Matt May5d ago
If you told me in 1990 that a coalition of Opus Dei and Italian fascists were going to platform a gay billionaire Republican to challenge the pope on end-times doctrine, I would conclude that one if not both of us was having a stroke
Show threadBongolian

@mattmay Thiel had a warm-up lecture series in San Francisco on this topic last year, hoping to attract supportive techbros. The lectures were characterized by one critic as "meandering musings". He though Greta Thunberg or Eliezer Yudkowsky might be the antichrist (!), yet the characteristics for the antichrist that he gave sounded more like himself: "They can do it if they're young – or – get rich young, since 'money has this remarkable velocity.'"

#thiel #antichrist
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist

Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

The political svengali and investor has been giving lectures on ‘an evil king or tyrant … who appears in the end times’

The Guardian
Mar 17 at 4:55amWeb
Show threadaxel.5d ago
@Bongolian @mattmay One of the main concepts of the totalitarian state is the all-encompassing database. Ideology and technology-wise he is working straight towards what he purports to defend against. So much money, so little understanding. It is embarrassing.
Show threadBongolian5d ago
@axeln @mattmay Regarding billionaires such as Thiel, historian Timothy Snyder had a very interesting essay in January of this year about a lecture to schoolchildren that J. R. R. Tolkien gave in 1938, in which Tolkien compared the very wealthy to dragons. The lecture was in part an explanation of Tolkien's thought process behind his 1937 book, The Hobbit.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/tolkiens-dragons-and-ours
Tolkien’s Dragons and Ours

Oligarchy’s Blasted Heath

Thinking about...
Show threadLeeloo5d ago
@Bongolian @axeln @mattmay
Now that you mention it, the comparison does seem like it should have been obvious.
Show threadMegan Lynch (she/her)5d ago
@axeln @Bongolian @mattmay Thiel is well aware of what he is doing. It does not come out of ignorance. He is on record saying he thinks of democracy as antithetical to freedom. He *wants* authoritarianism, he donates to back it, he cultivates people like Trump and Vance to implement it. #Fascism
Show threadaxel.5d ago
@meganL @Bongolian @mattmay I am fully aware of that. What really stumps me is the fact that he honestly seems to believe in this Antichrist stick, and sees himself as the „good“ defender. Scary stuff.
Show threadMegan Lynch (she/her)5d ago

@axeln Pardon me for taking the comment at face value, then. I apologize.

However, I do think it's important to publicly state wherever possible that this stuff they do doesn't come out of ignorance. Too many ppl think that mere education would change these ppl. That they're simply misguided.

And it's possible others reading the replies would have thought that as a result, so I chimed in.

Show threadaxel.5d ago
@meganL Sorry myself, for being so blunt. I don’t think it is a matter of education anymore. Nobody should be so powerful as our current crop of billionaires, be it TechBros, media tycoons or whatever. This is beyond mere „power corrupts“.
Show threadBongolian5d ago

@axeln @meganL @mattmay #Thiel knows what he's doing alright, but on some level he doesn't understand what he's doing: he named his company Palantir after #Palantír, the crystal ball in the Lord of the Rings books. In the books the Palantírs were accurate in foretelling the future but unreliable for showing guides to action.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palant%C3%ADr

Palantír - Wikipedia

Show threadaxel.5d ago
@Bongolian @meganL @mattmay All this Palantir, Anduril and „do not meddle in the affairs of wizards“ is just posturing and name dropping. They don’t even realize that they are fighting on the orc side of things (or they do, refer to „the last Ringbearer“).
Show threadSzymon Sokół 🇵🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦5d ago
@Bongolian @mattmay "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."