A Silicon Valley venture capitalist and multimillionaire, Tom Perkins, became a magnet for disapprobation and brought renewed focus on inequality in America after The Wall Street Journal published a letter in which he said there were “parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one per cent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one per cent, namely the ‘rich.’”
In particular he was criticised for using the word Kristallnacht, saying in the letter, “This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant ‘progressive’ radicalism unthinkable now?” The word roughly translates to ‘Night of the Broken Glass,’ an overnight campaign in 1938 against Jews in Nazi Germany and parts of Austria, during which 91 people were said to have been killed and 30,000 more sent to concentration camps.
Mr. Perkins apologised for the use of the word in a letter to the Anti-Defamation League, saying that it was a “terrible word to have chosen;” however he added that he did not regret the message he was trying to get across. “I guess my point was that when you start to use hatred against a minority it can get out of control,” Mr. Perkins said, and “It’s absurd to demonise the rich for doing what the rich do, and getting richer by creating opportunity for others.”
