What's Up with Peter Thiel's Obsession with the Antichrist?

I don’t know about Thiel specifically, but since the Charlie Kirk assassination, I’ve noticed many on the right have suddenly become a lot more religiously political rather than just political. For example they are now talking about Christian values being the foundation of the country or how different cultures (like Chinese or Indian or Latino) aren’t compatible with a Christian society and its norms or whatever. I see this on YouTube and social media. It’s strange seeing the theological twist on political topics suddenly become central, and also the religious supremacist tones. I wonder if Thiel’s adjacency to those groups is also the cause of his use of the Antichrist metaphor.

Using Thiel's own words:

"Perhaps we should fear the Antichrist, perhaps we should fear the one-world totalitarian state more than Armageddon."

A prerequisite for antichrist is a world without boundaries: moral or territorial. The Thiel's totalitarian state. The nature of antichrist can be understood if we look at what Christianity and other major religions are all about: ungluing ourselves from things, desires and thoughts of this world and transcending to the kingdom of heaven. Anti-religions will teach the opposite: to glue ourselves to shiny things, to lose ourselves in desires and to marvel at the depths of demonic thought. Antichrist, if it comes, will be a living example of these three aspects: his body will be nearly indestructible, his desires will transcend our imagination and his brain will be a demonic mastermind, probably powered by some Al chip. Right now there are no technologies to create such a thing.

As for why Thiel is so bothered with this topic, I think it's because he's knowingly or unknowingly serving the powers that want this future to come true. His mental proximity to their headquarters is what gives him insights, in other words.

It's not literal.

It says directly in the article:

"...defined the practice of politics as a struggle against an existential enemy, arguing that politics is just religion in disguise." and "human societies tend to spiral toward violence in a hunt for scapegoats."

The antichrist idea is metaphor that he likes.

He's spent too much time huffing Alexander Dugin's flatulence. It's no different to how revanchist parties in the United States these days characterize their battle against their (domestic) enemies. Just a rhetorical foil.

I think that sometimes we forget the fact that famous people have regular people brains under their famous skin.

I knew a guy who, hitting fifty or so, with more time on his hands, got really into collecting the wrappers of "Tunnock's Tea Cakes", which are a confectionary product housed in elegant gold packaging. Other people get into horse racing, or MLM scams, or - very, very frequently - history.

It is interesting that Thiel has become more interested in 'the antichrist', given a lot of people would cast him as such. But if I was a billionaire, and my new hobby was religious history - particularly the idea of "the antichrist" - there is absolutely no way I wouldn't be using my money to hold conferences about it and shit like that. I mean, wouldn't you, about your thing, were you a billionaire? He's a gigantic nerd like the rest of us.

Maybe it's an edgy, mid-life-crisis, "I'm so scary" emo pose - in a kind of Hot Topic way. Or maybe Thiel is actually the antichrist, or trying to summon him. Or whatever. But, usually, when a person does this sort of thing, it's usually just because they're interested in it and have the time.

You can take the bad-faith, more exciting view of it, obviously. Or - and this is arguably more embarrassing for Thiel, I think - see it as what it likely is: The hobby a middle-aged man might choose when his obscene wealth meant you would need a really, really, really large amount of Tunnock's Tea Cake wrappers - perhaps the whole company - to scratch the same relative itch.

I'm currently enjoying a book that seems to be a mix of fiction and non-fiction that gives a history of satan in theology - the character has changed a lot in the last 4000 years.

The title is "the devil's best trick" and the premise is that the satan has tricked us into no longer believing in supernatural evil.

I personally don't believe in god and supernatural evil but this book has given me nightmares which is something I haven't experienced for decades.

> What's Up with Peter Thiel's Obsession with the Antichrist?

Maybe he's annoyed since, he knows _he's_ actually the antichrist?

Personally, I'm an evangelical... an evangelical atheist. I always try to spread the good word that there is no invisible guy in outer space overlooking the human race. We're on our own here.

So, in spite of the fact that I believe the bible is an historical tale of incest and murder, with no more factual information than Pulp Fiction, I do actually believe one part of it is true:

Christians will start to follow false prophets, and they'll all go to hell.

I was raised in a fundamentalist evangelical household where speaking in tongues (spirit) and all realted new testament stuff was done. Also involved: the second coming, anti-Christ, books of Daniel and Revelations. They took it literally.

Through my teens there were three distinct e.g. during AIDs onset for one my parent's church pushed the second coming as imminent which meant there was triple emphasis on being saved ... man oh man what an emotional and intellectually distorting time that was.

I ended church by 17 and never looked back.

Extended focus in that mind set also tends to lead to a kind of short-termism: if God is going enact the final judgement why bother about tomorrow? It is a very, very strange business to live through.

An interesting take from EA a few days ago:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hGwAohPbwCrDT5ynY/...

There's obviously a lot to unpack, but IMO the buried lede - the new idea Thiel is trying to push - is that the "antichrist" wants to regulate AI.

This is of course a persuasion effort by Thiel that tries to do a few things - I don't have a personal opinion, but speculating I assume Thiel is trying to get ahead of something here. We haven't really seen a regulatory push in the mainstream _yet_. On the contrary, there has been a number of legal exemptions. I would bet (60/40) that in the near future we'll see "AI regulation" become a pertinent topic of mainstream discourse.

Autobiographical?

stop being interested in the content of what Peter Thiel is saying, and start being interested in the social and political function of what he is saying.

Content: Antichrist, prophecies, futurism; nothing that holds a truth value. Antichrist prophecies have been well established for hundreds of years as making coded gematria claims about Nero Caesar, a mother-murdering tyrannical ruler of the foreign empire that had recently destroyed the Second Temple ~79CE by the time John of Patmos was bitterly writing in ~95CE. "Nero Caesar" transliterated from Greek ('nrwn qsr') into Hebrew and added up using standard gematria gives 666. "Nero Caesar" transliterated from Latin ('nrw qsr') to Hebrew and added up gives 616, which appears in the earliest manuscripts. It's so plain and so obviously concerned with contemporary political goals of the author as to be almost boring.

Social Function: What is the social and political function achieved by Peter Thiel doing this in today's environment, styling himself as a Prophet of 'antichrist' matters?

It provides a swift pathway to an important role in unifying and binding himself to the anti-democratic theocratic Dominionists which he currently has little influence over, alongside the existing base that he already has vast influence over: the antidemocratic faction of the tech industry. By achieving a role unifying and consolidating power over the two major antidemocratic power blocs - both of which have built in tools of vast social influence (religion, social media), Peter Thiel aspires to place himself in a position of staggering influence atop a worldwide upheaval that is demolishing democratic power structures further every day.

I really think greater fluency in religion and in politics and history would help tech workers equip themselves resist be manipulated and controlled this way.

For the other bloc - the religious bloc being fished here- it has been fertile ground for grifters for decades now, so I hold very little hope that the theocrats (and in particular the New Apostolic Reformation crowd) have any hope of applying the appropriate scrutiny to Thiel's "prophetic religious claims" to allow that bloc to identify and somehow resist this cynical and dystopian power-play.

Further details:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1n9djkf/peter_thie...

sorry it's in french language, but this Great Thunberg fascination I find hilarious: https://youtu.be/aF4RH_fiT5k?si=fSysQKC6EvXlhHF1

We should be worrying more about a possible failed state that has 1000s of nukes.

Too much politics on HN for my taste.

What happened to his face?

Is it autobiographical?

Pleas stop... Every Armageddon mention I see is like reading half of the chapter... Becouse those scary scary armies coming to battle in Armagedon ware just self-brainwashed bunch of arogants: "we are so powerfull! we! etc"... Hiper balooned egos.

And that was instantly bursted.

With ONE word.

And opposition was like some unarmed but saint peoples on the ponies. Almoust ;) With a Leader.

Just read that Apocalipse chapter sentence or two longer !

And trust in God. "Only God know when end is coming".

Don't be Warhammer 40k brain-dead and ego buffed _permament_ agressor. Beliver or not.

Comedian Tim Dillon had some amusing, less partisan takes on this. His style is often an ironic parody of the self-serious. Yet another case of a comedian being more reasonable than the journalist classes.

The author loses the high-ground where he frames it as a kind of irrational hysteria. It isn't that the satanic panic wasn't irrational, but that the partisan media's framing of their opponents is generally irrational. I kind of checked out where he invoked national socialism.

Introspective analysis would go much further here. A movement that constantly berates the out-group, while celebrating themselves and the inclusive and tolerant ones - The hypocrisy is the least of the problems. The impotence is more off-putting.

There's very little these partisan journos can do to change their opponents, who have tuned them out completely. There's little or nothing they can do to reform their own positions or methods while they claim the mantle of righteousness. What's left is doubling down on even more partisan zealotry.

It doesn't inform us. It divides us.