Peter Thiel Antichrist Fiasco Sparks International Concern
An “unsatisfactory” ideology “cobbled together from various religious-philosophical fragments”
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The global reviews are in: Peter Thiel’s Antichrist speeches are alarming and bizarre.
Spiritually bankrupt. Intellectually hollow.
Furthermore, the spectacle of a powerful tech billionaire creeping around the planet giving secret lectures on fanatical apocalypse themes seems like quite a disturbing development.
This—according to recent reports in European newspapers.
A “Problematic” and “Unsatisfactory” Thesis
Our first dispatch comes from Austria, where the German-born Thiel gave a previously unreported Antichrist lecture at the prestigious University of Innsbruck, where he flopped before an audience of Catholic theologians.
From Falter, a news magazine in Austria:
Thiel brought four lectures with him, which he planned to deliver and discuss in a small group. Each lecture was scheduled to last four hours, with coffee and cake in between. Around twenty theologians were invited. All of this was confidential.
In the story, university officials strain to make it clear that they hosted Thiel at his own request, and on his own dime, with the Palantir billionaire having arranged his appearance through a contact with retired Tyrolean theologian Wolfgang Palaver, who first met Thiel in the early 1990s. The point of the meeting was to provide a critical perspective:
In response to an inquiry from Falter, Palaver explained that Thiel had come to the University of Innsbruck “at his request for a closed, internal seminar” to present his four Antichrist lectures to the “Dramatic Theology” research group. The whole thing wasn't a kowtow to an eccentric super-rich man, but rather a critical examination of him.
Thiel certainly got the critical treatment. From Wilhelm Guggenberger, dean of the faculty of Catholic theology:
“Thiel believes almost fanatically in the problem-solving potential of technology. He therefore sees the central evil of the present in the fact that innovative stagnation has prevailed for some time.”
“Thiel, who is philosophically educated and theologically interested, connects this with apocalyptic thinking and the biblical images of the Antichrist and the katechon. In a problematic way, Thiel attempts to identify these ideas with specific individuals or institutions in current world events.”
The Falter story ends on a stunning note:
Conclusion: As a Catholic Theological Faculty, we see it as “our obligation to offer a counter to such tendencies in research and teaching.”
Thiel's ideology, cobbled together from various religious-philosophical fragments, was thus rated “unsatisfactory” at least by the University of Innsbruck.
“Dramatic theology,” indeed. (Reliable sources tell me that “unsatisfactory” is a “peak insult in German.”)
Read the whole piece here (translation required):
Barbara Tóth
Thiel can now add “bombed in front of top Catholics in Hitler's birth country” to his list of achievements.
But wait, there’s more...
‘Poster Boy for the Sinister Global Elite’
Writing in The Spectator—a conservative English newspaper—Damian Thompson shreds Thiel in an article headlined “The Antichrist Is Back”:
How bizarre, then, that today’s most influential proponent of the Antichrist thesis should be Peter Thiel, who at first glance is a poster boy for the sinister global elite. He ticks nearly every box. He’s a handsome, silver-tongued homosexual who qualified as a lawyer at Stanford University, became unimaginably rich as a trader and investor, belongs to the Bilderberg Group, fantasises about sea and space colonies, and flirts with a transhumanist ideology that seeks to abolish physical death. And how did Thiel become a billionaire? By co-founding PayPal. Remember what Revelation says about the Beast seizing control of buying and selling?
Thompson chides Thiel for promoting Antichrist apocalypticism, which tends to lead to outbreaks of Antisemitism:
Since the last days of the Roman Empire, fear of the Beast has spawned crazy and destructive conspiracy theories. The long-overdue rejection of woke ideology, reflected in American public support for the mould-breaking initiatives of Trump 2.0, has begun to metastasise. Much of the mythology of the Antichrist assumes that he will be a Jew or an agent of the Jews. Although Thiel is not an anti-Semite, he could hardly have picked a worse time to be talking about one-world totalitarianism directed by a secretive elite. The online right, outraged by Israel’s pursuit of the war against Hamas, and borrowing tropes from the anti-Semitic left, is convulsed with Jew-hatred. And this obsession is becoming more pathological every day.
Damn, Mr. Thompson. Tell us how you really feel.
Thompson—a former editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on apocalyptic beliefs—gives Thiel a proper scorching, righteously devoid of any respect. His piece is paywalled but totally worth the price of admission.
Damian Thompson
These pieces miss the degree to which Thiel’s analysis hinges on the work of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, who saw politics as a holy war against an existential enemy. That framework is being deployed at the very moment when the MAGA party has begun to overtly demonize its opponents and portray them as existential threats who must be dealt with through extraordinary measures.
Schmitt called this the “state of exception”—when you declare an emergency that allows for the suspension of constitutional rights. The goal of the Trump administration is to create such an emergency rather than face unhappy voters. The conspicuous surge in religious talk is a key part of this, as I wrote in my recent New Republic piece.
But both pieces make it clear that, while the numbskull tech bros of Silicon Valley may lap up Thiel’s religious cosplay, intelligent audiences reject it wholeheartedly.
That’s gotta sting.
WSJ: ‘A Pretty Futile Endeavor’
Thiel’s utterly bizarre Antichrist obsession even forced the Wall Street Journal to take notice. The story by Angel Au-Yeung takes a quizzical look at Thiel’s freelance eschatology. Once again, the reviews don’t look great for Thiel:
Jay Kim, the lead pastor at WestGate Church in the Bay Area, who has had a front-row seat to the new attention to Christianity emerging in Silicon Valley, said Thiel’s focus on the Antichrist is misplaced.
“My best understanding is that the New Testament writers focus very little, if at all, on pointing followers of Jesus towards spending their energy on accurately identifying the Antichrist,” he said. “To give all your energy into thinking about all that, to me, feels like a pretty futile endeavor.”
Click here to read “Peter Thiel Wants Everyone to Think More About the Antichrist.” (gift link)
Silicon Valley and The Antichrist Playbook
For a deeper background on the history of the Antichrist in US politics, see our Nerd Reich podcast episode with Dr. Robert Fuller and Dr. Matthew Fox (click below). On October 9th, I’ll join Dr. Fox for an online discussion about where all of this public Antichristery is headed.
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