The Theology of Power: How Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession Explains the Billionaire Mind
What Peter Thiel’s “End Times” Philosophy Reveals About the People Running the World
The Theology of Power: How Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession Explains the Billionaire Mind
What Peter Thiel’s “End Times” Philosophy Reveals About the People Running the World
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #588: Thursday, October 9th, 2025.
Author’s Note
When there’s something I don’t understand…I go at it like a ten-year-old.
No ego. No jargon. Just pure curiosity and the willingness to ask “dumb” questions until the answers make sense.
Because here’s what I’ve learned:
If you can’t explain something so simply a kid could get it…you don’t really understand it yourself.
So I took one of the strangest…most confusing stories floating around today…Peter Thiel’s obsession with the “Antichrist”…and broke it down until even my inner ten-year-old could nod along and say, “Okay, now that makes sense.”
In the process, I wound up understanding it a hell of a lot better myself.
And now I’m going to hand it to you the same way…plain…direct…and easy to follow …because what Thiel believes about the end of the world isn’t just theology.
It’s a roadmap for power.
Let’s start with the big picture.
The Gospel of Control
Every power structure begins as a story.
Some use data.
Some use flags.
And some…like Peter Thiel’s, use the Bible.
When you hear that Thiel….co-founder of PayPal…early backer of Facebook…patron of Palantir…talks privately about the Antichrist and something called the katechon…it sounds like fringe mysticism.
But it isn’t. It’s the software running beneath a whole generation of billionaires.
Thiel doesn’t just bankroll technology. He bankrolls a theology of power: a way to interpret civilization as a slow-motion apocalypse where only the strong, the contrarian, the divinely “awake” survive.
He sees two threats coming at humanity like twin freight trains:
Technological catastrophe: AI, nukes, climate collapse.
A unifying global order: the “Antichrist,” in his vocabulary…that promises safety through control.
And he believes both trains are on the same track.
The Philosophy Behind the Fortune
To see why this matters, you’ve got to strip away the academic polish and look at it in plain English.
The Source Code: René Girard
Thiel’s college mentor…René Girard, taught that human beings imitate one another’s desires. We copy what others want.
That creates rivalry → resentment → violence.
To stop the chaos…societies find a scapegoat…someone to blame…sacrifice…or cancel …and call it justice.
Girard warned…that modern civilization….having lost faith in shared truth…is stuck in endless imitation and outrage.
Sound familiar? Twitter. Cable news. Politics. Every tribe hungry for a villain.
Thiel swallowed it whole. He believes the modern West is tearing itself apart because it’s lost its old scapegoats…and the vacuum is summoning a false unity…a global peace machine that will smother individuality in the name of safety.
The Legal Prophet: Carl Schmitt
Schmitt…a German legal theorist who thrived under the Nazis…called that machine the “Antichrist.”
His antidote was the katechon…a biblical term for whatever restrains the end times. In politics…that meant strong nation-states that block global governance.
To Schmitt, “the world state” was evil precisely because it erased enemies. Without enemies…no meaning. Without meaning…no order.
Thiel internalized that, too.
He frames global cooperation as a path to total control…the Antichrist’s path…and fragmented nationalism as the katechon that holds it back.
The Modern Interpreter: Wolfgang Palaver
Palaver tried to warn him: if your restrainer gets too powerful…it becomes the thing it fights. Build a super-state to block the super-state and you’ve already lost.
But in the billionaire mind….that nuance gets steamrolled. Power always believes it can handle paradox.
Thiel’s version of the story is simpler:
Globalism = Antichrist.
Nationalism = Katechon.
Surveillance and AI = Weapons to decide which side wins.
From Theology to Policy
Here’s where this stops being theory and starts shaping the world you live in.
1. The Surveillance Paradox
Thiel warns that centralized control is evil…while selling the software that makes central control possible. Palantir’s data tools help governments track citizens…predict behavior…and manage threats.
He frames it as defensive: a shield against chaos. But every shield can be a sword. And when you believe the end times are near…you don’t worry much about collateral damage.
2. The Political Ecosystem
Follow the money and you find Thiel seeding a network of “National Conservative” thinkers…candidates…and media outlets who talk like disciples of Schmitt with a Twitter account.
They don’t say “Antichrist.” They say “global elite,” “woke capital,” “one-world bureaucracy.” Same story…new marketing.
The goal:
Convince ordinary people that unity is dangerous and division is virtue…so long as the right people control the divisions.
3. The Tech Messiahs
Look around. Elon Musk talks about AI as a “demon.” Marc Andreessen writes “techno-optimist manifestos” about rebirth through disruption. Sam Altman speaks of AGI as salvation and risk rolled into one.
Different symbols…same frame: apocalypse as marketing.
They sell you salvation through innovation…and just happen to own the church.
They’ve turned existential risk into a unique selling proposition.
“Only I can save you from the end of the world I keep predicting.”
How They Use Belief to Bind You
Thiel and his circle understand something most politicians never do: belief is a business model.
When you frame the world as a moral war…people don’t just buy your product…they join your crusade.
That’s why this matters to you whether you invest…vote…or just scroll.
Because every time you hear a billionaire say “AI will save us” or “AI will kill us,” you’re not hearing science. You’re hearing eschatology…a story about the end times… repackaged for venture capital.
And it’s working.
It turns fear into investment capital.
It turns control into protection.
It turns followers into foot soldiers.
Every commercial you watch on TV uses the following formula: Problem → Agitation → Solution.
Thiel just applied it to civilization itself.
Where You Stand Matters Now
You don’t need a degree in theology to see what’s happening. You just need to recognize a pattern.
Declare a crisis too big for ordinary people to handle.
Offer a grand narrative that makes you the hero.
Wrap it in mystery and moral urgency.
Build technology that centralizes decision-making.
Call it salvation.
That’s not faith. That’s marketing. It’s the oldest persuasion game on earth…fear plus future…sold by a prophet with equity.
And here’s the truth you won’t hear anywhere else:
If you don’t define your own belief system…someone wealthier will rent you theirs.
The battle for freedom is no longer just political. It’s psychological. It’s spiritual. And the front line is the story you choose to believe.
Wake Up Before the Code Is Written
We’re watching a new religion form in real time. Its gods are algorithms. Its priests are billionaires. Its scripture is data.
They don’t need your vote to rule you. They just need your attention.
They don’t need your faith to save you. They just need your fear.
So here’s what you can do today…starting now:
Question the myth. When a billionaire talks like a prophet…remember: he’s selling something.
Follow the infrastructure. Who owns the data…the AI…the platforms? That’s where real theology meets real power.
Support voices that decode this stuff before it hardens into law. (That’s what this newsletter does every day.)
Reclaim moral language for yourself. Don’t let the world’s richest men decide what “good” and “evil” mean.
Because if we don’t speak up now…we’ll wake up living inside someone else’s Book of Revelation…and it won’t be written in ink. It’ll be written in code.
BONUS SECTION: What This Really Teaches About Power
Most people read an article like this and think, “Weird billionaire. Strange beliefs. Moving on.”
That’s a mistake.
Because what Peter Thiel is doing isn’t unique…it’s a playbook.
A system. A mental operating system every power player eventually learns.
They start with an idea so complex it intimidates you.
Then they hide behind it.
That’s how the elite keep everyone else quiet…not through violence…but through vocabulary.
You ever notice how most “thought leaders” talk like they’re auditioning for a theology degree or a TED Talk at the same time?
That’s not by accident.
They know if they sound like prophets…they’ll be treated like visionaries…and no one will call them on the details.
But here’s the secret they hope you never figure out:
Complexity is camouflage.
The harder it is to understand…the easier it is to control.
So when you learn to break things down to that ten-year-old level…when you strip out the jargon, the mysticism…the smoke…you start to see the wiring underneath.
That’s when power loses its magic trick.
That’s what this newsletter does.
We strip away the performance and look directly at what’s being built…in politics…in tech…in media…in money…and we do it in the one language that scares power most: plain English.
If that’s the kind of clarity you want more of…the kind that makes you dangerous to the people who depend on confusion…become a paid subscriber today.
Because the next deep dive goes even further inside the machine.
If you’re walking away from this with a clearer sense of what all that “Thiel / Antichrist” talk actually means…and you like how I break these things down so that even a country boy like me can hold his own in the conversation….become a paid subscriber.
Because that’s what I do.
I take the complicated…the hidden…and the deliberately confusing…and I translate it into straight talk you can actually use.
I’ll be back soon.
Best,
-Jack
Good one.
This may seem irrelevant but it kept chiming in as I was reading- I’ve been a repair tech most of my life (except for a ten year detour into IT, before it was even called that- but for another time.) So it must have been around 1988 I began to see computers infiltrating both autos and aircraft (certificated for those too) and it did not sit well. I think I knew it signaled a paradigm shift to complete reliance on tech, which also had a different meaning back then.
Despite some systems being vastly improved, like electronic fuel injection and the demise of carburetors, somehow I must have intuited was this was a very bad direction, at least and especially for the last of the hotrod generation. So much really expensive new equipment was required to even perform routine tasks I just bailed. And watched as they took over completely, and the DIY days were over. Along with autonomy. And for that matter, fun. Just like now.
It’s a stretch, but what we’re discussing here is directly connected. My shop was a mile away from Oracle headquarters, the looming buildings served to creep me out even though I barely knew what they were really all about. We often raced go-carts in the voluminous yet usually deserted parking lot and it always seemed to be in the shadow of those soulless towers. Cold and eerie.
The signs were all there, but I could not have ever conceived that they were soon and subtly leading the charge to remake the country into their self-serving dystopian fantasy world. Except it’s no longer fantasy.
Fascinating commentary