As The Guardian has reported, Peter Thiel has been lecturing in San Francisco about the Antichrist, Armageddon and a one-world order. What his Antichrist fixation tells us is a great deal about his views on power, but nothing on prophecy.
Thiel is one of the so-called and influential 'Tech Bros', and is a founder and major owner of Palantir, which now controls a great deal of NHS (and so your) data and which now has a billion-plus-pound agreement with the Ministry of Defence. He argues that the great evils of our time are global cooperation, international law, and any restraint on the wealthy or on technology. He hints that the Antichrist could be Greta Thunberg. He toys with the idea that it could be the United States. He worries that regulation and climate action will end freedom and stop invention. “Peace and safety” is the slogan of the Antichrist, he suggests. Restraint is the road to ruin.
It would appear that he hates tax havens as he wants places where money can be hidden, and suggests that moves against them have been very bad for society. Maybe I am on his outlier list to be the Antichrist in that case, given how much work I did on that issue.
But let's be candid. These lectures were not theology in the sense that any theologian might recognise. Nor, as far as I can see, are they about Christianity as such, although he claims to be one. One of the labels discussed here yesterday might well apply in that case. Instead, Thiel's lectures represent the catechism of a class that has lost the habit of accountability.
Thiel speaks as if democratic guardrails are satanic because they limit what the very rich may do, and he treats global standards on finance, the rule of law, and basic environmental responsibility as existential threats not just to humanity, but to the unconstrained reach of private capital.
This, in my opinion, is the thinking of a mind deranged by money and power. And he has power over us. He bankrolls political candidates in the US. He funds campaigns to roll back regulation. His firms win security and data contracts from governments. He wants the privileges of empire without the duties of citizenship, and the spoils of technology without the obligations that come with it.
What he does is recast public oversight for the common good - one of the essential tasks of any state - as cosmic persecution. The Antichrist then becomes, in his thinking, a metaphor for any force that might tax, regulate or simply ask billionaires to answer to the public. In that story, climate policy is tyranny, the International Criminal Court is heresy (he is a friend of Netanyahu), and the UN is a portal to hell. It is convenient nonsense. It is also dangerous because it gives political cover to attack the institutions that protect the rest of us.
There is also another way to read this if the mumbo jumbo, faux theology and fake philosophy are removed from consideration. What if the menace here is not a mythical tyrant waiting in the wings, as Thiel claims, but is instead the billionaire who preaches that shared rules are evil and that only private power should decide the future? What if the Antichrist Thiel fears is actually his mirrored image staring back at him, and the creed that says markets must rule, wealth must concentrate, and democracy must stand down?
I am not interested in Thiels' absurd take on apocalypse. What I am interested in is the material project underneath it, which is to remove the last checks on corporate power. If you can brand cooperation as satanic, as Thiel does, then you can make greed look like virtue, and if you can call regulation the path to Armageddon, you can turn profiteering into a sacrament.
In that case, let me address what must be said, which is that free speech is not the freedom of billionaires to buy politics. In addition, innovation is not the right to experiment on society without its consent, and security is not the outsourcing of the state to surveillance vendors paid from public funds. A civilised economy sets rules first and then lets enterprise flourish within them.
What then follows is not complicated. We need:
- Transparency over public contracts with data and defence firms
- Full beneficial ownership disclosure to end secrecy
- Hard limits on money in politics
- An end to tax havens
- Regualtion of cryoto-currencies
- Antitrust law to control social media platforms, other media and other monopolies, and
- Democratic oversight of high-risk technologies before they are unleashed.
In other words, we need the ordinary work of accountable government.
In his lectures, Thiel offers a choice between the Antichrist and Armageddon. I offer a better one, between oligarchy and democracy. If you want to see the real end of days, just look for the moment we decide that the richest man in the room gets to define what is good and evil, and you will know it has arrived.
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If there is an antichrist, I think it is Thiel, the Koch Brothers, etc., who stand for virtually everything that is the antithesis of what Christian values are supposed to be.
Separately, I noted the other day that one of the stated great advantages of AI is that it will eliminate over 25% of graduate white collar starting roles. How does enriching a few tech bros benefit society? The underlying consequences of these stated claims about eliminating graduate starting roles are mind-boggling as well as being illogical. How does the foregoing square with Thiel’s pathetic drivel about the antichrist, Armageddon, etc? QED – he is a prime candidate for the antichrist.
In some ways what we need is not freedom of speech but equality of speech.
Freedom of speech implies letting each shout as loudly as they can, which gives billionaires massive influence while the majority are entirely unheard. Demagogues also have a disproportionate voice.
Democracy aims to give people a more equal voice. Those voices may sometimes be ill informed, but an equal vote system reduces the opportunity for one person to completely upend things.
It depends how are we defining freedom, according to John Locke we are only free to purpose the salvation of our soul. So institutions/governments/businesses do not violate our freedoms when they censor us if they decide that our soul needs saving from our wrong actions. This is what John Locke believed was reasonable. Peter Thiel has written a book explaining this whole world view. If this is freedom then I don’t want it.
What David Burton says is so true.
You’ll never hear the billionaire-feudalists mention equality of anything – it’s always ‘free’-something-or-other, which always translates as the wealthiest being free to abuse society without society being allowed to defend itself.
We need more equality, more broadly across society, but this has to be explained to the public, as there’s been years of brainwashing that equality means ‘scroungers getting something for nothing’.
Equality of speech might be a good place to start.
I am full of admiration for your ability to reduce Thiel’s incoherent ramblings to a semi-coherent narrative in order to critique it. Well done. I gave up reading the Guardian article with a mixture of horror, disgust and despair that this man, with this kind of thinking has so much money and therefore so much power. I also reflected that perhaps Trump’s rambling speeches, which appear so extraordinary in comparison to those of normal politicians, are actually just a product of the company he keeps. If this really is how they think and talk to each other we really are in trouble.
I read it.
I did a TL;DR using AI.`
Then I did that again to get another version, deliberately setting it a slightly different task.
Then I wrote.
That is using AI as a tool but very definitely staying in charge.
I will address this in the guide to AI that I am working on.
I generally feel sick in my stomach reading this.
Thiel and Larry Ellison – what a future they have planned for us all.
If there is any hope – and I am struggling to feel any – is that there is a chain of consequence in all livings, everything connects and we either work together or dont and perish.
We have to have a vision for a better world. It currently feels like Bons villians have took over the world.
Oligarchs tussling for power. Very unsavoury. I’m thinking grimly of Tom Payton’s song, When Princes Meet. This looks like another kind of feudalism in the making.
It seems obvious to me that Thiel is a fascist?
All he is doing is getting his word in first for as you seem to suggest, he is actually the threat he is describing. He is get the refutation in first, pretending to be concerned, pretending to be a potential victim, hoping that he has thrown people off the scent.
We have to remember what people like Thiel have done. These are people who have deliberately made social media addictive and intrusive. They knew what they were doing and they did it anyway as Soshana Zubhoff has explained and so many others (watch ‘The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix or ‘The Great Hack’ also on Netflix if still available. Read Jaron Lanier for gods sake, watch – ‘Screened Out’ on Amazon.
This is Thiel’s empire and he is the emperor – a fascist one. It is almost like Star Wars – Thiel has gone over to the dark side because in the face of the known damage social media has done to young people in particular, he needs to side with or take over government in order not to be curbed. It is the same with Netanyahu keeping out of prison siding with Zionist extremists and why Trump had to become president to keep out of prison too. This is how powerful keep away from accountability. They double down and are prepared to be used and make a pact with the Devil himself.
Thiel’s favourite book is Lord of the Rings, but it appears he comprehended none of it. Perhaps he thought Sauron was the victim? He seems to have understood the text as well as Kemi Badenoch understood Terry Pratchett’s discworld novels.
Agreed
I’ve often wondered if, when the see one of the many versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, these billionaires think the Scrooge before the hauntings was the good guy.
But then what do I know ? – Seems now that Rowling was probably on the side of the death-eaters all along…
🙂
How about Christos or Christo bros for the Christians like Thiel who are diametrically opposed to anything Jesus actually stood for?
Thiel stuff, TL:HR
I’ll read Guardian ramblings later, but meanwhile…
Yes, “antichrist” in Thiel’s hands is a meme/cipher for anything he fears.
“Audience criticism” tells me he is talking to Trump supporters/sympathisers, especially theologically, biblically, ill-informed ****Christi**** (whatever the term ends up being from yesterdays thread). They are obsessed with literaliatic interpretations of apocalyptic literature (which makes little sense taken literally rather than as coded metaphor). These people identify Antichrist with their “opponents”. What Thiel may not have appreciated, is that they WANT Armageddon asap. In the MAGA world Armageddon is good, the sooner the better, hence Christian Zionism support. So he won’t get far with that audience, using it as a thing to avoid – they look forward to it as a time when their enemies will be slaughtered.
Thiel’s not a nation (he’s supra-national) so can’t use the usual scapegoats (immigrants, foreigners, China). So talks of demons, spiritual forces, principalities and powers because that works with his audience, and literally demonises the things Richard has so helpfully listed. (This is where it helps to read Walter Wink)
Meanwhile we stick with facts, reason, causes, effects, evidence, all of which tell us us not to touch Thiel (or Palantir) with a bargepole. Richard’s post does that very well – but those who believe Thiel’s antichrist ramblings won’t be listening to us – because we are “demon possessed” and “servants of the antichrist”. After all, that’s how evil powerful wealthy people reacted to Jesus himself – they accused him of being empowered by Beelzebul (Matthew 12, my dissertation passage).
Meanwhile, I’ll try and do my bit within my faith community to debunk this awful, ignorant, malign, deliberate misuse of apocalyptic imagery and literature, as I have done for the last 30 or 40 years. This summer was the first time I’ve been directly accused of being under demonic influence, and that was by someone I thought was a friend. Things are warming up.
I am tempted to suggest we invite Trump, Thiel, Musk, Vance, Netanyahu, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Blair, Mandelson, etc into a bombproof bunker, each with an AK47 in one hand, a handgrenade with pin pulled out in the other, plus food supply, and a bucket for sanitation, and ask them to lovingly work it out between themselves. But thats a bit naughty. Tempting though…
Thanks
Thiel, Musk and a handful of others demonstrate the complete takeover of Western government by corporate interests.
The way back to sanity from where we are today may be long and painful.
The alternative, where they do run the world unrestrained, doesn’t bear thinking about.
Cyberpunk authors like Gibson in the 80s looked at what was happening with corporate deregulation and warned us about a future corporate dystopia. Like most cautionary sci-fi, the billionaire class must have read it and saw a road map, not a warning sign.
Someone should refer Thiel to Christ’s words reported in Luke 18:22-25
“Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. … How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Indeed….
Just to illustrate what I argued in a comment earlier the week (about the very active networks on the far right coordinating messaging, actions, the narrative, etc), yesterday in the US the Speaker of the House (Mike Johnson), the Leader of the House (Steve Scalise) and another senior Republican whose name escaped me, gave a press conference – and then took to the airwaves, for an important announcement.
What was it? That the “No King” (i.e. anti Trumpist) demonstrations, that are set to take place across the US on the 18th October (and previously took place in June), are not that at all. They are “Hate America” demonstrations. Paid for by George Soros, and organised by ANTIFA, where thousands of professional demonstrators paid for by the Democratic Party will be bussed in to cause violence.
Consequently, Trump must mobilise the National Guard in advance, and so on a so forth.
Honestly, the sheer depths to which these people are now prepared to go – as with Theil – is beyond what even and absolute cynic like me would have believed. But what it does illustrate – for anyone still sitting on the fence – is that not just Trump but the entire political party that still operates under the name ‘Republican’, but is in fact the US equivalent of Putin’s, United Russia, are entirely onboard with the destruction of US democracy and the founding of a totalitarian state (exactly as I suspect Putin suggested/advised Trump).
Anyway, Chris Hayes has an excellent segment on what I mention here, and the latest anti democratic madness in the US, here. Well worth 10 minutes or anyone’s time: https://www.msnbc.com/all.
Thanks Ivan.
The detachment from reality is growing.
I think I’ve mentioned here before William Rees-Mogg* & James Dale Davidson’s ‘The Sovereign Individual’ – much admired by Thiel and other Tech Bros. Its central thesis is that globalised new technology and cryptocurrencies will make it impossible for states to collect taxes, leading to the disintegration of the nation-state – but far from seeing this predicted collapse as a bad thing, they see it as the opportunity for new leaders to emerge, free from the rule of law, or any other social constraint.
* Father of the Tory politician.
It is a very dangerous book and utterly deluded.
I do not claim to be religious but Matthew 7 verses 15-20 spring immediately to mind when considering these rantings of Thiel.
15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
If I were so rich that people actually listened to the nonsense that pours out of my mouth I’d probably say that there is no one single Antichrist but every age has its own Antichrist. I’d probably knock up a few qualifying metrics as well and I’m guessing that Greta would fall short of them.
I think Richard and I need to set up that business I have talked about before
Murphy and Boxall. Moral Compass Adjusters
🙂
that would needle some people
🙂
When ‘the leader of the free world’ says he doesn’t know who Habeas Corpus is, it reminds me of Tony Hancock saying that Magna Carta died too soon. It convinces me that however serious the dangers are from the Trumps and the Thiels of this world, humour is the only way to fight them. It is the one thing they cannot abide; being mocked. They like to believe they are the jokers when in fact they are the joke. I apologise to others who have made some very good comments about how serious the situation is.
My bold prediction is that the rhinoceros- hide of even Trump would not survive being laughed AT on stage and would quickly exit to the shadows. Well, maybe my ardent wish.
🙂
Thiel himself makes a better Anti-X candidate. Emmanuel Todd’s comments about the decay of Anglo-American protestant culture into nihilism sadly make more sense every day. And he’s made a start on why.
My autistic brother, who calls all over the US for the Dems and us himself a practising Christian, says similar: there are Crackers Christians running amok everywhere, happy to see the apocalypse as soon as poss. And no one to call their bizarre theological pretentions to order because they think Freedom of Religion entitled them to be prophets. Is it that too many sensible souls have left the churches?