to be the initial source of this story. As we’ve seen, Johnson’s ties to Thiel goes back years and include their work on the Trump transition team. Recall how Johnson even claimed at one point that Thiel used him as a conduit to leak emails between Thiel and Reed Hastings, who criticized Thiel for backing Trump. Johnson already outed himself as an FBI informant in a lawsuit he filed in relation to Clearview. And yet we’re told that Johnson is outing Thiel as a FBI source both as a means of supporting Buma’s whistleblowing but ALSO as retribution for what Johnson perceives to be bad decision-making by the Founders Fund and a sense of betrayal over Thiel not supporting him enough in his own startups. But beyond that, Johnson claims that he expected Thiel’s startup support as some sort of pay back for introducing Thiel to Buma, at which point Thiel could offer the FBI a window into Thiel’s contacts with foreign governments and could demonstrate his loyalty to the US. Johnson went on to explain Thiel’s motivation as seeing working with Buma as a kind of ‘hedge’ in an environment where extravagant wealth no longer affords the safety it used to. That was apparently the motivation Thiel had for becoming an FBI asset in the summer of 2021. Cozying up to the US government to avoid some sort of prosecution. It’s the kind of explanation that raises a rather chilling question: was Thiel previously under suspicion of acting as some kind of treasonous scheming? Why the need to prove his loyalty? A major undisclosed Jan 6 role, perhaps? Is Thiel’s loyalty solely to himself so palpable that it endangers how companies’ precious government contracts? It’s not like Thiel’s fascist politics were a secret all these years and yet he still got these highly sensitive government contracts. Why the sudden need to prove his loyalty?
But then we get to the confusing mess around what it was that Buma was actually investigating: Buma came forward in August of this year as a whistleblower, alleging the FBI under Trump shut down his investigation into Rudy Giuliani’s ties to Russia. And while that was all pre-2021, Buma’s investigative work at the FBI has apparently already come to an end, with Buma telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was ordered to cease contact with all his human sources in late 2022:
And then we get this very juicy nugget in relation to Buma’s previous investigations: he was apparently using Johnson as an informant on far-right figures involved with planning the January 6 Capitol insurrection. But that investigation is had been closed down by the FBI headquarters:
And yet, despite Buma getting pulled from his work with his human assets, it doesn’t sound like being a confidential human source for the FBI is something you can just casually shirk off. Which raises the question as to whether or not Thiel was simply given a new FBI contact to continue his human source activities. At the same time, note one consequence of Johnson going public with this story: Thiel’s status as a CHS is more or less ruined at this point. Any foreign government assets stupid enough to trust Thiel with sensitive info before are presumably pulling back at this point:
So how much ‘distance’ will there be between Thiel and the rest of MAGA world after the publication of this article? That remains unclear. In part because this whole thing seems designed send the signal that Thiel is keen on working with the US government, and yet the actual message sent by the article is that Thiel was feeling so vulnerable over some sort of treasonous activities that he was involved in that he felt compelled to send the signals that he’s not actually a treasonous bastard who can’t be trusted with sensitive government contracts.
Either way, it appears that Thiel’s attempts to cozy up a little closer to the US government did indeed work. He became a CHS and presumably fed the FBI all sorts of juicy intel. Or at least enough intel to keep the US government satisfied with its fascist privatized spy-chief for the time being. Intel likely focused on amplifying the existing ‘yellow peril’ sentiments in the US government. Which is also a reminder that the very real ‘fascist peril’ looming over the world relies heavily on infiltrating governments with fascists intent on fomenting one witchhunt after another...as long as the witches aren’t fascist. The fascist witches get CHS status.