Charlie Kirk, Greta Thurnburg, the Handmaid’s Tale, Kiwi Peter Thiel and the Antichrist????

The weird hyper religious martyrdom of Charlie Kirk was one thing.

JD Vance using Book of Revelations language around Charlie Kirk’s assassination was another…

Vice President J.D. Vance told Republicans to put on the “armor of God” and seek vengeance against “soulless and evil” institutions of the left.

…but the sudden launch of secret lectures on the Anti-Christ by Kiwi Peter Thiel is totally another…

Hours later, Peter Thiel — the billionaire who created Vance — delivered a secret lecture on the Antichrist.

While the doors were closed to the public, I pierced the veil of secrecy. For The New Republic, I studied Thiel’s past Antichrist speeches to decode his message. What I found is chilling: a fusion of Nazi political theory and scripture, woven into an “incisive meditation” on the power of apocalyptic ideas in politics.

Now, with Vance and other Republicans openly speaking the language of holy war, it’s crucial to understand the message of Thiel’s unusual sermons.

…wtf is going on?

Why is Kiwi Tech Billionaire and kid voted most likely to own a hollowed out Volcano super villain lair suddenly hosting closed lectures on the Anti-Christ?

What new madness is this?

What’s Up With Peter Thiel’s Obsession With the Antichrist?

The tech mogul is amping up his apocalyptic rhetoric—and adding a dangerous dose of extremism into the already-fraught culture war.

In yet another troubling sign of these times, Peter Thiel can’t stop talking up the Antichrist. This month, the tech billionaire is delivering a four-part, closed-door lecture on the topic, which he is framing as “political theology,” in San Francisco. It’s part of what you might call an “Antichrist World Tour” by the PayPal and Palantir co-founder, who has already given off-the-record Antichrist lectures at Oxford, Harvard, and Bari Weiss’s ersatz college, the University of Austin.

It’s not clear why Thiel needs secrecy to hold forth on his latest obsession. He’s been pontificating about the Antichrist in public talks for years. During a June interview with The New York Times, Thiel offered extended thoughts on the shadowy figure, barely mentioned in the Bible, who according to legend (and countless pulp horror movies) will arise to help Satan kick off Armageddon. He even named a suspect: Greta Thunberg. (The interview went viral when Thiel struggled to answer a question about whether he wants the human race to endure.)

Thiel is not a theologian, scholar, or prophet. So why pay attention to his biblical musings? Because Thiel is one of the world’s most influential men and his Antichrist speeches reveal his deep belief that religion is a weapon for political warfare—and he’s right.

Thiel’s Antichrist fixation fits a long tradition in American politics. Since the nation’s founding, Americans have sought to name the Antichrist—usually by pointing the finger at their political enemies. “The symbol of the Antichrist has played a surprisingly significant role in shaping Americans’ self-understanding,” wrote historian Robert Fuller in 1995’s Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession. “Because they tend to view their nation as uniquely blessed by God, they have been especially prone to demonize their enemies.”

Over time, the identity of Satan’s Little Helper has shifted from Native Americans to Communists, Hitler and Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama—even barcodes and microchips have been implicated. From colonial days to the AI era, the hunt for the Antichrist continues. Today’s QAnon conspiracy theorists believe they are battling a cabal of cannibalistic Satanists. Unhumans, a 2024 book praised by JD Vance, equated progressives with bloodthirsty “unhuman” creatures. This turns politics into a zero-sum holy war.

Thiel knows these dynamics well, but it’s not clear whether he’s horrified or impressed. His talks stop short of providing solutions. Instead, they meld Schmitt, Girard, and scripture into an incisive meditation on the power of apocalyptic ideas. Thiel positions himself as someone trying to help the world navigate a “narrow path” between Armageddon and Antichrist. But his rhetoric also sketches a playbook for holy war, scapegoating, crisis, and power—since Schmitt famously argued that power consolidates during existential crises, when constitutions can be suspended.

“We’re told that there’s nothing worse than Armageddon, but perhaps there is,” said Thiel during a talk at Oxford in 2023. “Perhaps we should fear the Antichrist, perhaps we should fear the one-world totalitarian state more than Armageddon.”

He is already experimenting with this doomsday script: In January, he wrote an op-ed framing Donald Trump’s return to power as an “apokálypsis”—an “unveiling” of hidden truth and a chance to cleanse the nation’s “sins.” And in his religion talks, Thiel does not hesitate to name potential Antichrists, including Greta Thunberg, communism, and even tech regulation. This reveals a telling urge to wield scripture as political weaponry.

…this matters because of the role Thiel had in building Vance. Both are speaking the language of end days, both seem intent on manipulating America’s Evangelical Right.

This all feels like the pre-equal to the HandMaid’s Tale.

Has Peter Thiel asked Judith or Luxon to pray with him yet?

 

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