One of Donald Trump's most ardent supporters in Silicon Valley allegedly told two of his classmates at Stanford that he thought South Africa's former apartheid system of government was "a sound economic system." On Thursday, through a spokesperson, Thiel denied ever having supported apartheid.
In a blog post on Medium, Julie Lythcott-Haims wrote that she was a dorm mate with now Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel at Stanford in 1985-86. Lythcott-Haims wrote that Thiel told her that "moral issues were irrelevant" to the racist government's economy.
As an African-American woman, Lythcott-Haims wrote, she was taken aback that he would say this to her "with no facial affect." She went on to say that Thiel made "no effort to even acknowledge the pain the concept of apartheid could possibly raise for me, a Black women."
Lythcott-Haims' account of Thiel's opinion about apartheid was backed up by Megan Maxwell, a freelance editor who also attended Stanford with Thiel. Maxwell, who is also an African-American, told NPR that in a separate incident Thiel also told her that "morality and governments shouldn't be connected" and that "you shouldn't judge a government based on whether it fits your view of morality."
Maxwell said you have to wonder about someone who "would imagine trying to defend apartheid to two black women in separate discussions. Did he have no sense of his audience? Did he just not care?" Maxwell wondered. "What is your world that it's OK for you to do this? I think that was the freakiest thing."
