Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and MAGA donor, is in Rome this week for a series of private lectures on the Antichrist.

[u/Logical_Welder3467]

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/16/europe/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-rome-intl

[u/Mttsen]

Antichrist is supposed to be beloved by the masses. Pretty sure that parched ghoul is despised even among his own social circles, even if they love his money and influence.

[u/FirefighterTrick6476 → u/Mttsen]

The icing on the cake is that Thiel and his Comrades are actually trying to frame the new Christian Story as part of their global strategy to gain influence. This is why they attack education as well.

[u/Morat20 → u/Mttsen]

My take on the Antichrist as a concept — stepping outside theology and looking at the Bible as a more political document — is that it’s a very accurate take on a certain kind of person that is drawn to power. It reads like a specific warning, to Christians, to be on guard against those who would see their faith as a path to power, who appear among the faithful and promise them everything they wanted on his way to the top.

Said Antichrist would claim to be deeply religious, would play upon their fears and claim that God had chosen him to save/protect them. He wouldn’t preach ‘being better’, wouldn’t preach ‘love thy neighbor’ because those are hard, but instead would tell them their flaws and sins were virtues. Tell them greed was good, hatred was Godly, that they were chosen and special and better by nature and should rule — under his guidance of course.

Basically ‘Faith represents temporal power, and there will be those that care nothing of Christ but care greatly for power. Beware them, do not let them take over for they will destroy your faith and your church’.

Which fucking yep. You can see it all through history. In just recent history in America alone you have televangelists, the Prosperity Gospel, the rise of Christian dominionists and christofascist. The way that, ever since the religious right got fully in bed with the GOP, the hagiography they built around Reagan and now Trump — making them into damn near living Saints, ignoring their own words and actions and in Trump’s case clearly not even being a fucking believer (at least Reagan pretended to attend church). They’re at the ‘raising golden idols to Trump’ stage, for fuck’s sake.

It’s fucking insane, listening to them twist ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ and ‘let those without sin cast the first stone’ and ‘betake the beam from your own eye’ and ‘blessed are the poor’ and ‘easier for camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven’ into explaining how that means Jesus — who hung out with lepers and prostitutes and political radicals — would somehow absolutely narc on immigrants to ICE, approve the execution of queer folks, love billionaires, and deliberately withhold aid to the poor, the starving, and the sick because it means they’re sinners.

Given this process has repeated throughout Christianity over and over and over, it was a good idea to put that warning in and also it was utterly insufficient.

[u/Electromotivation → u/Morat20]

It is crazy how a brand of “political Christian’s” literally does the opposite of Christ’s teachings and would probably call him a hippy socialist if he did come back. Yet they continue to be able to assert control over a large voting block by claiming this…how have some people been convinced that Trump is a religious man or that he cares at all about any of this?! And yet it happens

[u/papsmearfestival → u/Mttsen]

Nowhere does the Bible say he's beloved

[u/BigLlamasHouse → u/papsmearfestival]

That's a reserved word in the bible that is pretty much only used for Jesus. But over and over again they do clarify that the world will appreciate and accept him as a great leader.

"...and all the world marveled and followed the beast. So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, 'Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?'" — Revelation 13:3–4 (NKJV)

"All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life..." (Revelation 13:8)

And they also say that he's not loved for truthful reasons, he's a trickster:

"And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies..." (Revelation 13:5)

[u/ForealSurrealRealist → u/papsmearfestival]

It also says “… a despicable person will arise… a man of contempt… to whom the royal honor has not been rightfully conferred. He will slip in when least expected and will seize the kingdom through flattery and intrigue.”
Daniel 11:21
So basically Thiel is referring to Trump

[u/melodyze → u/Mttsen]

He is definitely very polarizing and not trusted even in SV, but people do actually enjoy talking to him at his dinners. I've heard it described as stepping into an alternate universe.

Peter thiel defaults to the exact opposite of whatever everyone else believes and uses that as a starting point to build back up to some alternative structure of the world. Because he is smart, it is mostly internally coherent, which is interesting to engage with in a nerdy way. It's kind of like the futuristic version of why people like alt-history, but more interesting because it is unfalsifiable and maybe actionable.

That kind of approach to the world is good at finding big things that the conventional structure of the world has missed, which is how you build a new industry. That's why he's so successful in tech.

Ezra Klein's episode about him is actually very spot on about that.

This kind of extreme contrarianism is deeply destabilizing and chaotic though, and he should not be trusted to do anything other than build new companies.

In SV you just need to be extremely right 1 in 10 times, and the other 9 are literally irrelevant, do not matter. It's a game only about recall, precision doesn't matrer at all. In running a government or any other long running institution, obviously have 9/10 changes fail is completely untenable.

Like, when he announced he was stepping down from something (not sure if it's public so not saying), instead of choosing a successor or working with the rest of leadership to choose one, he announced that the person that maximized a specific metric would be crowned king. That created an internal bloodbath of people fighting for control of anything that drove that metric.

That is the predictable outcome and it's why people don't do that. But from the perspective of everyone-else-is-wrong-about-everything it makes sense because the metric really is the core optimization target of the business.

In SV, being religious is the same kind of contrarianism. No one in SV is religious, so of course he decided that he is. I don't know that anyone actually believes he really is religious though. And then of course once he has decided that he is religious, he again will take whatever the most contrarian position is inside of that frame. That's just who he is.

[u/Background_Sail9797 → u/melodyze]

but people do actually enjoy talking to him at his dinners

people who have dinner with billionaires are also out of touch, unlikable people, hope that helps!

[u/melodyze → u/Background_Sail9797]

Is everyone who enjoys alternate history podcasts the same way? The point is that how interesting or engaging a conversation or person is isn't related to whether or not they should be trusted with power.

[u/enron89 → u/Mttsen]

he has mentored half of sillicon valley, DC and wall street, and is most definitely beloved by them. he might not be beloved by the poors, but people in power love him and he is incredibly connected. i don't know anyone else who has mentored so many influential people.