Katie Fossett: How would you describe Peter Thiel’s ideology? This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. I called Chafkin to talk about his book and where Thielism goes from here-if it even exists in the first place. While there are certainly strains of authoritarianism and libertarianism that run throughout Thiel’s writing and political activities, Chafkin says, Thielism is riddled with so many contradictions that it remains, at its core, largely a mystery.

Chafkin is a Bloomberg reporter and the author of a recent book on Thiel, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power. It’s unclear where one ends and the other begins, though, because, as Max Chafkin says, it’s unclear whether there actually is a coherent Thielism. If there is a Trumpism after Trump, it might look a bit like Thielism … or somewhere between the two. In 2009, for instance, Thiel wrote that the extension of the vote to women in the 1920s “rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ an oxymoron.” And in the years since then, Thiel has continued to refine his political worldview, a mishmash of libertarianism and nationalism that has led to his interest in cryptocurrency, funding of immigration hardliners, support for seasteading-floating autonomous ocean communities that are not subject to government regulations or taxes-and some of his more controversial statements. The Trump campaign wasn’t Thiel’s first political foray, but it was his most high-profile. But there was one powerful supporter who seemed to contradict every idea of what the typical Trump backer looked like: Peter Thiel, the early Facebook investor and venture capitalist who was so synonymous with the tech industry he got his own character on the HBO show “Silicon Valley.” Thiel spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2016 and donated around $1.5 million that cycle to pro-Trump groups. In the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign, most public figures, companies and celebrities rushed to disown Republican nominee Donald Trump, including those who identified as conservative.

Thiel book