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Comment by calibas | Hacker News Reader

Gawker was certainly trashy journalism, but I think the only lesson anybody learned from that whole experience was "Don't fuck with Peter Thiel".

The lesson should have been that Thiel and other billionaires have such enormous influence over governments and courts that he's a direct threat to democratic systems. Just look at how things turned out, Hogan couldn't touch Gawker because of Freedom of the Press, but then Thiel got involved and suddenly the 1st Amendment stopped protecting Gawker. The moment a billionaire got involved the legal system changed.

And if you need any more proof that people like Thiel are a threat to democracy, he's currently funding conservative candidates in the US who believe the presidential election was "stolen" from Trump.

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Funding conservative causes as a wealthy private individual does not make you a threat to democracy., American liberal progressives seem to repeat that notion and get hysterical about this any time it happens, while forgetting the sheer number of extremely rich billionaire progressive supporters of numerous causes they do favor. Are these people then not also threats to democracy? Or does this definition only begin to apply once a billionaire supports a thing you don't approve of?

He's not just funding "conservative causes" he's funding people who are contesting the previous election. He's giving money to people that believe the current government is fraudulent, so yes, that is a threat to our current democratic system.

And yes, billionaires who donate to "the left" are a problem as well. Any time enormous amounts of wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few people, it can't help but go against democratic ideals. You used the term "progressive" but both of the main US political parties have been bought out by wealthy interests, and I'd hardly call either "progressive".

If you've ever looked at leftist progressive commentators, they just as often complain of big money in politics for the democrats, or even for leftist causes.

Gawker was certainly trashy journalism, but I think the only lesson anybody learned from that whole experience was "Don't fuck with Peter Thiel".

Maybe I'm different from most people, but the lessons I learned were 1) there's a rich a-hole named Peter Thiel and 2) he's a petty spiteful vindictive a-hole (in my opinion based on what I know of his actions). In practical terms it mostly meant that when I saw news mention of him I knew who was being referred to.

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