Semantic Panic
Rehashed Satanic panic tactics must be exposed for what they are: a cynical ploy to further inflame political divisions
(Image source: Enrique Costa/REUTERS)
Peter Thiel says evil is “maybe kind of good.” Curtis Yarvin says Hitler was a genius. And the mainstream press has barely asked their intern, JD Vance1, about either.
– Gil Duran, Antichrist, Hitler and JD Vance’s 2028 problem; The Nerd Reich
Do you have difficulty grasping just how this could happen? Do you wonder if they ever study American history? And just what moral philosophy does Peter Thiel follow? Duran continues…
Thiel, who has embarked on a new career as the world’s premier Antichrist enthusiast, ignited a firestorm of controversy last month by praising the virtues of evil. During an interview in his native Germany, the Palantir billionaire said being evil is … “maybe kind of good.”
Clues abound in Gil’s linked 16 September 2025 article for The New Republic.
He even named a suspect: Greta Thunberg.
Classic fascist move, pin your crimes on the opposition.2
(The interview went viral when Thiel struggled to answer a question about whether he wants the human race to endure.)
I guess the answer is no. Same answer Satan3 would give.
his Antichrist speeches reveal his deep belief that religion is a weapon for political warfare—and he’s right.
[…]
Duran quotes Robert Fuller’s 1995 book Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession:
“Because [Americans] tend to view their nation as uniquely blessed by God, they have been especially prone to demonize their enemies.”
[…]
Unhumans, a 2024 book praised by JD Vance, equated progressives with bloodthirsty “unhuman” creatures. This turns politics into a zero-sum holy war.4
“Once we label our adversaries in these cosmic terms—all good versus all evil—now there’s going to be no compromise,” said Fuller.
Thiel understands this. He frames his interest in the Antichrist as part of his own “political theology,” a term he borrows from Carl Schmitt, a Nazi philosopher who defined the practice of politics as a struggle against an existential enemy, arguing that politics is just religion in disguise. Thiel also draws on René Girard, a Catholic thinker (and one of Thiel’s Stanford professors) who warned that human societies tend to spiral toward violence in a hunt for scapegoats.
“There’s always a question of whether politics is like a market … or is it something like a scapegoating machine, where the scapegoating machine only works if you don’t look into the sausage factory?” Thiel said, during a 2024 talk at Stanford. He explained the mechanism: “If, say, we’re having a lot of conflicts in our village and we have to find some random elderly woman and accuse her of witchcraft so that we’ll achieve some psychosocial unity as a village … this sort of thing doesn’t really work if you’re self-aware.”
[…]
[Thiel’s] rhetoric also sketches a playbook for holy war, scapegoating, crisis, and power—since Schmitt famously argued that power consolidates during existential crises, when constitutions can be suspended.
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Thiel does not hesitate to name potential Antichrists, including Greta Thunberg, communism, and even tech regulation. This reveals a telling urge to wield scripture as political weaponry.
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Thiel’s Antichrist checklist—a paranoid obsession with apocalypse, control, and surveillance—describes Thiel himself.
Thiel co-founded Palantir, a software company literally named after an all-seeing orb controlled by an evil wizard in The Lord of the Rings. Palantir is partnering with the Trump administration to supercharge government surveillance at a moment when the president openly embraces authoritarianism. The irony is so striking it almost seems like a confession. As comedian Tim Dillon quipped5 on Joe Rogan’s podcast recently: “It’s so strange. … You build domestic surveillance technology to surveil our friends and neighbors—and then your other pet passion is the Antichrist.”
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But we must avoid falling into the Antichrist name-calling trap. Instead of asking, “Who is the Antichrist?” we must ask, “Why is a tech billionaire trying to convince us we’re on the brink of apocalypse?”
These rehashed Satanic panic tactics must be exposed for what they are: a cynical ploy to further inflame political divisions.
[…]
If tech billionaires seek to spread Christianity, they should stop hunting Antichrists and reflect on the words of Jesus Christ, who urged his followers to practice empathy and forgiveness and to care for people rather than exploit and surveil them. Instead of worrying about Armageddon, Thiel should heed the Gospels, which warn that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Now there’s scripture worth dwelling on—and it’s a problem that no AI, no surveillance, no power, no money can fix.