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

@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
@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.
@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
@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.

@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

@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“).