Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy | Peter Thiel | The Guardian

Masters, who has campaigned on the notion that "psychopaths are running the country right now" and spoken approvingly of the anti-establishment philosophy of the 1990s Unabomber, and Vance, a frequent speaker on the university circuit during his book tour days who now says "universities are the enemy", fit the same mould. They and Thiel all have ties to a branch of the New Right known as NatCon, whose adherents believe, broadly, that the establishment needs to be torn down, much as Thiel and his fellow Silicon Valley disrupters believed two decades ago that the future lay in destroying longstanding business models and practices.

Thiel himself opined as far back as 2009 that he no longer believed democracy to be compatible with freedom and expressed "little hope that voting will make things better"...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/15/peter-thiel-who-is-he-republican-donor-tech-entrepreneur

Newly Uncovered Emails Show Blake Masters’ Long History of Hating Democracy – Mother Jones

Two of the articles were by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a German economist best known for his 2001 jeremiad Democracy: The God That Failed. One, a 1995 paper titled "The Political Economy of Monarchy and Democracy, and the Idea of a Natural Order," argued that "the historic transition from monarchy to democracy represents not progress but civilizational decline." In addition to advocating "the abdication of democracy," Hoppe wanted people to accept a "natural order" under which a "voluntarily acknowledged 'natural' elite—a nobilitas naturalis" reigns supreme.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/blake-masters-anti-democratic-stanford-emails-arizona-kelly-thiel/

In Arizona, Blake Masters backtracks on abortion, scrubs campaign website

Masters, the GOP Senate nominee in Arizona, said on his campaign website he supported a "a federal personhood law" — until Thursday...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/arizona-blake-masters-backtracks-abortion-scrubs-campaign-website-rcna44808

Fact-checking Blake Masters’: Mark Kelly voted to legalize abortion ‘up until the moment of birth’ - PolitiFact

Contrary to what Master's campaign said, the bill's text does not mandate abortion on demand "until the moment of birth."…

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/01/blake-masters/fact-checking-blake-masters-mark-kelly-voted-legal/

6 Revealing Moments From Our Profile of GOP Senate Candidate Blake Masters – Mother Jones

… More fundamentally, Masters is the right-hand man of a billionaire who confessed in 2009, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." Instead of disrupting taxi companies or hotels with his investments, Thiel now has his sights on American democracy. He is spending tens of millions of dollars backing Masters, as well as Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance, another former employee. He is also putting smaller sums behind more than a dozen Republican candidates, most of whom question the results of the 2020 election. His goal is to bend the American right to his will...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/blake-masters-profile-peter-thiel-six-things-tldr/

Opinion | What the Arizona GOP’s response to Uvalde reveals - The Washington Post

That brings up an interesting irony. Some Republicans say that teachers should be able to carry guns in the classroom and teach lessons on religion, yet they cannot be trusted to openly talk to students about issues of race and ethnicity. According to a bill recently approved by the House, violators could lose their teaching license. As state Sen. Christine Marsh (D), a former teacher of the year, so eloquently said, "Give me a break."…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/06/arizona-republicans-uvalde-response/

Trump-Backed Senate Candidate Says Gun Violence Is 'Black People, Frankly' | HuffPost Latest News

The eventual GOP nominee for Senate will face off against Sen. Mark Kelly (D) in a seat the Cook Political Report has rated as a tossup ― and one that could help determine control over the evenly split Senate…

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/blake-masters-guns-black-people_n_629d6a6ee4b016c4eefaddcb