Conspirituality Podcast

Episode 280: Peter Thiel is Definitely Not the Antichrist
Release Date: October 23, 2025
Hosts: Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

Overview

This episode explores the strange intersection of tech billionaires, Christian eschatology, and the wellness-to-conspiracy pipeline, focusing on Peter Thiel’s recent lectures about the Antichrist. The hosts analyze Thiel’s intellectual influences—particularly his relationship to mimetic desire theorist René Girard—and connect the dots between right-wing “health freedom” grifts, the politics of “victimhood,” and the growing alliances between reactionary tech, spirituality, and authoritarian movements. The team also brings listeners up to speed on the New Age anti-vax group “Make Europe Healthy Again” and their expansion across the Atlantic.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The European Wellness Grift—Make Europe Healthy Again (MIHA)

(04:56–19:25)

Anti-Vax, Anti-Climate, Pro-Nationalism:

• Context: The anti-vax conspiracy movement is now expanding to Europe under the MIHA banner, led by Dr. Maria Huber Hogg (EMT turned anti-vax activist) who failed to win a seat in Austria’s 2024 elections.
• Other Key Players:
  • Rob Roose, ex-far right Dutch politician
  • Dr. Andrea Lamont Nazarenko, “health freedom” psychologist
  • Stephanie Lind (Health Freedom Summit), and Dr. Aseem Malhotra (anti-statins, anti-vax)
• Allies & Sponsors: Mary Holland (Children’s Health Defense), Tony Lyons (Skyhorse Publishing), Brian Hooker (Andrew Wakefield ally) and Sayer Ji (GreenMedInfo).
• Mission Statement:

  “To nurture a Europe where people reclaim their power, their voice, their health and their traditions by protecting the essentials of life.” (09:47, read by Matthew)

  • The hosts highlight the classic dog whistles—“traditions,” “sovereignty,” “safe communities”—as camouflaging hard-right and exclusionary politics.

US → EU Conspiracies

• The US “wellness-to-conspiracy pipeline” is exporting its business (and propaganda) model to the socialized-medicine nations of Europe. Host comments make clear this is less about “health freedom” and more about exploiting gaps for profit and privatization rhetoric.
• Matthew:

  “RFK Jr. worked his ass off to destroy healthcare infrastructure in the U.S.... but the entry barriers for cranks and quacks are different and higher in the EU.” (11:40)

Privatization, Austerity, & Dog Whistles

• They discuss how the movement will likely focus on mixed public/private models and “choice”—not an explicit attack on socialized medicine, but moving the Overton window toward privatization and “personal responsibility.”
• Julian:

  “It’s not poor people who have no healthcare that are seeking out alternative medicine... it’s usually wealthy people taken in by this idea of self-optimization.” (16:19)

• MIHA’s use of “personal sovereignty” is highlighted as a nudge toward capitalist definitions of health and wellness.

Budget Cuts and Christian Nationalist Policy

• Derek shares findings from the “Make America Healthy” commission budget—major cuts to family planning, teen pregnancy prevention, and tobacco cessation, while propping up “pro-family” and embryo adoption funds.
• Derek:

  “This is a very Christian nationalist, sort of pronatalist budget that’s happening right now... They are putting a lot more investments in things like embryo adoption and pro-family planning.” (18:25)

2. Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Lectures: The Techno-Religious Ouroboros

(21:57–54:31)

Thiel’s Business, Surveillance, and Influence

• The hosts summarize Thiel’s massive influence across tech and finance—Palantir, PayPal, Facebook, Anduril, Stripe—framing his work as helping to build the global surveillance apparatus.
• Derek:

  “We shouldn’t limit Thiel’s love of surveillance to just Palantir... He’s invested in defense tech, social networks, anything that handles your money and tracks your identity.” (22:48)

The Lectures: Context and Themes

• Four sold-out lectures in San Francisco (no recording allowed, but transcripts were leaked to The Guardian), organized by the Acts 17 Collective (“Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society”).
• Thiel blends New Testament prophecy, conspiracy tropes, pop culture references (esp. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”), and political fear-mongering.
• Thiel’s central warning: The Antichrist will present as a peacenik, a global humanitarian, and promoter of “peace and safety” while actually ushering in a one-world dictatorship.

Key Quotes:

• Peter Thiel (as summarized by hosts):

  “What I will focus on is the most common and most dramatic interpretation of Antichrist: an evil king or tyrant who in the end times... ushers in Armageddon by cultivating fear of existential threats—AI, climate change, nuclear war. The slogan of the Antichrist? ‘Peace and safety.’” (29:05–29:56)

• Matthew:

  “Thiel’s business is gathering information and surveillance... but the conflict here is between exposing and hiding. Who gets to be the truth teller?” (49:12)

Hypocrisy, Paranoia, and Intellectual Self-Dealing

• The hosts zero in on Thiel’s cosmic irony: he rails against authoritarian, one-world surveillance, but he literally builds and profits from those systems.
• Derek:

  “Why the fuck did you donate $1.25 million to Trump for his 2016 campaign? ...That kind of feeds into the whole fear that you're describing now.“ (34:46)

• Thiel and his ilk accuse the “concern for victims” (welfare, environmentalism, redistributive policies) as Antichrist-like, a “toxic-mimic” of Christian virtue.

The Scapegoats: Who’s the Anti-Christ?

• Greta Thunberg, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Nick Bostrom are named as “harbingers”—all are construed as apocalyptic “doomers” warning about existential threats, and thus, per Thiel’s twisted logic, vehicles for global authoritarianism.
• Julian (paraphrasing Thiel):

  “It’s not Bill Gates. The Antichrist would be popular. Age matters; Christ ended at 33... maybe now 66 is the new 33.” (50:25)

• The episode notes Thiel’s numerology and mythological cherry-picking is incoherent:

  “He can't even get his numerology right, though. Buddha started traveling at 29, he experienced nirvana at 35... He's just making up [stuff] to fit into his brain-numbing numerology.” —Derek (53:21)

3. René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, Envy, and Scapegoating

(57:53–71:31)

Girard’s Influence on Thiel

• Matthew gives a succinct overview: Girard (Thiel’s mentor at Stanford) theorized that human desire is essentially imitation (mimesis), breeding competition and crises, eventually resolved by scapegoating.

• Matthew:

  “Extrapolating from these novels [French lit], Girard imagined what he called the mimetic theory of desire… Girard says that the frustrations of envy are at the root of human and mob violence… scapegoats were ritually murdered in a form of sacred violence.” (57:53)

• Girard saw Christ as revealing the brutality of scapegoating; Thiel warps this into a justification for capitalist hierarchy: people who critique wealth and privilege are motivated by base envy and thus are enacting an anti-Christian (Antichrist) project.

Victimhood, Paranoia, and Right/Left Political Worldviews

• The core host analysis:
  • The right frames the “sin” of society as envy; the left frames it as greed.
  • Thiel’s worldview, through the Girardian lens, paints every demand for equality as dangerous envy, every act of charity as suspect, and “unworthy victims” as existential threats.
• Matthew:

  “If I walk up to Peter Thiel in the street and say, ‘Hey, you should be ashamed of yourself for being a billionaire....’ How can I prove I’m not simply envious of him? ...It’s almost a metaphysical belief.” (68:32)

Notable Reflection:

• The hosts muse on why the tech-conservative set is so obsessed with “victims”:

  “You gotta wonder why someone making drones that shoot children in Gaza has to think a lot about why victims are grifters or despicable… Girard had a sophisticated analysis of victimhood and sacrifice in Christianity, but what trickles down to Thiel is only enough maybe to help expiate guilt.” —Matthew (71:26)

Most Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Julian:

  “Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is no cuck philanthropist like Bill Gates. The cofounder of Palantir is leading his company at the bleeding edge of mass surveillance... He also fancies himself a political player... Considering this CV, the announcement that Thiel would give a series of four lectures on the Antichrist was puzzling.” (03:39)

• Matthew:

  “This beast of empathy is the Antichrist because it pretends to out-Jesus Jesus, leaving Jesus’s true function... by the wayside.” (42:50)

• Derek:

  “We’ve been very selfish in keeping all the pseudo-scientific loons to ourselves. Now you can have them too. Seriously, take them. All of them.” (19:25)

• Peter Thiel (summarized):

  “The Antichrist comes to power by talking constantly about Armageddon, about rumors of wars, and scaring you into giving him control over science and technology.” (37:00)

• Julian:

  “He is not entirely sure who the Antichrist is. But age is apparently important... Christ only lived to age 33 and became history’s greatest man. The Antichrist has somehow to outdo this.” (50:25)

• Matthew:

  “If Christ is the figure who proves the immorality of scapegoating... who is the Antichrist and why is it Greta Thunberg?” (63:27)

Structured Timestamps for Key Segments

• MIHA/European Wellness Grift: 04:56–19:25
• Family Planning, Budget Cuts, Christian Nationalism: 17:39–19:25
• Peter Thiel’s Tech Empire and Hypocrisy: 22:12–23:52
• Context for Thiel’s Antichrist Lectures: 25:52–28:56
• Thiel’s Biblical/Apocalyptic Framing: 29:05–34:46
• Thiel’s List of Potential ‘Antichrists’: 47:59–52:08
• Girard’s Mimetic Theory and Thiel: 57:53–70:51

Tone & Takeaways

The episode manages a careful balance—deeply critical, darkly humorous, and attentive to the esoteric but dangerous fusion of tech libertarianism, eschatological paranoia, and reactionary grift. The hosts are skeptical but not dismissive, and their banter makes for an accessible but rich decoding of Thiel’s intellectual world and its real-world consequences.

Final Word:
Just as the episode title suggests, the real danger isn’t whether Thiel is the Antichrist; it’s that his ideas are helping to reshape the landscape of spiritual, technological, and political power in profoundly authoritarian ways, even as they’re dressed up in intellectual flourishes and New Age “freedom” lingo.

For further exploration:

• See The Guardian’s leak and summaries of Thiel’s Antichrist lectures
• Investigate René Girard’s “mimetic theory” and its strange afterlife among Silicon Valley elites
• Watch for MIHA’s continued incursion into European public health discourse

All ad, intro, and outro segments have been omitted from this summary.