> It's me, hi,

> I'm the problem, it's me

- Taylor Swift, 2022

There’s nothing here about the lectures themselves just constantly repeating that Thiel is a bad guy who founded Palantir and works with republicans to the backdrop of a ton of ads.

“Who was the Antichrist? When would he arrive? What would he preach? What kind of SaaS offerings will he want to invest in?”

This is an attempt at a reverse Streisand effect, right? He didn't like people memeing that he was the antichrist, so he did all this so any searches would turn up his lectures rather than the memes/accusations.

Takes one to know one.

AI is the Antichrist.

the old saying goes that every entrepreneur wishes they were a philosopher, and every philosopher wishes they were an entrepreneur

generally holds true soros marc rich bill gates musk thiel nassim taleb epstein etc

If he was on a park bench covered in his own piss no one would pay any attention to the same words.

“Christians debated these prophecies for millennia. Who was the Antichrist? When would he arrive? What would he preach?”

Maybe that we all need to surrender all our data to an intransparent global surveillance tool, that gets more and more connected to automatic killer drones?

Oh and also despise democracy of course. Jesus Christ was on the side if the poor, so the antichrist would be on the side of the rich.

Any ideas who the new antichrist might be?

He’s appealing to the largest maga faction, fundamentalist christians because they are the kingmakers after Trump decays.

I grew up in a pretty religious household and my parents fully believed that Armageddon would happen in our lifetime. It wasn't until I was older that I realized there were a lot of American Christians that secretly held this belief, and that it has a meaningful influence on how voters want American politicians to deal with Israel and the Middle East in general.

Anyone got a bootleg?

Are these lectures available for anyone to look over or is it only for paying customers? I feel like if it was public it probably has the same weight as the Left Behind books did in the early 2000s.

Behind the Bastards did a good two-parter on Thiel's lectures. He sounds dangerously insane.

It'd be bad enough if he was just some random crank, but the fact he's got the level of power and influence needed to actually make his beliefs happen makes it exponentially worse.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtR7ny9TuCY

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXhyx-vVG_Y

The thing that really worries me about these kinds of beliefs in some kind of a god or gods is that they can provide a get-out clause for existential risks to humanity. If this physical universe is just one manifestation of existence, then there's less to worry about because there will be some kind of existence afterwards if you screw it up. But in my view the universe is all there is, and it very definitely doesn't "care" if humanity cooks the planet in a way that makes human life impossible. If that's your view, the first priority of every single person should be to work towards stabilising the climate and reduce our impact on the enviromnent, but instead we have shiny-eyed millenarians piling billions of dollars into things like AI that could be much more productively used in funding an energy transition. (And don't get me started on the idea that AI will help that transition - we already know what we need to do, that isn't complicated, even if the route is complex).

lecture is doing a lot of lifting.

So many believe that rupture or antichrist arrives in their generation, because it would make them feel special. If they die before, it makes them unimportant.

Knowing what kind of business Peter Thiel is engaged in, it is not a big surprise that he does not like the religion started by a guy who was crucified for telling others that it would be great if people were nice to each others.

It is disconcerting to see that quite a few of the well-known billionaires seem to have just outright insane beliefs. And those are people with real power and the ability to influence events on a larger scale.

Some reporting on the contents of the speech from last year:

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

It's suitably insane rambling nonsense. It actually seems to dovetail pretty well with Andreesen's manifesto in that evil is portrayed as anyone who opposed relentless technological progress at any cost. If you worry about the economic or human effects of tech oligarchs (Grete Thunberg is named as a candidate) then you are preparing your evil army for the final battle. Seeking to regulate AI also makes you a candidate.

I've listened to several of his antichrist talks and remain confused by his stance. He's imprecise on the topic and rambles often, but in my opinion it boils down to one of a few options:

1) These are actual good faith views that are inspired by his own piety

2) This is some chess game he thinks he's playing in which he erects the world government/ totalitarian state as signals of the antichrist, with Thunberg and other "woke" leaders as candidates, because they pose a risk to his business interests. Peace and safety are the enemy because they undermine Palantir

3) He is too rich/disconnected and has disappeared up his own ass

South Park season 28 has Peter Thiel as an exorcist trying to cure Cartman's devilish obsession with 6-7.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_season_28

There were a few news outlets (I think maybe the Washington Post?) that got copies of recordings of these insane lectures when Peter Thiel did them in San Francisco. I think it would be in the public interest for them to release the lectures in full.

Maybe people should put some pressure on these outlets to do so.

If you mention Israel or anyone from Israel you get auto-flagged. Criticising Americans is somehow much more tolerable.

“has proven so controversial that the Catholic universities initially associated with it have all denied official involvement”

Journalists have a real knack for warping banal things into sensational, ominous nonsense. The implication here is that that universities are monolithic coordinated machines with a single voice where all things are organized top-down. Some club here is hosting this event. That’s it. We had clubs at university that did the same thing. The quoted passages read like factual answers to questions posed by journalists to the Angelicum’s and CUA’s communications offices, not some frantic “distancing” or gotchas. They probably don’t care one way or another.

“the Catholic magazine First Things”

Not officially Catholic. Ecumenical is perhaps a better term. Even that word is not accurate, as there are plenty of contributions from Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, etc writers.

“an ancient Christian concept of the order of love, received a famous slapdown from Pope Francis […] Prevost shared an article […] with the headline, ‘JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.’”

Charitably, Francis and then-Prevost were critical of what they privately perceived as a misapplication or misunderstanding of this principle, not the principle itself. Prevost’s own Augustinian order draws heavily from St. Augustine who expounded the concept of ordo amoris/ordo caritatis. The concept isn’t an endorsement of national chauvinism, but merely that our love must be prioritized and ordered. It is a moral obligation and is simply part of and entailed by the natural law.

In any case, I don’t see any relevance to the article. It’s like some mish-mash of disconnected propositions held together by dubious or meaningless associations to imply something significant has taken place. Or would have sufficed to say “Peter Thiel lecturing on the Antichrist in Rome”.