Peter Thiel talks about the Antichrist
The tech leader says the biggest dangers aren’t AI or fossil fuels—but a global elite that promises to protect us from them
Peter Thiel speaks at the Bitcoin Conference in Miami Beach, Fla., on April 7, 2022. Associated Press / Photo by Rebecca Blackwell

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One of the most successful technologists of our time is now traveling the world giving lectures about the possible rise of the Antichrist. Understandably, writers for the mainstream press don’t know what to do with all of this, having probably not cracked open a copy of the Bible in decades. And much of the reaction from Christian thought leaders has been little better, especially from never-Trump Christians who may well be biased against Thiel due to his early endorsement of Donald Trump.
It probably doesn’t help that Thiel is highly influenced by the French Catholic thinker Rene Girard, who is known for somewhat impenetrable prose, and by philosopher Leo Strauss, who promotes the idea that philosophers deliberately obscure their meaning to confuse opponents and avoid persecution. So the job of explaining some of the most obscure apocalyptic passages in the Bible through the framework of Girard using Straussian esoteric rhetoric techniques just might lead to misunderstanding.
As someone who has been reading, writing about, interviewing, speaking with, and listening to Thiel for a decade and a half, I’d like to try to say plainly what I believe he is saying. I interviewed him as some of these ideas were being formed in 2022. And I wrote about his rollout of these thoughts at the most influential debating society in world for WORLD Opinions in 2023.
There’s no understanding Peter Thiel without putting him in the context of his mentor Rene Girard, who taught that ancient paganism built its social order around human sacrifice. For Girard, Satan’s desire for his own kingdom was in conflict with his nature as an accuser who creates social chaos. Satanic accusation creates escalating waves of rivalry and conflict. But this contagion then threatens to destroy political society entirely, leaving Satan with nothing to rule. So the Satanic social order chooses a scapegoat as a social sedative. Some poor outsider is falsely accused of being a witch or a parricide or a devil. The crowd unites against them, murders them, feels much better and takes the false accusation and turns it into a legend.
This worked, said Girard, until Jesus.
Jesus also was sacrificed, but the Gospels and his disciples steadfastly maintained that he was innocent. The Gospels unmasked the system of human sacrifice, lies, mythology, and ritual that held it all together. Which means that it is not held together any longer. And the more the Gospels are taught, the weaker the scapegoat system becomes. Charlie Kirk was killed, but we did not all come together and agree that he really was a secret Nazi and it’s better that he’s dead and move on in unity. We have compassion for victims now. For Girard the spread of the gospel, and the subsequent weakening of the power of pagan scapegoating, hastens the kind of social breakdown that we see in the “end-times” texts of the Bible. This gives Girard’s thought a very apocalyptic cast that clearly was inherited by his most influential student, Peter Thiel.
This kind of thinking fits the moment: Our age is an age of apocalyptic fears. They just are not often expressed in Biblical language. Greta Thunberg is a kind of doomsday prophet(ess). But it’s not Hell that will burn us, according to Thunberg, it’s the industrial economy. AI is the monster of the moment, but during the COVID crisis it was bio-pharmaceutical research. And, of course, galloping since 1945, nuclear technology has been the longest running horseman of the apocalypse.
Thiel looks at all that and reminds the world that it’s neglecting the biggest threat of all, the Antichrist. But what is the missing plot point in all the Antichrist literary treatments to date, the cause which would bring him to power? Our inordinate fear of all the other Armageddon scenarios. We’re terrified of nuclear power, fossil fuels, and of AI, and that fear makes us vulnerable to the kind of man who could promise us “peace and safety” (1 Thessalonians 5:3). We’re afraid of the risks of freedom, and so we are willing to give it up in exchange for safety. We fear what Thiel is calling “Armageddon” too much and “Antichrist” too little.
This explains why Thiel hesitated so long, and by doing so, launched a million outraged hot takes in web world, when the New York Times columnist Russ Douthat asked him if he wanted the human race to survive. Of course, Thiel wants the human race to survive. What he doesn’t want is for the survival of the human race to be used as a kind of human shield by apologists for a stultifying global-planning elite’s dreams of power. Me neither.

These daily articles have become part of my steady diet. —Barbara
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