This Pro-Israel Silicon Valley Bro Just Went Viral for Islamophobic Tweets About Zohran Mamdani
Meet Shaun Maguire, the multi-millionaire tech VC embracing anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian hate as Silicon Valley pours money into US and Israeli defense startups.
At 10:00 am on July 4, while many people in the US were preparing to pop some burgers on the grill and celebrate the birth of America, Shaun Maguire, the multi-millionaire general partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the most esteemed venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, was rage-tweeting.
"[Zohran] Mamdani comes from a culture that lies about everything," he posted. "It’s literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda. The West will learn this lesson the hard way."
Maguire was alluding to a deeply misleading and inflammatory article in the New York Times that published hacked material from 2009 revealing that Mamdani had checked the “Asian” and “African American” boxes on his application to Columbia University, handwriting “Ugandan” to reflect his Ugandan‑born Indian heritage. The Times article relied primarily on Jordan Lasker, a race‑science proponent, as the source. Mamdani told the New York Times that he was simply trying to convey his complex identity, not mislead anyone or gain an improper advantage. Mamdani did not get accepted to Columbia.
Maguire lives in the Bay Area, but has tweeted incessantly about Mamdani since the progressive leader won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary last month. He has repeatedly falsely claimed that Mamdani, who is Muslim and has faced a tidal wave of Islamophobia since his win, is a radical Islamist. (Mamdani marched in NYC's Pride parade just last week, proudly waving a trans rights flag and has a close partnership with Brad Lander, New York City's Jewish comptroller, who endorsed him in the primary race.) Maguire also published a post on the Fourth of July, implying that "ending America" is a "religious goal" for Mamdani. "Mamdani is a new strain of Islamism, mutated to be more palatable for the Western mind," Maguire posted.
The fact that Maguire can make such extremely racist and Islamophobic comments publicly about a major American political figure shows how deeply anti-Muslim bigotry has become embedded in Silicon Valley culture. Silicon Valley billionaires are now openly embracing anti-Muslim hate as they pivot toward defense startups that profit from perpetual war and the genocide in Palestine. The US war machine is structurally dependent on Islamophobia to justify decades of military intervention and surveillance, and, as Silicon Valley becomes even more intertwined with the defense sector, extremists like Maguire will likely only obtain more power and influence.