Billionaire Peter Thiel Thinks Greta Thunberg Is One of the “Legionnaires of the Antichrist”

I don't want to add to your troubles and woe, but there's this very influential tech gozillionaire running around getting people to pay to watch him talk about...the Antichrist. The Guardian got ahold of some video of off-the-record talks by Peter Thiel and, boy howdy, has he achieved escape velocity.

Over the past month, Thiel has hosted a series of four lectures on the downtown waterfront of San Francisco philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming. Thiel, who describes himself as a “small-o orthodox Christian”, believes the harbinger of the end of the world could already be in our midst and that things such as international agencies, environmentalism and guardrails on technology could quicken its rise. It is a remarkable discursion that reveals the preoccupations of one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley and the U.S.

Answer: According to the Bible, the Roman Empire served as the katechon, or the place that will restrain an antichrist figure, and provided law and order, which in turn prevented or delayed the coming of the apocalypse. Thiel says the modern-day katechon is likely in America. One possibility is San Francisco, partly because of its distance from Washington D.C., which would make it harder for there to be a fusion of too many powers like the federal government and the technology industry. Ironically, though, he says America is also likely the place with the most markings of a future one-world order. Quote: "It's just that America is, at this point, the natural candidate for katechon and antichrist, ground zero of the one-world state, ground zero of the resistance to the one-world state."

Wow. And the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air and a voice cried out from heaven, saying, "You want another, pal?" Ordinarily, none of this would bother me, except that Thiel has messed around in my business, and he has messed around with my country. He may have personally programmed our animatronic vice-president. (Note to Peter: It may need a check-up.) And this is where he's at. From The Washington Post:

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel recently warned that Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and critics of technology or artificial intelligence are “legionnaires of the Antichrist” in private lectures on Christianity that connected government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future, according to recordings reviewed by The Washington Post. ...

“In the 17th, 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science,” Thiel said in his September 15 opening talk, according to the recordings. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer,” he said, referring to Thunberg and Eliezer Yudkowsky, a prominent critic of the tech industry’s approach to AI.

In some political contexts, the argument that "at one point this policy made sense, but now what was once X is now Y" works. You can actually get people elected if you say that the Civil Rights movement "went too far," and now white men are a disadvantaged class. But saying the antichrist once was Victor Frankenstein and is now is Greta Thunberg? Isn't the Antichrist a religious figure? Can't spell "Antichrist" without "Christ," after all.

Can we please at least have oligarchs who have not slipped off the tracks?