Trump ally Peter Thiel brings Antichrist lectures to Vatican’s doorstep after attacking ‘woke American Pope’ | EUROtoday

Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel is presently in Rome delivering a four-part lecture sequence outlining his beliefs concerning the Antichrist on the Vatican’s doorstep, having beforehand attacked Pope Leo XIV as a “woke American pope.”

Thiel, 58, a co-founder of PayPal and the info mining firm Palantir, delivered the primary of the sequence Sunday and can current three subsequent instalments on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week, during which he’ll reportedly clarify his advanced private philosophy relating to the imminence of Armageddon.

The lecture sequence is invitation-only, no recording gadgets are permitted throughout the venues – the areas of which have repeatedly modified – and two Catholic universities beforehand tied to the convention have denied their involvement.

Thiel, who grew up in an evangelical Christian family, delivered an identical set of talks in San Francisco final September, which once more occurred behind closed doorways; illicit recordings subsequently leaked, and The Guardian posted in depth excerpts.

In these speeches, the tech investor was heard defining himself as “a libertarian, or a classical liberal, who deviates in one minor detail, where I’m worried about the Antichrist,” which he characterised as “a spiritual descriptor of the forces of evil” or “an evil king or tyrant or anti-Messiah who appears in the end times.”

Thiel informed his viewers of predominantly younger male professionals in California that he believed the End of Days can be led to by an Antichrist determine who encourages a concern of existential threats in opposition to humanity as a way to consolidate energy, giving local weather change, AI and nuclear warfare as examples of matters they could use to instil nervousness a couple of coming Third World War.

Thiel stated such an individual would use the following paranoia to justify a push towards a one-world state and the enforced stagnation of scientific progress and technological advances, one thing he believes is already underway.

Seeing the Antichrist as each a person and a malign pressure compelling the unification of the world below a single international state has prompted Thiel to oppose such worldwide organizing our bodies because the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

His earlier lecture sequence, characterised as “diffuse, meandering and often confusing” by The Guardianadditionally noticed him warn in opposition to Pope Leo as a “woke American pope” and anti-science “Luddites” such because the local weather activist Greta Thunberg.

He additionally mused on the function President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gavin Newsom, and Zohran Mamdani may play in his cosmology.

The talks had been peppered with pop cultural references, with Thiel alluding to all the things from Jonathan Swift and JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to Alan Moore’s Watchmen whereas discovering time for facet swipes in opposition to his tech trade friends, Bill Gates and Marc Andreessen.

Responding to his arrival in Italy, The Messenger quotes an essay by the Catholic theologian Father Paolo Benanti, initially printed in The Great Continentduring which the priest critiqued the self-styled prophet’s bleak message as depicting a society “incapable of self-government” during which “the only alternative to apocalypse would be a technocratic order imposed by an elite of rulers.”

He continued: “In this vision, democracy understood as the self-government of equal citizens is already dead – and all that remains, in the darkness of a data center, is the clinical management of its corpse.”

Benanti considers Thiel’s talking tour “a prolonged act of heresy against liberal consensus: a challenge to the very foundations of civil coexistence,” The Messenger concludes.

At house, Thiel has fortunately aligned himself with the Trump administration, personally donating to the president’s 2016 marketing campaign, whereas Palantir is amongst these serving to to pay for the brand new ballroom being constructed instead of the East Wing of the White House.

The firm has additionally inked an settlement with ICE to streamline the method of figuring out individuals the company is focusing on for deportation, a transfer that led to protesters focusing on Thiel’s last San Francisco lecture with placards that learn “Predatory Tech”, “We Do Not Profit from People Who Profit from Misery,” and “Not Today Satan”.

Thiel can also be identified to be near the vice chairman, having supported Vance’s early profession in enterprise capital and having poured tens of millions of {dollars} into his profitable bid for the Ohio Senate in 2022.

While the billionaire might take exception to Pope Leo, the Chicago-born pontiff has equally made his opposition to the Trump administration clear, lately criticising the Iran battle and final March sharing an article on social media opposing its remedy of migrants with the headline: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

Leo additionally warned Catholic clergymen in February in opposition to being seduced by “illusion on the internet” and the risks of AI, simply as Thiel warned the Antichrist may do.