Shortly after American-born Robert Prevost was elected Pope, J.D. Vance and his wife stopped in to visit with the new pontiff.

In addition to a Chicago Bears shirt, Vance brought the American Pope two books by St. Augustine. This gift represented a bond between the two men: Vance chose St. Augustine as his patron saint when he converted to Catholicism, and the Pope was previously head of the worldwide Augustinian order.

It's an open question whether Vance ever read either of the books, since Augustine spends a good amount of time lecturing against pride, encouraging humility, and preaching compassion for immigrants. But even assuming Vance still somehow clings to a highly selective edit of the saint ("An unjust law is no law at all," means Vance can do anything he wants, right?), it looks like he's going to have to denounce the guy in the big hat.

Because Vance's vampire boss says the Pope may be the Antichrist.

Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel is probably best known for three things: Company names stolen from The Lord of the Rings, trying to drain the blood of young people so he can live forever, and foisting J.D. Vance on America. But there's another side to Thiel.

He's not just a technofascist seeking to build an AI-fueled authoritarian surveillance state. He's also an absolutely bonkers pseudo-religious nutcase who views everyone who stands in his way as an agent of ... Satan. And that includes the Pope.Thiel has hosted a series of lectures for a very select audience in which he's warned that the Antichrist—harbinger of the apocalypse—is in the world today, making trouble for all the good little AI billionaires. Tickets for these events generally start at $200, so it's safe to say that most of those attending are already fairly well off. (Or they're looking for someone to fund their Senate campaign.)

In those lectures, Thiel puts his finger on some very suspect people. People like Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, other environmental activists, AI safety advocate Eliezer Yudkowsky, anyone else who suggests regulating AIs before they destroy humanity, and people who are worried about nuclear war.

Yes, according to Thiel, trying to prevent nuclear armageddon means you are also a potential Antichrist.

Thiel's view of the Antichrist “is that of an evil king or tyrant or anti-messiah who appears in the end times”. It's worth pointing out that, no matter how many times this idea may have appeared in conservative rhetoric or sweaty tent revivals, this is a profoundly unbiblical concept.

Several times in the Greek versions of the gospels, there are mentions of someone being "antikhristos," which is exactly what it sounds like: opposed to Jesus and his teaching. Another term, "pseudokhristos," is used to describe people who spread statements falsely attributed to Jesus. In both cases, these terms are applied, not to a particular individual, but to anyone seen as interfering with the message of Christ.

The idea that the Antichrist is an evil potentate who will usher in the end of the world was created after everyone involved with the Gospels was long dead. It's the vision of a 10th-century French monk, Adso of Montier-en-Der, who compiled centuries of speculation to turn an adjective into a title. In the process, he created an antagonist who has been beloved of poor biblical scholars ever since.While many people quickly adopted the concept, most of Adso's biography of the Antichrist has been conveniently discarded. He was supposed to be Jewish, born in Babylon, and to rule the world from a throne in Jerusalem. But all that stuff gets in the way of lots of fun speculation and flinging an Antichrist label onto anyone you hate.

The Antichrist is also supposed to be empowered to perform all sorts of miracles and be capable of resurrecting the dead. So if a 22-year-old Swedish woman best known for shouting environmental concerns into a microphone is secretly the Antichrist, she's been seriously holding back.

Thiel's Antichrist obsession goes back to at least the 1990s and borrows themes from French-American philosopher René Girard to posit that the left is intrinsically anti-Christian and the natural home for the Antichrist. There's already plenty to object to in how Girard's "mimetic" philosophy has been interpreted and applied. But he has enough hold on conservative Catholics that Thiel, who is not a Catholic (because Pope Francis was also too woke for his taste), has been invited to do his anyone-who-opposes-me-is-Satan dance at multiple conservative Catholic venues, including The Catholic University of America.

Somewhere in his decades of studying a figure that never existed, Thiel's views took a decidedly peculiar twist. He can't seem to distinguish between technology and God. As The Washington Post reported, Thiel's lectures have only grown more "intense" over recent months.

... recordings offer new detail about how the billionaire seems to place those who would critique or regulate tech developers into a religious good-vs.-evil worldview, where the future of all creation depends on giving innovators free rein.

As Wired reported in September, Thiel also has some very odd notions of what's good and what's evil. He doesn't just draw his thinking from Girard. He also frequently quotes Nazi attorney Carl Schmitt.

You know you live in strange times when one of the most influential billionaires in the world—an investor who lit the financial fuses on both Facebook and the AI revolution, who cofounded PayPal and Palantir and launched the career of an American vice president—starts dedicating his public appearances primarily to a set of ideas about Armageddon borrowed heavily from a Nazi jurist. (As in: the guy who rapidly published the most prominent defense of Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives.)

That Nazi is a big part of Thiel’s philosophy. According to Thiel, anyone who raises doubts about the benefits of new technologies is evil. And anyone who tries to generate unity is suspect. That makes a climate campaigner like Thunberg a potential Antichrist and every international climate agreement the work of the devil. Ditto for those cautioning against AI advancement and even those who have worked to oppose nuclear weapons.

But defending Nazi attacks on Jews? For Thiel, that sounds like someone with a lot of good ideas. Right on target for a billionaire who has also declared that democracy and freedom are "not compatible.”

So maybe it's not so strange that the vampire billionaire of the apocalypse has found a new potential Antichrist hiding under a big pointy white hat. Thiel has reportedly warned J.D. Vance about getting too close to "the woke American Pope" and fumed that Leo may actually be ... the A-word.

This warning appears to have come after Pope Leo cautioned AI developers "to ensure that emerging technologies remain rooted in respect for human dignity and the common good." The Pope also warned students against using AI to do their homework.

“AI can process information quickly, but it cannot replace human intelligence,” he said. “And don’t ask it to do your homework for you. It cannot offer real wisdom. It misses a very important human element.”

Them're definitely fighting words for Thiel. And he's taking the fight right to the man he installed as America's second-in-command in a way that hasn't gone unnoticed by Catholics who don't source their opinions from Nazi Germany.

Let that sink in: the main backer of the likely GOP nominee for president is accusing the Bishop of Rome of being an agent of the end times — and telling Vice President Vance to disregard the pope’s moral guidance.

For most of the billionaires hurtling the world toward AI destruction, fame and money are sufficient cause to light humanity's last bonfire of the vanities. For Thiel, this is a religious fight. Will we have the evil that comes with peace and environmental reform, or will we enjoy God's bounty of unregulated pollution and unchecked AI?

Either way, Thiel plans to be here to see how it turns out. If he can keep filling his veins with fresh, young blood.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos