Since 1997, billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and conservative political activist Peter Thiel has donated tens of millions of dollars to political candidates and causes in U.S. elections, the nonpartisan nonprofit Open Secrets revealed. In the 2022 midterm elections alone, he donated around $32.5 million to the Senate campaigns and political action committees of far-right conservatives J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona.
While significant on its own terms, the mounting intensity of Thiel’s political spending traces his evolution from an economic and social libertarian to a “Dark Enlightenment” and Christian-nationalist authoritarian. (As a reactionary philosophical and political movement, the Dark Enlightenment is anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian.)
Thiel’s donations fall into three distinct time frames: 1997 to 2011, 2012 to 2020 and 2021 to 2022. His donations to candidates and causes increased to more than $13 million in the 2012 to 2020 election years, compared with less than $1.5 million from 1997 to 2011.
