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Kleiner Perkins Distances Itself From Founder After Nazi Analogy

Thomas J. Perkins, known as Tom, is a legend in Silicon Valley, an elite investor who was an early backer of Netscape and Genentech. The firm he helped found, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, cemented its reputation with early bets on Google and Amazon.

But over the weekend, members of the technology elite sought to distance themselves from Mr. Perkins after he publicly compared criticism of the wealthy to Nazi attacks on Jews.

In a letter to the editor printed in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Mr. Perkins, 82, wrote: “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.’”

“This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking,” he continued. “Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent ‘progressive’ radicalism unthinkable now?”

The seemingly tone-deaf remarks immediately caused a stir on social media and blogs. Many expressed outrage and shock.

Some commentators saw evidence of a more widespread attitude among the very rich.

“Extreme inequality, it turns out, creates a class of people who are alarmingly detached from reality â€" and simultaneously gives these people great power,” Paul Krugman wrote in his column in The New York Times on Monday. “Mr. Perkins isn’t that much of an outlier. He isn’t even the first finance titan to compare advocates of progressive taxation to Nazis.”

Mr. Krugman was thinking of Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group, who employed an unfortunate analogy in 2010 when speaking about the Obama administration’s crackdown on finance, particularly a plan to raise the tax rate on carried interest.

“It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939,” Schwarzman said that summer. He later apologized for the “inappropriate” analogy.

Another venture capitalist, Mark Suster, wrote on his blog on Saturday that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers - often known as simply Kleiner Perkins - should consider shortening its name further.

“This is not a mere gaffe that people won’t remember in 3 years,” Mr. Suster wrote. “Perkins will forever be associated with greed, insensitivity and lack of historical context. If it were my firm I would rebrand as Kleiner.”

Mr. Perkins, a fiercely competitive investor who built one of the world’s most expensive yachts, left a big imprint on his venture capital firm, which has made a number of bold bets over the years. But on Saturday, Kleiner Perkins sought to emphasize that Mr. Perkins no longer worked there.

That line of argument was also advanced by Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, who wrote on Twitter on Saturday: “Before collective freakout extends too far: Tom Perkins has not been VC for over 20 years, mostly uninvolved in tech industry for long time.”

After that tweet generated a number of heated responses, Mr. Andreessen returned to the issue a day later, this time addressing the comments themselves.

“I wish to express my extreme displeasure with Tom Perkins,” he wrote, using a vulgarity to describe Mr. Perkins.

Others saw an opportunity for humor. Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box, referred to another wealthy businessman, while Gabe Rivera, the founder of Techmeme, proposed a new name for Kleiner Perkins.

In his letter, Mr. Perkins referred to “libelous and cruel attacks” in the The San Francisco Chronicle on the author Danielle Steel, who is his former wife. A columnist in The Chronicle had called Ms. Steel a snob.

“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,” Mr. Perkins wrote. “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.”

On the subject of real estate, Mr. Perkins has been vocal in the past.

“I’m called the king of Silicon Valley,” he told The Journal in 2012. “Why can’t I have a penthouse?”