Thiel's Antichrist Lecture Tour Arrives in Nashville

Peter Thiel will begin a new round of "Antichrist" lectures in Nashville, Tennessee, starting September 28, held on four consecutive Mondays. This is the third stop following his lectures in San Francisco in Fall 2025 and Rome in March 2026.

The lectures are co-hosted by local media The Pamphleteer and the nonprofit Meriwether Academy, which focuses on boys' education. The four sessions are scheduled for September 28, October 5, 12, and 19, with doors opening at 5 PM and lectures starting at 6 PM, followed by a Q&A session. The specific location will be disclosed to invited attendees the day before the event. Attendees must present valid identification matching their registration information and undergo bag checks and security scans. The use of electronic devices is strictly prohibited, and the "off the record" rule will be enforced.

The previous round of lectures in San Francisco was organized by ACTS 17 Collective and was also closed to the public. However, after the first session, tech worker Kshitij Kulkarni published detailed notes on his personal website, leading the organizers to cancel his tickets for the remaining three sessions without a refund, citing a "violation of off the record rules." This incident attracted media coverage from outlets like The Washington Post, and the content of the lectures was subsequently leaked.

Leaked content revealed that the core argument of the first lecture, titled "Knowledge shall be increased," is that the Antichrist of the 21st century will not seize power through war but will instead amplify "apocalyptic risks" such as nuclear war, AI out of control, and climate disasters, demanding humanity surrender more power in the name of "peace and security." Thiel stated, "The Antichrist of the 21st century is a Luddite who wants to stop all science, like Greta or Eliezer," directly associating figures like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Greta Thunberg, who have long warned about AI and climate risks, with the "Antichrist army."

In subsequent sessions, Thiel discusses globalization and the "one-world state" using the Book of Daniel, arguing that multinational institutions like the UN and the International Criminal Court risk sliding in this direction. He also posits that the Antichrist must be young and able to mobilize funds quickly to unify the world within their lifetime, specifically analyzing why the age of 33—at which both Jesus and Alexander the Great died—recurs among historical and religious figures. He even claims that the U.S. Constitution's requirement for the president to be at least 35 years old is a "design against the Antichrist" and jokes that under contemporary gerontocracy, 66 is the new 33, also mentioning that aspiring for the Nobel Peace Prize is a characteristic of the Antichrist's personality.

The lecture leak incident itself constitutes a game of attention capital: Kulkarni's tickets were canceled without a refund, which instead expanded the reach of the content from dozens of invited attendees to national media audiences like The Washington Post and The Guardian, objectively amplifying the influence of Thiel's theories. When the lectures moved to Rome in March this year, several Catholic institutions rumored to be associated with the event quickly distanced themselves, and Pope Leo XIV subsequently publicly called for caution regarding AI, urging that technology serve the "common good." One side gains topic heat and ideological mobilization, while the other must bear the public relations costs of separation.

Father Paolo Benanti, who has long provided AI ethics advice to two popes, publicly referred to Thiel as a "political theologian deeply embedded in the Silicon Valley ecosystem," claiming his theories represent a "radicalization" of Western values that emphasize individuality, technological progress, and competition. Meanwhile, Palantir, co-founded and deeply involved with by Thiel, has secured contracts for the ICE "ImmigrationOS" system since 2025, ranging from $30 million to about $60 million, used for tracking immigrant movements and assisting in large-scale deportation enforcement.

Source: Public Information