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6/26/25

“...Some other real questions the New York Times could have asked Thiel:

Curtis Yarvin, the pro-monarchy extremist who wants to end American democracy, has been getting a lot of attention. You have supported him for decades, and now his ideas are being adopted by the Trump administration. DOGE, for example, was directly inspired by Yarvin’s RAGE (Retire All Government Employees). How do you explain your current relationship to Yarvin, and do you consider DOGE a success? Do you agree with Yarvin that we need a system besides democracy, and what would that be?

JD Vance largely owes his career to you. At every step of the way, you have been there for him with jobs, investment and support. What is your relationship like now that he is in the White House? Do you think he will become president, and what advice would you give to President Vance?

You have said the Antichrist will be someone who speaks about Armageddon nonstop in order to seize totalitarian power. Peter, you talk about Armageddon, apocalypse and the Antichrist with an alarming frequency. Your surveillance company, Palantir, is developing a trove of data on American citizens that resembles the totalitarian Big Brother from Orwell’s 1984. By your own definition, aren’t you a good candidate for Antichrist?

You’ve spent years warning that liberal democracy is collapsing and that Silicon Valley is spiritually bankrupt. Yet you’ve made billions from both. Is your critique sincere, or is it just a branding strategy to consolidate wealth and power while appearing “contrarian” or anti-establishment?

You have invested in Seasteading and Pronomos Capital, which seek to create new corporate-governed cities to compete with existing democratic nations. Trump’s so-called Freedom Cities clearly match this idea, which reflects Yarvin’s idea for “Patchwork” nations and Balaji Srinivasan’s idea for so-called Network States. Why is this idea important to you, and how far do you think it will get under Trump?

You have long warned against the supposed dangers of multiculturalism and democracy. Now, decades later, you’re funding candidates and thinkers who openly challenge those same ideals. But the United States is a multicultural democracy. What’s your endgame, and does the USA still exist in that future?
You often speak in religious and apocalyptic terms, but you fund people and movements that thrive on chaos, disinformation, and authoritarianism. Are you trying to save the West, or are you accelerating its collapse in hopes of rebuilding something more to your liking?

The Sovereign Individual is one of your favorite books. You wrote the introduction to the 2020 reissue of the book — a very apocalyptic work that predicted the rise of crypto and the fall of nation-states. Why is that book so important to you? And do you think its prophecies are largely on track?
You seem unusually terrified of death. Are you going to die someday, or do you have other plans?

I could keep going, but I’ll stop here. Now, this would have made for a totally fair, fact-based, and highly interesting interview.

But Douthat doesn’t ask any questions about the extreme Silicon Valley ideologies which now hold sway in American politics. Instead, we get a bland repeat of the same bizarre ideas Thiel promotes in all of his interviews. The word “democracy” doesn’t appear once in the transcript.

Peter Thiel, recycled and sanitized.

https://www.thenerdreich.com/is-peter-thiel-the-antichrist-nyt-didnt-think-to-ask/