Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

Summary

It has been widely reported that the US tech billionaire Peter Thiel recently gave a series of rambling lectures to a private audience in San Francisco in which he laid out his apocalyptic reading of world politics. These lectures mark the culmination of two years of Thiel traveling the world speaking at Catholic universities, at international conferences, and on right-wing podcasts about how the Antichrist threatens global order. While Thiel’s discourse may lack clarity and coherence, it is still profoundly significant in view of the political and economic power concentrated in his hands. Yet perhaps more important still is what Thiel’s comments on the Antichrist tell us about the convergence of Christian apocalypticism, the tech sector’s economic dominance, and US imperialism. While some have associated Thiel’s vision with what they refer to as “end-times fascism,” it is more useful to characterize what he advances as an apocalyptic geopolitics — a simplified remapping of global politics onto the spiritual coordinates of salvation and damnation. Thiel’s apocalyptic geopolitics seeks to overcome internal social contradictions by projecting them onto an external evil, at once foreign and metaphysical. This justifies the most extreme violence against his opponents while protecting his own views from contestation. Thiel’s world is a battlefield of moral absolutes rather than a terrain of political complexity where different interests and values are contested and negotiated. Thiel and the Reactionary RightThiel has long been associated with the reactionary right in the United States, establishing hyperlibertarian projects like the Seasteading Institute, funding the far-right National Conservative movement, and supporting the work of reactionary intellectuals like Curtis Yarvin, guru of the “Dark Enlightenment.” He also donated generously to Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign and bankrolled J. D. Vance’s successful bid for a Senate seat in Ohio. Peter Thiel has long ...