Thomas Perkins, Super-Rich Businessman, Compares Treatment Of The Rich To The Holocaust

'The Rich Are Persecuted Like Jews'
Tom Perkins, 73, author of the novel,
Tom Perkins, 73, author of the novel,
ASSOCIATED PRESS

A billionaire has compared the treatment of the wealthy to the treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust.

Venture capitalist Thomas Perkins wrote an eyebrow-raising letter to the editors at the Wall Street Journal, comparing the plight of the rich to the mass murder by the Nazis, called "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?"... and the WSJ published it.

"I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich,'" Perkins writes.

Thomas Perkins, one of the founders of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, was comparing taxes on the super rich to the slaughter of millions in the Holocaust.

"From the Occupy movement to the demonisation of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent," Perkins continues.

"There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these 'techno geeks' can pay."

Perkins ends his very questionable rant with: "This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?"

Obviously, there has been a rather furious backlash to the letter. "It certainly proves you can get rich without being very thoughtful, perceptive, or intelligent," Slate's Matt Yglesias writes.

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