Silicon Valley has never been known for its appreciation of subtleties. Case in point: eminent venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who co-founded mega-firm Perkins Caufield & Byers, just wrote one of the most disgustingly tone deaf statements on class tensions we've ever seen.

Titled "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?," the brief letter in the Wall Street Journal accomplishes nothing more than a series of horrible attempts at analogy:

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

In short, criticizing the techno-affluent, and their at times unwanted transformation of San Francisco, is tantamount to one of the most horrific events in Western history. A critique of hubristic, tech-enabled culture shift is put on the same moral grounds as an nightmarish assault against Jews and Jewish-owned property:

From the Occupy movement to the demonization 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. 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.

[...]

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?

A rock through the window of a private Google shuttle, the precursor to the Holocaust—close enough. It'd be one thing if this were just another San Francisco wackjob on Medium—but this is a pioneering voice in the history of venture capital, in the very history of Silicon Valley. And this is how he thinks.

Photo: Getty/Hulton