Isegoria

Peter Thiel recently delivered a series of four lectures on behalf of ACTS 17 Collective — a nonprofit dedicated to Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society (ACTS) — about the Antichrist:

Thiel kicks off the lecture series by identifying himself as two things in his private life: “A small-o orthodox Christian” and a “humble classical liberal.” Thiel claims his fears about the Antichrist are his only “deviation from classical liberal orthodoxy,” and his analogy between the Antichrist and one-worldism, one of the central motifs of his lectures, is unmistakably libertarian.

While the rapid rise in AI and other advanced technologies has led many to believe that the Antichrist will use technology to accomplish his goals — the New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat has even suggested to Thiel that the surveillance technology provided by Palantir could be a tool for the Antichrist — Thiel says in his first lecture that, “in the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science.” In his second lecture, Thiel goes on to identify “the legionnaires of the Antichrist [as people] like Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, and Greta Thunberg [who] argue for world government to stop science.”

Although Thiel doesn’t explicitly reference Crisis and Leviathan (1987) — the celebrated book by American historian and economist Robert Higgs — he warns that the former precipitates the latter. In his first lecture, Thiel cites Matthew 24:6 to insist that “the Antichrist will come to power by talking about Armageddon non-stop” and 1 Thessalonians 5:3 as evidence that the Antichrist will rise to power by promising “peace and safety.” In his second lecture, Thiel explains how “a new, reformed government called ‘Leviathan,’” as described by political philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 political treatise, that wields supreme power to cow men into peaceful cooperation, will be ridden by the Antichrist “to take over the world.”

Opposition to totalitarianism aside, not all of Thiel’s comments fit comfortably within the libertarian worldview. Thiel criticizes “zombie liberalism” and “lame libertarian abstractions,” preferring an anti-communist ideology where “you could do some pretty bad stuff because the communists were so much worse.” For example, Thiel praises the CIA of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, for being “sort of this rogue thing outside the State Department,” which he says was full of communists.

Still, Thiel recognizes state power as a double-edged sword, identifying the American empire as simultaneously “the natural candidate for Katechon” — the entity that delays the emergence of the Antichrist — “and Antichrist; ground zero of the one-world state, ground zero of the resistance to the one-world state.” In his third lecture, Thiel names “tax treaties, financial surveillance, and sanctions architecture” as defining features of the international “Antichrist-like system” of international governance. Thiel explains how “it’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money” in the wake of the Patriot Act, the “extensive” administrative state (the Treasury Department, in particular), and the centralization of payments on the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications system — an international messaging network better known as SWIFT, which banks use to process global payments. All of these factors make it impossible to “escape from global taxation if you’re a U.S. citizen,” he says. Thiel links this erosion of financial freedom to Revelation 13:16-17, which prophesies about a society where an individual’s ability to engage in commerce is contingent upon brandishing the mark of the beast on one’s body.

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