January 25, 2014, 4:58 pm  Tensions between the techno-elite and activists in San Francisco are racheting up every day.  This week, a shadowy protest group confronted a Google engineer at his home in Berkeley, Calif. That was the first time activists had moving beyond blocking buses to targeting specific individuals.  Now a member of the tech elite is likening the protesters to Nazis. In a letter published in The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, Tom Perkins, a founder of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, wondered about the possibilities of a new Kristallnacht.  “Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, 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,’ ” Mr. Perkins wrote.  His evidence for “the rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent”: outrage over the buses. Outrage over high real estate prices. And “the libelous and cruel” attacks on Danielle Steel, the best-selling novelist who is one of the biggest non-tech celebrities the Bay Area has to offer.  Mr. Perkins, who did not mention that he was once married to Ms. Steel, was referring to a brouhaha over the rather large hedge in front of Ms. Steel’s mansion. In a casual aside, John King, the architecture critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, had called the hedge “comically off-putting” in December. A columnist at The Chronicle picked up the attack, and called Ms. Steel a snob.  Ms. Steel fired back in the paper that her hedge, which is indeed large, was necessary to keep the creeps out. And that she had done many good works for the people of San Francisco.  Mr. Perkins was Ms. Steel’s fifth husband. The marriage ended in 2002. He could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
Simmering tensions between the tech elite and San Francisco activists are coming to a boil. Now a prominent financier has resorted to the ultimate in name-calling.