Thomas Perkins, the pioneering Silicon Valley financier who triggered an avalanche of criticism by likening protests against wealth inequity with the Nazi pogroms against Jews in late 1930s Germany, is sorry he said that. But he's unapologetic about his message that the rich are being persecuted for no other reason than their wealth.
Perkins unleashed a storm last week with a 186-word letter to the Wall Street Journal. "I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews," he wrote, "to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the rich.'"
He went on to blast the San Francisco Chronicle for its "demonization of the rich ... embedded in virtually every word." He decried anger over Google buses in San Francisco. He decried the discontent over soaring rents driven largely by tech-sector workers. He decried mean remarks in the local media about his former wife, wealthy novelist Danielle Steel. And he concluded: "This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?"
(If you're not familiar with Kristallnacht, one of the most notorious episodes in Nazi Germany's campaign of terror and murder against Jews, here's a primer from the U.S. Holocast Memorial Museum: Kristallnacht: A Nationwide Pogrom.)
Perkins, 81, is a founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, a legendary Sand Hill Road venture capital firm. And the firm was one of the first in the technology world to disown Perkins' remarks. Here's the tweet:
Tom Perkins has not been involved in KPCB in years. We were shocked by his views expressed today in the WSJ and do not agree.
— Kleiner Perkins (@kpcb) January 25, 2014
Marc Andreessen, a VC who made his first fortune as co-inventor of the Mosaic web browser and cofounder of Netscape, had a more pointed observation:
I wish to express my extreme displeasure with Tom Perkins. His positions just go to prove that he is the leading asshole in the state.
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) January 26, 2014
Monday, Perkins went on Bloomberg TV to talk about the commotion his letter stirred. He complained that Kleiner Perkins had thrown him under the bus and that Andreessen's comment was not very nice. (He's right.) He said he's sent an apology to Abe Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, to dispel any notion he was being anti-Semitic when he used the word "Kristallnacht" in his critique of "the progressive war on the American 1 percent."