The Gospel According to Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s Rasputin and the Politics of the Apocalypse
There’s a moment in every civilization, usually right before the wheels come off, when the richest people in the room start talking about demons.
For Russia, that moment was Rasputin, the unwashed mystic whispering into the ear of a doomed royal family. For post-Soviet Russia, it was Alexander Dugin, the bearded prophet of “Eurasian destiny” whose geopolitics sound like a Lord of the Rings fanfic written after too much absinthe. And for the late-capitalist West, it seems we’ve found our own version in Peter Thiel, billionaire venture capitalist, libertarian philosopher, and, apparently, apocalyptic theologian.
The Guardian recently reported that Thiel, in a series of private lectures, warned of the coming of the Antichrist, a metaphysical entity that, in his telling, manifests as global regulation, bureaucracy, and moral cowardice. The Antichrist, he suggests, will seduce humanity with promises of safety and equality, using fears of AI, climate change, and nuclear war to justify submission to a one-world technocratic order.
Which, translated from theological Esperanto, means: don’t regulate tech companies.
From PayPal to the Apocalypse
It’s quite a career arc. Most people who co-found PayPal go on to buy a yacht, not write eschatological fanfiction about the United Nation. But Thiel has always been more monk than mogul, less “Silicon Valley bro” and more “medieval scholastic who discovered crypto.”
His worldview blends libertarian economics, Catholic mysticism, and the gnawing suspicion that progressivism is a secular religion designed to crush innovation. It’s an intoxicating brew: half Nietzsche, half Revelation, garnished with a dash of Ayn Rand and a $200 lecture ticket.
So when Thiel warns that regulation is the road to the Antichrist, he’s not joking. He’s doing what Rasputin and Dugin did before him: turning metaphysics into policy.
The Mystic-Technocrat Archetype
Rasputin, Dugin, Thiel. Three men, one archetype: the mystic-technocrat, the guy who convinces powerful people that their moral confusion is actually a cosmic drama.
Rasputin offered the Romanovs divine purpose when their empire was collapsing. Dugin offered Russian elites transcendence after the Soviet Union fell apart. Thiel offers Silicon Valley billionaires meaning in a world where having infinite money stopped being interesting. In all three cases, the mystic’s message is the same: You are not merely powerful, you are chosen.
It’s easy to mock, but this is precisely what makes figures like Thiel dangerous. They supply the ruling class with a theology of entitlement, a mythic justification for domination disguised as spiritual insight.
How the “Crazy” Becomes Policy
The journey from “that’s nuts” to “that’s in the policy memo” follows a predictable path.
Step 1: Translation. Apocalyptic language gets rebranded as philosophical seriousness. “Antichrist” becomes “centralized global bureaucracy.” “Battle for souls” becomes “defense of innovation.” Suddenly, a religious vision sounds like a Brookings white paper.
Step 2: Narrative anxiety. Elites, bored of managing quarterly earnings and regulatory compliance, start craving purpose. Enter the mystic, who gives their ennui a cosmic frame: you’re not avoiding taxes, you’re defending civilization from entropy.
Step 3: Policy laundering. Once the story feels sufficiently intellectual, it filters into actual decision-making. Opposition to climate treaties becomes resistance to “one-world technocracy.” Deregulation becomes “defense of freedom.” Public health oversight becomes “tyranny of safetyism.”
By the end, theology has been sanitized into ideology, and ideology becomes law.
The Cult of Civilizational Anxiety
Apocalyptic thinking has always thrived among elites because it flatters them. If the end is nigh, then their wealth isn’t greed, it’s Noah’s Ark money. They’re not hoarding; they’re preparing.
Thiel’s version of this anxiety has been brewing for years. He once declared that “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible.” He funds seasteading projects to build libertarian ocean nations, invests in surveillance tech, bankrolls political candidates who treat Silicon Valley as the new Vatican, and now, apparently, hosts theology lectures warning that Greta Thunberg is an emissary of the Beast.
This is not just eccentricity; it’s a cosmology of control. For Thiel, every attempt at collective action looks like a prelude to tyranny. Every rule is an omen. Every social contract is a preface to Revelation 13.
And that worldview is appealing precisely because it’s flattering to billionaires: it recasts selfishness as sanctity.
Dugin, Meet Palo Alto
Compare this to Alexander Dugin, who tells Russian elites that global liberalism is the Antichrist wearing Western clothes. Dugin’s “Fourth Political Theory” dresses old imperial instincts in mystical garb, Russia as the eschatological heartland, the West as decadent Babylon.
Thiel’s theology is the Silicon Valley remix: the Antichrist isn’t NATO or Washington, it’s the Securities and Exchange Commission. Where Dugin sees the apocalypse in globalism, Thiel sees it in regulation. Both men tell the powerful what they want to hear: your instincts are not greed or paranoia, they’re prophecy.
Dugin whispers to the Kremlin. Thiel whispers to Congress, to tech CEOs, to the libertarian intelligentsia. The language changes, but the mechanism doesn’t: turn power into revelation, and revelation into justification.
Why the Smart Fall for the Strange
You might think these ideas would die at the first whiff of sunlight, but intellectual decadence has a sense of humor. Thiel isn’t ranting on street corners; he’s lecturing to rooms full of investors, academics, and politicians.
That’s because our elites no longer believe in much. The old secular faith, progress, meritocracy, reason, feels threadbare. Into that vacuum steps theology, now wearing designer sneakers and quoting Nietzsche. Tech leaders want transcendence without humility, religion without guilt, prophecy without God. Thiel offers exactly that: a secular apocalypse where they are the saints.
It’s a perfect product for an age that markets enlightenment as personal branding.
The Political Aftertaste
Here’s the thing: mystical politics doesn’t stay mystical. It metastasizes. Once you frame policy as salvation, compromise becomes heresy.
We’ve already seen hints of this in American politics, the fusion of techno-libertarianism with religious populism, the rise of politicians who quote Revelation and Hayek in the same breath. Thiel’s money amplifies those voices. His mythology, of regulation as sin, of innovation as grace, provides a theological grammar for deregulation.
It’s the oldest trick in the book: wrap ideology in sacred language, and even the absurd starts to sound profound.
Rasputin in a Hoodie
If Rasputin wandered into the 21st century, he’d probably have a venture fund and a Substack. He’d speak in TED Talk riddles about spiritual disruption, warn that AI ethics committees were the devil’s work, and sell NFTs of his beard hair to fund a new monastery in Wyoming.
Thiel, in this sense, is our Rasputin in a hoodie: a mystic who traded incense for venture capital, theocratic paranoia for PowerPoint slides. Like Rasputin, he thrives on access, less a ruler himself than a whisperer to those who rule.
He doesn’t need to win elections or command armies. He just needs to plant a few seeds of metaphysical panic in the minds of people who do.
The Broader Pattern: When Power Loses Its Plot
Every empire eventually drifts into metaphysics when it can no longer explain itself. The Romans blamed decadence, the Soviets blamed deviationists, and we, naturally, blame the Antichrist of overregulation.
It’s not that Thiel’s theology is new; it’s that it’s symptomatic. When an empire’s managerial class starts reaching for Revelation to explain economic policy, the real apocalypse has already begun. Thiel’s “Antichrist” isn’t lurking in Brussels or Davos. It’s in the collective hallucination that technology can substitute for morality, and that billionaires are the rightful priests of progress.
The Theology of Self-Justification
In the end, Thiel’s eschatology isn’t about God at all. It’s about self-justification. If the Antichrist is “control,” then disobedience becomes holy. If regulation is demonic, then profit is redemptive. It’s the perfect moral system for people who already have everything: a religion where salvation means never saying sorry.
This is why calling it “crazy” misses the point. It’s not madness, it’s marketing. Apocalyptic rhetoric, deployed not to save souls but to secure capital. And like all good marketing, it works best when people stop taking it literally and start taking it seriously.
Conclusion: The Sermon on the Blockchain
So here we are: Rasputin had the czarina; Dugin has the Kremlin; Thiel has Congress, crypto bros, and a theology of deregulation.
Each man represents a civilization talking to itself in mythic code, trying to make its contradictions sound divine. Each begins with mysticism and ends with policy. And each proves that the line between spiritual adviser and political operator is as thin as a venture capitalist’s moral scruples.
Maybe Thiel is right, in a way. Maybe the Antichrist is coming. If so, he’ll probably arrive in a black turtleneck, armed with a pitch deck and a libertarian podcast.
References:
The Guardian (2025). 'Peter Thiel’s private lectures warn of the coming Antichrist.' 10 October. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist (Accessed: 4 November 2025).
Reuters (2025). 'Peter Thiel in talk on “Antichrist” says he told Elon Musk not to give wealth to charity.' 10 October. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/peter-thiel-talk-antichrist-says-he-told-elon-musk-not-give-wealth-charity-2025-10-09/ (Accessed: 4 November 2025).
Schmitt, C. (2005). Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Agamben, G. (2011). The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Taubes, J. (2009). The Political Theology of Paul. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Moyn, S. (2020). Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Chesterman, S. (2025). 'Silicon Sovereigns: Artificial Intelligence, International Law, and the Tech-Industrial Complex', [online] arXiv preprint: 2505.05506. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05506 (Accessed: 4 November 2025).
Çaya, S. (2014). 'Rasputin’s Profile and How Charisma Works in Inducing Others into Guided Actions of all Sorts', Journal of Health Science 2:599-603. Available at: https://www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/55531b2865bb7.pdf (Accessed: 4 November 2025)
Al-Mekaimi, H. (2023) 'Factors influencing the intellectual premises of the Russian theorist Alexander Dugin in geopolitics, Eurasianism, and the fourth political theory'. iKNiTO Journal of the Faculty of Arts, University of Cairo, Volume 2023 Issue 1. Available at: https://journals.ekb.eg/article_439455.html (Accessed: 4 November 2025)
