Angry Billionaire Compares 'Occupy Wall Street' and Rebellion Against Income Equality and the 1% to the Rise of the Nazis

Tom Perkins (left) compares "Occupy Wall Street" with the Nazis: That's exactly the kind of "big lie"
propaganda Germany's murderous Nazis were known for. (Photo by TechCrunch)

By Caroline Bankoff
Does San Francisco's backlash against its wealthy tech workers bear any resemblance to Nazi Germany? Influential rich guy Tom Perkins thinks so! In a letter to The Wall Street Journal titled "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?" published on Saturday, Perkins, a billionaire who founded venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, writes, "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.'"

After citing the Occupy movement, San Franciscans' anger over Google buses and rising real-estate prices, and the San Francisco Chronicle's "libelous and cruel attacks" on his his ex-wife, romance author Danielle Steel, as evidence of "a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent," Perkins (who once wrotes some sexy fiction of his own) concludes, "This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?"
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