Here are some excerpts from The Guardian article "Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist." My comments are in square brackets. I read this and started out laughing at (and copying) the merely comical. By the end, not so much.
"'I'm a libertarian, or a classical liberal, who deviates in one minor detail, where I'm worried about the antichrist,' Thiel said during his third lecture...." [In other words, most "classical liberals" aren't so worried about the Antichrist, but he is. This was in a THIRD lecture, mind you]
"Tickets for the series went for $200, selling out within hours...." [Most of the audience was young men -- who not only had nothing better to do, not only had $200 to blow on something like this, but WANTED to go and listen to what Peter Thiel had to say on this topic -- ???]
"The Silicon Valley heavyweight drew on a wide swath of religious thinkers, including the French-American theorist René Girard, whom Thiel knew at Stanford University, and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, whose work he said helped create the core of his own beliefs. He credited the English Catholic theologian John Henry Newman as the inspiration for his four-part series, saying: 'Newman did four, so I'm doing four. I'm happy about it.'" [He gave the same number of lectures that John Henry Newman did, so now they’re even and he’s happy about it. It’s not often -- or, at least it didn’t USED to be -- that "religious thinkers" can include a "Nazi jurist." That the "work" of the "jurist" in question "helped create the core of {Thiel's} own beliefs" needs no further comment]
"In recent months, he has spoken to theologians and podcasters about the antichrist both publicly and in private...." [Because, why WOULDN'T you talk to a podcaster along with theologians on this subject?]
"Thiel said that international financial bodies, which make it more difficult for people to shelter their wealth in tax havens, are one sign the antichrist may be amassing power and hastening Armageddon, saying: 'It's become quite difficult to hide one's money....'" [Personally, I can't get a goddam prescription filled without the Antichrist screwing things up]
[Peter Thiel says] "When I met [Benjamin] Netanyahu early in 2024, about a year and a half ago, we talked about what he's doing in Gaza, and the one-liner he had was: 'I can't just Dresdenize Gaza -- you can't just firebomb them.' So it's like, come on, 'I'm less of a war criminal than Winston Churchill. Why am I in so much trouble?' " [Hmmmm, where to even start, but obviously there WAS "only" firebombing "them" -- and that it has all been reduced to the terms of a "one-liner" says all there is to say about the horrific unrighteousness of all that we’ve seen]
[Peter Thiel says] "The US world police is the one truly sovereign country. They always say the president is the mayor of the US and the dictator of the world." [This man is, technically, insane. Or high on glue]
[Peter Thiel says] "I'm sort of always in favor of maximal free speech, but my one concrete test is whether I can talk about the antichrist. If I can't, that’s too restrictive."
