Also media.
Welcome Behind the Bastards back to podcast people bad about tell all them you. I'm Robert Evans and yeah with me again for part two of our episode on what Peter Teale thinks about the anti christ. I'm just I'm sorry, that's that's what we're talking about, right.
I love it. We're getting right to the heart of the matter, you know, because people are like, do you want to talk about the economy, And I'm like, no, no.
No, I don't. I don't want to talk about the economy. I'm tired of talking about the economy.
Tell me about what these idiots think, tell me what they believe.
Absolutely, Sarah Marshall, you got anything you want to plug here at the start before we dive back into it.
Yeah, I have a new podcast about the Satanic panic and the wackado horrible things that the fear of a Satan who never showed up to the party caused self described good and law abiding people to bring about. And it's a sad show. It's a fun show. It's a show about history, it's a show about today. It's called
The Devil. You know. It's all right now with CBC Podcasts, And of course I also host a show called You're Wrong About and you can listen to that too, and it's uh, yeah, you know, we have fun while trying to get to the bottom of things, much like you do.
Right right, We're talking today about Peter Teal being wrong about something important, and we're also talking about the devil he knows, or at least who he thinks the devil might be. Yes, his fantasy devil. Yeah, perhaps his fantasy devil. I guarantee you're not going to see where this is building to.
My question, is Sarah, who is your fantasy devil? Oh?
Yeah, there you go.
Peter Cook and Bedazzled of course.
Oh you know I Sarah, you could not have said anything that would have gotten me more on your side than that. I love the original Bedazzled he is He's the best Satan easily by a mile.
Tell me why you think that is. And people haven't seen this movie enough. This is a lie. It's Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
I respect, both from a theological standpoint and from just an entertainment standpoint. The idea of a devil who is folks whose primary focus is not on acts of grand evil but on acts of like petty annoyance, like that scene where he's just like casually scratching records and then putting them in the mail. It's so funny to me.
And there's a scene where he's ripping the last pages out of novels.
Yes, yes, and there's that. There's that, I mean my favorite part. I guess spoilers for the film Bedazzled, which is half a century old. But there's a great scene.
There's a great scene where the guy whose soul he's the devil is trying to win and he are talking and the guy the human asked him like, why did you rebel against God in the place it seems like he had a pretty sweet deal and the devil the devil like gets up on top of I think it's a mailbox or something, and he's like, okay, I'm gonna like walk you through what was like you know back then,
I'm God. Start praising me. And the guy's like goes around like, I praise you, keep going, keep praising, and be keep praising and be keep And he goes on like this for a while, and eventually the guy's like, hey, can we take a break and maybe I get up there for a minute, and the Devil's like, that's exactly what I thought.
Yeah, exactly right. And it plays on the feeling that a lot of us have in Sunday School or equivalent that like, you know that the character of God in the Bible is insufferable, you know, And I know if that plays into our topic today, but I have always noticed it, and especially and I also really love the cartman Land episode of South Park where Kyle's faith is challenged and so his parents tell him the story of Job and he's like, why would God do that? Too?
And it's like, why would God do that? Because like saying, you expect to like try and be a trickster, but the fact that God is like, hey, yeah, I should ruin this guy's life and see if he still phrases me. That's a good use of my time. You're like, hmmah. The day the Devil comes out looking comparatively good in that story because it's less of a betrayal from him. He's just an asshole.
Yeah yeah, anyway, watch watch the original Bedazzled Wadled the one, Mabey, Yeah.
You can't watch that one. It's cute, it's fun. You want, but yeah, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, one of the great comedy duos. And I do feel like the idea of just that the trickster devil is so beautifully embodied there, and that it's interesting to me that the devil is kind of the trickster character, and we took the trickster, who's necessary in most cosmologies and made him evil is very different. Yeah, a very different role to play.
Yeah, So I don't know, folks watch The Dazzled. It's more biblically accurate than Peter Teal's lecture on the Antichrist. I'll say that.
Yeah, that feels so true.
So I had planned, Sarah for us to get through the first one of Peter's, like the notes on his first lecture, faster than we did. Because we didn't get through that even.
We might have to do like a day long staged event doing that, like when Dandie Kauffman read The Great Gatsby.
Yeah, I'm ready, yeah, Or I could just get this the Embarcadero to host me while I talk for four days about Peter Teal's lectures on the Antichrist and why they're very silly. But we're going to have to cut through the remainder of that first lecture before we get into who he thinks might be the Antichrist.
And so when we left it, I do feel like you've given me a pretty clear sense of how unhinged this thank you good theology is.
Yeah, I'm glad we at least landed on that. So when we last left off with Peter, he was complaining that science promised to make us immortal and it failed to deliver, which it didn't, but nonetheless, next Peter says that after the development of the atom bomb quote, technology itself became apocalyptic, and in nineteen forty five, the National Committee on Atomic Information published One World or None, which is generally agreed to have been like the first atomic
scare movie, Like this is the first like what if a nuclear war movie? Right, And the gist of this is that nukes were really dangerous and the only rational solution to a world in which everyone has nukes is a strong United Nations that can put an end to war and ensure nuclear weapons are never used. In moss right, yep, I would say I think most people would say, like, it's pretty reasonable reaction to nukes.
Kind of the theme of a lot of Twilight Zone episodes as well, pretty reasonably right. Yeah, really middle of the road concept.
It's also yeah, also this is also like a reaction to World War Two, where it's like we should probably have some sort of like international law, so like if a country's doing war crimes, there's some sort of mechanism in the.
United States from doing the things that we will choose to do again.
Yeah, I mean, we don't really do this the ICs. I mean we briefly Serbia, we punish briefly. But that's kind of it, you know, in terms of international law. I'm cutting things down a little bit, but we never This is not a thing that ever really happens, but it is a thing. Peter Teel is in a lot always a very old fashioned kind of paranoid. The UN is the devil, the anti Christ, wants the UN to take over the world kind of.
Guys's the Sterling Hayden and Doctor Strangelove kind of a role that's so crucial in American politics.
And Doctor strange Love is going to come up in a little bit here. You're gonna hear what Peter thinks about that movie. But it's not it is. He tries to dress it up because he knows that, like, well, cranks to the guys who think that any reasonable person can be like, well, the un never came even any we're close to being a one world government, Like, at no point did it have even a fraction of that much power, obviously.
And if it did, then you know they would have solved more problems.
You would think maybe things would be better. Peter is that kind of a crank, but he doesn't want you to think about that. So we have to dress this up in like theological terms, and shit, he.
Can't just be the guy down at the feed store, because really he's like you know, Dale from King of the Hill. But he has to make it seem important.
Right, And so he says that you know, this movie One World or None was the birth of when we started seeing technology itself as like apocalyptic, right, And this is bad because this is Peter is blaming basically the fact that we don't make scientific advancements anymore on this train of thinking that starts, you know, with the nuclear paranoia of this idea that like, well, technology is bad and that's why we're not progressing technologically, of course, And
I feel like I've explained enough why this is all nonsense.
Yeah. Also from a film history perspective, that's even wrong, because like, what do you call Metropolis Baby Frankenstein.
Yeah, sure, I mean the movie and the book. But yeah, there's all There's so much we could critique about this, but I need to read you this next line. Coincidentally, this is also when the Catholic Church stopped giving apocalyptic sermons? Did it? Is that true? I don't know what the fuck you're talking about because I went to I like, my dad was Catholic. I didn't only go to Catholic Church, but I went to Catholic Church a good amount as a little kid, and I remember the priest talking about
the end times and the Second Coming. It wasn't the only thing. That's certainly not as much of a focus in Catholicism. It is as it is in a lot of like Evangelical Christian Christian sects, but it's not not talked about.
Start talking about it constantly, and therefore they're not doing it at all.
Yeah, like I guess by citation here is like I went to church as a kid. What the fuck are you basing this on on, Peter, Like that's just not true. And it's also like, well, Catholicism's just one chunk of Christianity, and a lot of Christian faiths and priests and pastors over the last seventy five eighty years have talked about
the apocalypse in different ways. It's a common subject. I don't know, this whole pillar of his belief system, which is that people don't really talk about the Antichrist or the apocalypse anymore outside of technology causing it is like, No.
It's like in the late twentieth century people talked about it, you know, an unbelievable amount and like pretty consistently, and you know, it's right. It just feels like he's arguing whatever he feels like he needs to in order to justify his the point he wants to make thing by thing.
Yeah, His issue is that like all of the people who are pushing these secular apocalyptic fears about like fertility collapsing or bioweapons or AI are kind of playing into the real Antichrist, because the Antichrist wants to stop technological progress, right, That's that's the argument he's making.
Yes, fascinating, the Antichrist is Amish.
Yeah, or a Luddite right now, Peter, the other thing I mean and that's really what he believes. He does believe the Antichrist is a ludite, and he also misunderstands ledites. Whatever. He also, he goes on he's angry that he doesn't like secular apocalyptic fears because and he complains, he lists that like, oh, regular people when they talk about the apocalypse, they're always worried about like nukes or biological weapons or AI or you know, the children of men, fertility collapse.
And that's really incomplete. Quote. We should add the risk of the biblical Antichrist manifesting is a one world government. Here the secular maps neatly onto the theological, the one world state of the Antichrist on the other hand, and
the no world of armageddon. And like, first off, that's not really a risk because like they're no one to think, no reasonable person thinks one world government is anywhere close to a reality, Like it's just not a realistic fear, Like even if that was a bad thing, it's not a realistic fear looking at the world today, and the whole this idea that like, oh, the secular maps onto
the theological. You've got the one world state of the Antichrist, and then the no world of the of Armageddon, and like those things are only map neatly if you're an idiot. One world or None is arguing in favor of a strong you win and a strong international criminal court to stop world leaders from doing crimes against humanity. That's not a one world state. Like the movie that he argues for is not advocating a one world state, and neither are most people who want a stronger You Win or ICC.
Basically zero percent of people including me, who support a stronger ICC, want to one world state. You just want there to be punishments for genocide, right, right.
And in this case, it feels like people, including Peter tail in this case, are betting themselves in a pretzels to justify their desire to get to kill whoever they want and call it morally good.
Yeah, And I think with Peter, because I don't think Peter's specifically all that motivated to kill specific groups of people. But I think Peter ses, if there's an international criminal court, if there's a higher international law of any kind, then that means I'm bound by laws, right, And that's wrong. That's fundamentally wrong for anyone to be able to punish me. Peter teel or hold me accountable for any of my actions whatsoever. That's the worst thing that can happen.
Because I'm baby, but I'm also the most powerful person in the world, or I should be.
And I should be because of how smart I am.
But also, who will stop me? Someone? Please stop me? R I know no one stopped me.
Yeah, fucking Peter. So this next paragraph is I've said this several times. This is where things get really crazy. But this is where things get really crazy.
This is where things get really crazy. It's been really crazy.
It's been pretty crazy, but it's about to be crazier. We should at least suspect that the apocalypse in our newspaper headlines is the apocalypse of the Bible. This is not mysticism but simple extrapolation of human nature. Wisdom has not increased, even if information has. The one point on which the atheist and fundamentalist degree is that violence comes from God. The Christian, however, knows it comes from Man. I know what the fut are Wait, Peter, what what
are we saying? I think? Let me tell you what I think he's arguing here. I think he's saying that atheists, obviously fundamentalists believe that everything comes from God, so that includes all violence. Atheists blame all violence on religion, right.
If that makes sense when you put it that way, I.
Was an angry atheist. I'm not an angry atheist anymore. I'm still more or less an atheist. I've never met an atheist who thinks all violence is caused by religion, right, I've never met a one. That's a crazy thing to believe.
There's certainly capitalism looking at you, kid, and a lot of other stuff.
Yeah, some dude like murdering his wife because he doesn't want to pay alimony. It's not God. That kind of stuff happens. Like a fucking a rapist committed rape. Isn't like God didn't make him do that, right, Like, obviously there's rapists to do it through the worry.
Just sort of male entitlement and just you know, yeah, there's anyway. But it's like, this is the kind of writing where it's like you have to kind of simplify everything into an either or. It feels like right again is very eighth grade.
And it's it is very like it's like how a twelve year old debate bro Christian kid talks about a like when I was a twelve year old right wing debate bro. This is how I thought about atheism. Right, But it's like a straw man that an adult wouldn't have. It's such an absurd idea. But both the atheist and the fundamentalists believe all violence comes from God.
Counterpoint, No, it's like you've never talked to an atheist.
I mean, no one thinks that. I don't even think. I guess like fundamentalists would argue that everything comes from God or whatever. So but yeah, but like even then, I think most very few of them would phrase it that way, even of the religious fundamentalists that I know. That's just a weird way to phrase anything. Like you're well in any.
Argument based on there being like a few key groups of people who all think the same thing as each other.
They all think never exactly. And it's this, weirdly enough, this sentence of all of the reading I've done on Peter Teel, and I have read extensively. I've read a lot of most of the interviews he's done over the years. I've read a lot of his own writing. This is the thing that scares me most. This scares me more than any of his anti democratic polemics where he's talking
about the need for a dictatorship. Because the fact that he would think this and say this is evidence that there is a disconnect in his mind between what he thinks people believe and actual humanity, and that disconnect is so it's very upsetting to me, Like, that's scary how disconnected he is from reality. I would say I am upset by this. Yeah. Now, from here, Peter argues that if we're heading for war or armageddon, then it's not on.
If it's reasonable to think that there might be an apocalyptic war, right, then it's not unreasonable to worry that an antichrist might rise to power, promising to end wars and bring stability back. Right. If it's reasonable to say we might have a war that ends humanity, it's not. It's got to be reasonable also to say that the antichrist might promise rise to power, promising to stop that war. Right.
Both of those are logical things, and let's let's let's give him that that's a nonsense point in and of itself, but let's pretend that makes sense.
Sure whatever, Peter somehow.
Doesn't draw a connection from that to like, well, an antichrist might rise to power promising to stop World War three, to the fact that Donald Trump, who he's supported, got elected promising to stop like literally saying, I will avoid world War three if you vote for me, we'll stop having a We won't have War War three, but Kamala will lead us there or Biden will lead us there. Like that literally is directly what Trump said. I'm not
editorializing in any way. Oh, I know you know this, Peter, right, Like anyway, Peter just doesn't deal with this, right, Who's to say this thing that actually happened obviously isn't relevant.
Let's talk about how scary it would be if it happened in an imaginary way, so you can ignore the real way that it do just happen. Yeah, that'd be fun.
The Bible literally says that many Christians, many believers, will be tricked by the Antichrist when he rises to power promising to fix a lot of this shit. And Donald I, Peter literally believe the Antichrist will rise to power promising to stop World War three. Donald Trump rose to power promising to stop World War three. Obviously, none of this
is worth talking about, completely irrelevant. Instead, Peter now talks about two different like eighty year old novels about the Antichrist from like the early twentieth century, both of which
and he brings these he summarizes them. I don't think we even need to talk about the novels because what he's what he's pointing out is that both of these novels about the Antichrist and most antichrist narratives all have a plot hole, which is that they don't explain how the Antichrist will actually seize power quot in late which is like a weird thing to care of anyway, whatever, In late modernity, we finally have the answer to how
the Antichrist wi rise to power. By talking constantly of armageddon or in secular terms of existential risk, he the Antichrist rides the wave of apocalyptic anxiety. Oppenheimer limited, we need new knowledge like we need a hole in the head. Nick Bostrom has proposed preventative policing and global compute governance
and his Vulnerable World hypothesis. Elisar Jedkowski's latest book is If Anyone builds It, Everyone Dies, And Peter is saying all three of these guys are potential Antichrists or servants
of the Antichrist, right, because they're redding. As he gives this lecture series that's entirely about his apocalyptic beliefs, he's saying, these guys who are talking about armageddon are all clearly agents of the Antichrist, if not the Antichrist themselves, because no one else would talk about the Antichrist and or the apocalypse so.
Much except as he talks about the apocalypse.
Except it's fine with him.
The whole thing is built on paradox is, because it's like, we have to avoid a one world government by giving all of our power to a dictator who will protect us from basically another dictator question Mark, You know.
Yeah, And it's the funniest thing to me. We'll get to his other Antichrist, the fact that he's like Alizer yed Kowski, maybe an Antichrist right, certainly an agent of the Antichrist. Made we've made fun of him on this show a lot, right, Like he's a he's an AI
risk dude, and obviously I don't like AI. I don't, but but not like yed Kowski is like a rationalist who believes in He's like a member of a cult, kind of the leader of a cult based on these like deranged ideas of rationality, and he thinks AI is dangerous because AI will become a god that and and it will any AI god we create will inevitably want to kill us.
All right, I mean it's sanxious enough in terms of taking all our jobs. You know, we can get start with you that. Yeah.
No, he's not one of the it'll take our jobs thing. He doesn't care about artists making a living. Yedkowski cares about like he believes that the Harlan Ellison short story, I have no mouth that I must, but I must scream. That's what he literally thinks AI will do.
Right, But before that, it'll take our jobs.
It'll take our jobs exactly. And it's fun because like Peter Teel funded yed Kowski in his early career, his like rationalism and stuff, Like Peter gave this guy money and supported the growth of like the rationalist subculture in the Bay Area.
And then he was like, I know not that.
No, yeah, he's literally saying. He says in this lecture that he thinks he had Kowski is dranged now because he had Kowski's anti AI.
So he has a former mentee who then takes his ideas in a direction he doesn't like, and he's like that guy, uh huh could be the Antichrist. I mean, if nothing else, that doesn't this story make you feel better about your own beefs? You know?
Yeah, I do kind of think Garrison might be the Antichrist, you know, my my protegee, but yeah, that's.
Separate once protege could always be the Antichrist.
I mean, Sophie, it's certainly not impossible.
Garrison is a perfect angel.
Sophie is the one you least suspect, you know, when you think about it.
So, yeah, it could be Sophie. It could be Sophie. I've I've accepted that a while ago.
I think it's Paul Pierce.
Anyway, you think it's Paul Pierce? Okay, sure, why not? So this is kind of where I've decided to get into the most publicized fee of Peter's Antichrist lectures, which is his predictions as to what modern fit people might be the Antichrist in disguise. So obviously Yudkowski, you know, is at least in consideration.
Guy I've never heard of.
Obviously, right, this guy must be it. And Peter not only hates Yudkowski, he feels the need to analyze him as a possible Antichrist, because Yudkowski's main claim to fame now is he's trying to like warn people about AI and stop AI development, and AI is the only thing that could give Peter a return on his financial investment commensurate to what he thinks he deserves. So obviously Yudkowski's evil for trying to stop this stuff.
You know, we also appreciate that, Like even if you're you know, like, I don't think that the kind of person who wants to go to a four part lecture series on the Antichrist is like my kind of person. But even so, I do feel like you would assume you were in for something different than a guy being like, here are people I don't like personally and why I think they are the Antichrist, Like that's another level You're.
Like, oh, hey, what we're doing. Yeah, And it's it's because basically Peter's primary claim here is that the Antichrist is anyone warning people about the apocalypse and trying to save the world. That's if that's not the Antichrist, that's an agent of the Antichrist except for me. Except for me obviously, and Donald Trump, you know, so here's here's
a quote from his first lecture. My thesis is that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the Antichrist would have been a doctor strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of crazy, evil science. In the twenty first century, the antichrist is a luddite who wants to stop all science. It's someone like Greta or a Leezer. You cast's Greta Tunberg, he says, he's specifically, and he he'll go in later and be like, I don't think he had kowski is
He definitely thinks Greta Tunberg might be the Antichrist. He very directly is clear about that. He thinks Greta Tunberg could be the Antichrist.
What what what is it about her that so unnerves tyrants? I mean, I guess the fact that she's you know, very smart and abasemble, truth corrupt. Yeah, the truth, speaking the truth to power.
She's proved to I mean, honestly, like, I've been just shocked at how continually good her takes have been. Just because like anytime someone gets famous, that famous, that young, like you expect, okay, at some point they're going to like either buy into a conspiracy theory or get something, gets something weird, and she's just like really consistently got a great head on her shoulders. Yeah, and so that scares the hell out of them.
Yeah, right, and can't be convinced to look away, which I do feel like, you know everything you've been talking about it. I mean, we've been joking about it, but so much of it as like, what in the world is that thing? Look away? Let me do a little sleight of hand over here. It's parlor tricks.
I think fundamentally, why why he hates her and why she is hated by a lot of these guys so much is not that they're scared of the day because obviously she doesn't have any power. She's like somewhat influential, but she can't. She's not going to throw Peter Teal in prison or destroy thought. She simply does not have the power.
She's not a corporation. She's just a person with morals.
Yeah, she's just in the person with morals and basically zero real world power. But she is emblematic and embodies a fact, which is that I'm not a believer in Oh, justice will win out the bark the arc of history bends towards like I don't. I think that's a silly stance.
But inevitably, in the future, if there are people, they will realize that Peter Teal and all of his ilk during this period of time were deranged monsters who destroyed the environment and who fought viciously against any attempts to reduce the harm humanity was doing to the biosphere in order to make themselves wealthier. And they will be hated as a result.
That's just a fact, but not just based on the people, because so many people will have died as a direct result of their actions and inactions.
Yeah, Like, I think Greta represents the reality that in the future these people like won't they won't be able to after especially after they're dead, keep up the lie that they were fighting against all this disinformation from the left and pretend, you know, the climate change fake Like that lie won't hold up at a certain point.
Well, And that they're working so hard to create a mythology where like the story changes every day based on what needs to be true for them to be right, and that that kind of mythology won't perpetuate itself forever, and keep protecting them.
Yeah, exactly like there will be a future in which the bullshit that they have spent their lives propping up is not widely believed. And that doesn't mean it'll be a perfect future or even a more just future. It just means that in the future people will know what a scumbag Peter was, and that's why he is so scared and hateful of her, right, I think that's it.
Yeah, And also that he's going to die and other people and he's going to die to live and sail around.
Yep, he's going to die, probably sooner than he expects, like most people, and a lot of folks are going to be happy because it'll be good when he dies. Anyway, speaking of death, advertisements or a kind of death. That's what in French, the word for advertisement means the little death. And we're back, yes, talking about my flawless knowledge of French and talking about Peter Teel's belief that fucking credit
Tunberg is the Antichrist. So perfect, Let's talk about this from a theological standpoint, because one thing the Book of Daniel is pretty clear about visa of the Antichrist is that the Antichrist is a political leader of some sort he has described repeatedly as a prince or a king. Now I could see being like, well, obviously that's if we're going with the The Bible is true, but not
always literally. You know, these are apocryphal stories that Okay, I can could be a standard for a president or a senator, sure, but a young lady who sometimes tries to deliver food on a boat, there's no, that's not a There's no way to like describe Greta Tunberg as a king or a prince. Same with Eliza, you'd CASKI, like, they're not political leaders. And the Antigrist definitely is like again, Peter's selective embrace of literal readings of the Bible here really biting.
Him in the ass, Like it's all very little roal, unless I need it to be so figurative that it completely goes in a new direction, thank you.
I also love his fundamental like, oh, you don't know stand Doctor Strangelove like the movie at all, because the idea that like, well, in the seventeen or eighteenth century, the Antichrist would have been doctor Strangelove, right, well, no strange love, yeah, right. For one thing, like in the movie of the same name, he's not a political leader. He's the president's scientific advisor, and he's not responsible for the apocalypse, right, at least not primarily. Right now, the same.
Act delivering exposition right.
Exactly, yes, and like it is true. Peter Sellers also plays the president, right, he plays he plays by doctor Strangelove and the President that Strangelove is advising. But even if you're saying, well, that means they're the same person. That does Peter Sellers as the President being the Antichrist doesn't make sense in that movie because.
Like it's just embarrassing to misremember a movie in your big speed.
It's so bad, like you could rewatch it. You're writing a four part lecture series. Man.
Also, in the seventeenth century, the Antichrist would not have been acharacter from a nineteen sixties movie, but it would have been the Antichrist just like the you know, the Devil's Kid or whatever.
Yeah, it would have been a king or something.
Like Bible, a text people knew better than a movie that wouldn't come out for three hundred years.
I also think, again, I don't maybe he hasn't even seen the movie, because it sounds like Peter thinks doctor Strangelove causes the apocalypse in the movie Doctor Strange Love.
He's like, well, you know it's about it's about an atomic bomb, and it's called Doctor Strangelove, So probably Doctor Strangelove made the bomb. Obviously. I mean I don't have time to watch it, but I deduced it because I'm so smart.
That must be what happens. And like, no, for the record, if you haven't seen it, Doctor Strangelove is a mad scientist and a Nazi. Yeah, but he doesn't. There's a crazed US general who launches the initial nuclear strike and says American as can be right, and like the government like we try to reach out to the USSR and our bunker and are like these are where the missiles are coming in, you know, you can shoot them out of the sky, Like please, we don't don't want to
actually have a nuclear war. This is a fuck up. Yeah, And the USSR is like, oh, well, we actually built a doomsday device that will go off automatically and we can't stop it.
Right right, And the premise is like what if an American general lost his mind and there weren't adequate safeguards in place, yes, before he could cause mutually assured destruction, and it's like, oh, yeah, I guess, I mean that's certainly not a problem we're having.
Now, right exactly, certainly no more relevant now than it was back then. But it's like neither the President nor Doctor Strange Lover antichrist figures, no one really is in the movie Doctor Strange Love action now. But it's particularly weird to say Doctor Strangelove is the Antichrist because he doesn't incite the action. Like that just isn't accurate.
Have you ever seen because you know the omen has two sequels and they're not that good.
Oh god that does.
The second one has Sam Neal in it and he plays the adult Damien. He has like taken over the world and he's all charismatic and I think in politics and dating a newscaster lady. Yeah, but the movie like doesn't really know what to have him be doing because it is like what would the anti Christ believe? Like
what would his whole deal be? You know, like people are kind of like reluctant to state that, yeah, and so it's like you get to sort of align it with whatever you know, people already find threatening at that time, which you know, hence all the Obama stuff.
Right right, right exactly. So the fact that you know he's listed Greta Tunberg and Elisa Hidkowski as possible Antichrist, both of those things are insane. At least Tunberg, she is like popular, she has a lot of like followers and people who care about what she says. Alisa Yudkowski, he's got his little cult, but he's not you really, you think he's got the juice to even be on the list of potential Antichrist. You're vastly overestimating this man's charisma, rights charisma.
It's not even in the top thousand.
No, No, I am a more realistic Antichrist than fucking.
keV Bush, way ahead of him.
Honestly, yes, Jeb is much closer. So after this, in the second lecture, Peter apparently goes into more detail about his beliefs on the Antichrist. Per the Guardian quote, Teal goes on to identify the legionnaires of the Antichrist as people like at least Yudkowski, Nick Bostrom and Greta Tunberg who argued for world government to stop science. So that's at least a little more realist. He's like, well, maybe they're not the Antichrist, but they're at least his legionnaires.
Oh my god, okay man, And again I should I shouldn't have to say neither yed Kowski, nor Tunberg nor Bostrom want to stop all science. Right, specific issues exactly, they're very specific issues with specific technologies. But Peter can't stand that because again they'll get in the way of his profit, right, Like, that's really what this comes down to. It's it's very banal, but that is the truth of it.
Peter goes on to say the legionaries of the Antichrist, like Alizia Yeddkowski, Nick Bostman, Greta Tunberg, argue for world government to stop science. The Antichrist has somehow become anti science,
and no, they just don't. When The Washington Post reached out to Yeddkowski for a statement, he replied, My understanding is that authorities for multiple Christian denominations have stated that Teal's views identifying the Antichrist with proposals to regulate the AI industry are not deemed by them to be compatible with conventional Christian belief. It's one of his few statements that I'm like, yeah, that's a good response.
Yeah, I mean, that's a nice thing. If about standing next to someone who's completely off their cracker, you get to seem a little bit more normal.
Very seem much more reasonable now. I will say Greta's response was much better because her spokespeople, whoever that, whoever the Post reached out to on her team didn't comment. Which is the best response to Peter Teel declaring you the Antichrist or one of his legionaries. It's just don't there's what are you gonna say?
You really shouldn't have to issue a statement saying you're not the Antichrist whenever someone accuses you of it or else. You know, no one would ever get anything done in this country.
I guess I feel like if I was in that boat, I would be like, yes, Peter, I am the Antichrist and I'm coming for your soul, buddy, Like I talked with the devil and we have a plan for you. You don't even know how we're ensnaring it. Yeah, got you, baby, Yeah, got you now. At the same time, in his second lecture,
Peter talks about his luddite Antichrist candidates, like right. While he's doing that, he floats another name as a potential Antichrist briefly before kind of explaining why he doesn't think this guy is the Antichrist. And that name is Mark Andresen. Now, Mark Andreesen is the co founder of Andreson Horowitz. He is a fellow big tech AI venture capitalist ghoul. And actually I'd be like, yeah, Mark Andreesen not a bad
antichrist candidate. He is evil, but Peter hates him not because he is a monster trying to destroy all art and human culture and replace it with AI slop, which is literally what Mark Andreeson wants, right, that's his stated goal. Mark is the author of something called the Techno Optimist Manifesto, which argues that AI will solve all problems, including like climate change. All of our serious life threatening issues will
be solved by a super intelligent AI. Therefore, anyone who tries to slow or stop AI development is evil and needs to be destroyed, killed if necessary. Is is what you're is insinuated heavily, not directly state, but like anything you can do to stop the people who are anti AI is justified because they're trying to kill God.
You know.
That's Mark Andreeson great and.
What of really well balanced people with a lot of power in this world, is what I'm learning.
More and more sane billionaires, all of them, all of them sane. And it's funny to me that as nuts as he is about this, Peter recognizes how crazy Mark is because his issue with Mark Andresen is that his he he's putting out gobbledegook AI propaganda. M And I mean he is, because yeah, I think his issue is yed Kowski's anti AI stuff is that it will inevitably
become a god that's evil. And Andresen is just like the opposite, where he's like, it will inevitably become a god but good, right, And so I guess Peter rejects both of them. But he says this when he brings up Mark in the context of the Antichrist. It's not Andreeson. By the way, I think Andreson is not the Antichrist, because you know, the Antichrist is popular. Oh that's it's funny, shade. But I thought I'd say.
His name on the word Antichrist in the same sentence several times.
Several times. I didn't need to bring it up right. Next, he goes on to Bill Gates, who he he notes, you know, it's reasonable to put him on the list, but he thinks Gates is ultimately unlikely to be the Antichrist, even though he describes him as a Doctor jekylin Mister Hyde type character whose positive public face is just a mask. Quoth Peter, I saw the mister Hyde version about it year ago, where it was just a NonStop tourette's yelling,
swear words, almost incomprehensible what was going on. And I don't have trouble believing that Bill Gates is a dick. Yeah, I'll give you that, Peter, I'll give you that. I'll give you I don't have trouble believing he's a Jack ln Hyde. Clearly his wife left for after the Epstein stuff for a good reason.
You know.
Now, as I noted reporters with The Guardian, namely Joanna Buoyan, Derek Kerr and Nick Robbins early actually got trans like all seven hours of Peter's Antichrist lectures and listen to them, which I have not been able to do yet maybe one day, and on the subject of Bill Gates and their article, they write something very funny. Ultimately, Teal concedes Gates cannot be the Antichrist. Bringing up the topic more than once. And here's that's so funny. He really is
stuck on that. He's not a political leader, he's not broadly popular, and again, perhaps to Gates's credit, he's still stuck in the eighteenth century alongside people like Richard Dawkins who believe that science and atheism are compatible. What and that's fundamentally he believes, Well, because being anti science is what makes you the Antichrist, So that must mean that you can't be pro science and not Christian. Okay, it's
actually possible, Peter. This is disordered thinking. This is like, yeah, there's something actually wrong here.
This is like, if you weren't a billionaire, his family would be like, hey, buddy, do you want to try for you? Yeah, you want to go feed some squirrels.
Yeah, it's something to take your mind off the crazy.
Why don't we put this manifesto in the drawer.
Yeah, well, we'll come back to this tomorrow, Peter. Maybe we'll keep working on this.
Yeah. Why don't we have some hot soup?
Yeah, some soup, maybe a cup of coffee, you know, maybe some tea. Caffeine is probably bad for you right now, get off.
The sandy Christ thing for a while.
You've been screaming about Bill Gates for forty five minutes.
Yeah, but I guess like part of the great American dream of becoming a billionaire is that no one can tell you how crazy you sound.
You know, that's the whole and that. Yeah, that's part of why they're angry at the people they're angry at. Yeah, they're doing a bit more research around this area. It makes it very clear why Peter Teal hates Bill Gates so much, aside from the fact that Gates seems to annoy a lot of people in general by being.
Dick you know, Microsoft word had some you know, right and some tricky areas. Let's say.
Sure, Yeah, but it can't just be that because Teal is friends with Elon Musk. So the fact that Bill Gates is just an asshole can't explain it, right, Yeah. So, and I think I figured out what it is, which is that Bill Gates has made a big public show of wanting to give away and convince other billionaires to give away most of their fortunes before they die.
Right the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, without which I would not have probably gotten to hear Morning Edition for many years.
There you go. Yeah, my my ex wife wouldn't have had a laptop in elementary school, you know. So, I I think that's really his issue with Gates. And I think that in part because of what I found in a Washington Post article, because the Post also got access to the tapes and an article by Natasha Tiki, Elizabeth Dwashkin,
and Garrett de vinc They wrote this The investor. Teal said he recently encouraged Musk to renege on his twenty twelve commitment to the Giving Pledge movement, co founded by Gates, which asks wealthy people to commit the majority of their fortune to charitable causes. According to the recordings, and this is Teal here, two hundred billion, if you're not going to be careful, is going to left wing nonprofits that
are going to be chosen by Bill Gates. Teal said he warned Musk, according to the recording painting, the philanthropist is among the malevolent forces besetting technologists. That's his hatred of Gates. Gates wants to billionaires to give away their money to these evil left wing causes, and he convinces Musk to stop.
He funded too many modern dance troops. Therefore Antichrist. It's like viral standards for your antichrist behavior.
I gotta say, yeah, and it does. You know. Teal's positive on Musk, now, I think because Musk is useful. He also, in this lecture series has nice things to say about jd Vance, whose political career he paid to get off the ground. Per Maggie Dupree writing for Futurism, Teal quote described himself as very pro Vice President JD Vance, to whom Teal has given millions in campaign funds. He's concerned. Yeah, he did express that he's concerned the VP, whose Catholic
might give too much credence to the pope. The place that I will worry about it is to burst to the pope, said Teal per The Guardian. And so we have all these reports the fights between him and the pope. I hope there are a lot more. And that's like my issue with jd Vance is that he might be a papist.
Okay, great, well, we've gone back to puritanism in this country. We have to worry about papistry now on top of everything else. It's also like, I mean, look, I'm I don't believe in antichrist stuff. I never have. I'm not a devil believer, but you know, which is part of my tists in the Satanic panic, which it just seems like extra wild when you're not afraid of Satan yourself. I grew up afraid of a lot of the things. I was afraid of the Bermuda Triangle, but I wasn't
afraid of Satan because I just wasn't. Didn't seem relevant to my life.
It's not a real thing.
If I were to pick an anti christ today, it would obviously be Trump. Like, he's really behaving very anti Christy, and it's just so funny to have him leading a party that has become so much about you know, this kind of death cult and armageddonism. And they're like, but not you, sir, And it's like because because look at it.
Not the obvious guy. Yeah. And it's again like, even the things you name in this are clearly more relevant to Trump than credit Dunberg or whatever. I mean now outside of this frankly unhinged lecture series. Back in June, Peter gave an interview to Ross do that doubt it whatever, however you say? Last name, but the New York Times and Ross one of the worst writers alive. He used to be the senior editor of the Atlantic, and I think he might be the most up his own ass
conservative writer in the country. He was Bill Crystal's replacement and a massive downgrade from Bill Crystal. Even he's both entirely uncritical of big tech and pro everyone should be religious. And so he and Peter Teel are peas in a pod and during that interview, Ross asks what Peter thinks about the Techno Optimist Manifesto that Marc Andreesen self published in twenty twenty three, And again, that's basically saying we have to accelerate at all costs the growth of AI
because it will solve all of our problems. So slowing things down AI down is the same as committing mass murder.
Yeah, and think of us studio ghibli esque portraits of your husband that will never be.
Drawn exactly exactly. It's a fate worse than death for all of us. And the fact that, like the document is generally considered to be a foundational text for AVE accelerationism, you know, that's kind of the philosophical name for what Andresen is preaching. And that's close to what Peter tele advocates because he's literally arguing that Gretit Tunberg might be the Antichrist, or is at least furthering the Antichrist's agenda because she's skeptical about AI and fossil fuels and shit.
And I'm the Antichrist too. Congratulations to me.
Like Teal definitely thinks the same way. But I think he's incapable. I think why he has to reject andresen is that he can't speak positively about appear with the same ideas if they put those ideas down first. And so he says this about the essay. It represents a kind of corporate utopianism. In the nineteen nineties, there was a broad cultural optimism that technology would solve everything, but by twenty twenty five, that optimism is shrunk. Today's visions
are narrower, less inclusive, and less confident. The grand utopian projects have given away to incremental gains, overshadowed by fears of collapse. Oh and that's accurate, But like the problem again, he's not capable of like looking what he's literally saying. The visions are narrower, the optimism has shrunk. That doesn't mean that like we're not making technological progress, but it does mean that, like there's a problem in how people are mess he's a visualizing progress, right.
Yes, yeah, And it's like perhaps people are more pessimistic and perhaps even more reasonable because of how horrible everything's been for the last thirty years.
Exactly.
I realized that in the nineties it was a utopian time when Starbucks had like big upholstered chairs in them and he could sit there for a long time and he could buy from Nora Jones CDs. But that's over man.
Yeah, right, And that the article is just a great example. There's so much ross. Just lets Peter say nonsense without ever questioning him. It's like it's one of the worst movies I've ever read.
It's like he's accidentally a great interviewer by being a terrible interviewer because I guess lets him say stupid stuff.
Yeah, you do get more out. There's no like Peter drops the line again. He makes the claim like after nineteen forty five, churches stopped preaching end Times sermons, and like question Peter, no, they didn't.
Really, Where did all those left behind movies come from?
The Left behind books massively popular? Peter, like Ann had nothing to do with technology. By the way, that's not how the anti I mean surveillance tech, I guess, but the Antichrist doesn't rise to power on the back of fears about fucking AI or whatever. Anyway, I don't know how Peter can think this true. I don't know how Ross can't question any of this other than Ross is just like the fucking boot lickorist boot liquor whoever looked at goddamn.
Boot like I hear you got some good blood for me later on.
Right.
One of the weirdest things to me here is that like Ross is theoretically a Christian, he's a big C. S. Lewis fan, and Peter is theoretically a Christian. But then in this interview, Peter describes the choice presented by the Bible in the Book of Revelations as anti Christ or Armageddon, and that this is unacceptable and thus quote, we must find a third path, right, it's me, which is like, no, it doesn't. That's not like for one thing, the Bible
doesn't present a choice. It just says there's an anti Christ, and that leads to the second coming in an armageddon, and.
Everything's going to get all weird and then people are going to get up out of their graves. It's gonna be wacky, you guys. Yeah, yeah, it's not like you have an option to change that. If you're going to believe it, you have to just like you know, God knows, no one has ever been selective about their beliefs as a Christian.
Yeah, it's this both that like Ross doesn't question Peter on this, Yeah, and also this is so heretical, Like I'm not a I don't care personally, but like you should.
But don't you think that it's like weirdly become like a tenet of modern sort of American I don't know, like political Protestantism. I guess like we allow people much for your hand in terms of doing their own interpretations. Then absolutely, Yeah, it seems like things have gotten a little bit over the top.
I mean, and that's that is definitely true that like we like that's that's a major factor in like the birth of Protestantism. Right, is this idea, this this this ongoing thing that like, well, anyone can be a priest or a pastor, anyone can speak the word, right, and like.
Why can speaks at a certain point if they feel like it.
Anyone can interpret the Bible, sure, but even so it is kind of very fundamentally heretical to be like the Bible says, there's we have to choose between, you know, the Antichrist of the apocalypse. But I think there's a third way, because Peter is literally saying, I think we can avoid the Biblical apocalypse by getting our politics right.
And actually we're kind of getting into Joseph Smith's territory right where you're like, I believe in the Bible, but also I'm adding stuff.
Yeah, I think I think we can rewrite the ending of the Bible.
And also I need to have sex with your wife.
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's weird, right, and especially because Peter describes himself as a little Orthodox Christian, which like this is not anywhere close to orthodox. Right, the idea that you're arguing God might let us avoid having an Antichrist and an armageddon and still live forever, that's not Christian theology. That's Peter deology.
You're right, it's like getting into your starting to found your own religion at that point, which you certainly have resources.
And that's I would argue what Act seventeen is doing is they are not spreading Christianity to Silicon Valley elites. They are creating a new like a like a Mormonism for rich people.
Christianity with like second billionaire culture. Now that's the Antichrist, the curse child of too.
Evil anteist of Christ. And it is kind of weird to me. Part of what's strange is that like he wants to avoid the biblical apocalypse. And I think what that means is that Peter Teel is so clearly scared of death that he can't even embrace everlasting life like he would prefer He vastly would prefer some scientist keeps his body alive then like Jesus ensures him eternal life, and like.
I believe in you, God, but stay the fuck away.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
The most reasonable thing that I've you know, theorized him thinking this whole time in a way.
Yeah.
And also it's like it's this thing of like, you know, because I do feel like if you look at sort of the sum of human experience, it's like, yeah, organized religion facilitates a lot of horror and a lot of evil, and it also facilitates a lot of structure and a lot of just a lot of stability in people's eyes.
And I think one of the positive elements of it is the feeling of allowing yourself to not be in control and sort of believing in something, you know, not even necessarily a higher power, like it's a twelve steps kind of a thing, although that certainly is helpful for a lot of people too, because the sort of like the ability to believe in something beyond yourself and to sort of maybe use religion to get out of the
human urge towards sollipsism. Yeah, it feels like this is like, no, I'm actually using religion to become more self centered than ever. Isn't that great?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, And it's it's just like the idea that, yeah, you're you're so scared of death that you can't even even the idea of heaven. You can't even you have to find a fix for that, yeah.
Right, like death becomes her Yeah, you know, person just walking around getting hairline fractures, incluing himself back together.
And again, Ross, who is a useless thinker and a useless writer and a waste of column inches for The New York Times, can't even question that there's only one really valuable thing about the article that he writes Interviewing Teal, which is that it includes a fascinating segment where Peter talks about his early attempts to secure eternal life for himself. And I'm just gonna read I'm going to read a
long quote from the interview here, Peter. I remember nineteen ninety nine or two thousand when we were running PayPal. One of my co founders, Luke Nosek. He was into alcore and cryonics and that people should freeze themselves. And we had one day where we took the whole company to a freezing party, you know, a Tupperware party. People sell Tupperware policies at a freezing party, they sell and the Ross butts in here was it just your heads? What was going to be frozen? Teal? You could get
a full body or just ahead ross. The just ahead option was cheaper, Teal. It was disturbing when the dot matrix printer didn't quite work and so the freezing policies couldn't be printed out.
Okay, I missed s matrix, Prince, that's buddy.
I think a critical and thoughtful interviewer might have said something like, hey, it kind of seems like a lot of companies in a life extension space, like the guys who were selling you youthful blood to inject into your body, are like questionable and sketchy, and maybe con Men has repeatedly encountering stuff that doesn't work or is sketchy, like
Alcore not being able to make a printer work. Has any of that made you reevaluate whether or not you're just following for a series of cons like the old pharaohs of Egypt taking fucking strychnine or whatever to make themselves live forever, or like are you still good? You still follow in all that? Like Ross doesn't asked this
at all. Now, Instead, when Peter talks about how this cryonics company couldn't even get a printer to work, Ross nonsensically adds technological stagnation once again, right no, which is like, no, that's not what that's an example of it at all period. But Peter responds, but in retch kind of ignores Ross.
But in retrospect it's also a symptom of the decline because in nineteen ninety nine this was not a mainstream view, but there was still a fringe boomer view where they still believed that they could live forever, and that was
the last generation. So I'm always anti boomer, but maybe there's something we've lost even with this fringe boomer narcissistem where there were at least a few boomers who still believed science would cure all their diseases, no one who's a millennial believes that anymore.
I don't even know what that aside was about.
What is that even about? So you're anti boomer because they thought they could live forever, but you.
Can, yeah, or just like, you know, say more about what did it feel like to think about getting your head son off by these people? How much did just the head cost versus the body? Say more about that? Exactly would they give you someone else's limbs or put you on a big robot body like RoboCop?
Right, Yeah, so we're almost done here. I want to end by talking a little bit more about Renee Gerard and Schmidt and some of some of Teal's philosophical beliefs.
But first, let's have an ad real quick, all right, So we're back, and I talked up at the start about Karl Schmidt, who's the Nazi philosopher who discussed how to destroy democracies in a way that Peter Teal followed and rene Gerard, who is this He's this big belief in sort of like this mimetic theory of like, uh, like mimetic rivalry, right, where like people, once they cover their basic needs still want things, and so they kind of pick, well, what is this other guy who seems
to be doing better than me have? And they like, that's kind of mimetic rivalry, but it doesn't make people happy, so they need scapegoats, you know. And Gerard's attitude was like Christianity brought an it should have brought an end too, that it's certainly evidence that we need to bring it
into that it's bad to escapegroat groups of people. And christ was kind of like that's why he was killed, right, he was made into a scapegoat, and that's like the final evidence that it's wrong to do that, you know.
That's Gerard's attitude. Peter claims to be a major follower of Girard's, and he's gone to a bunch of gatherings and in fact, in two thousand and four, he and one of his mentors organized a week long seminar on renee Gerard at Stanford, and they invited Girard who was alive at the time, And they also invited a scholar of Carl Schmidt who was also like a peer of Renee Gerard named Wolfgang Palaver, who is Plaver is one of Peter Teal's favorite intellectuals name, it's quite a name,
and Teal is very like a huge, big fan of this guy and a major like like cites him quite frequently and has invited him to a number of these different events. Right, this two thousand and four seminar on Girard is right after Peter Teal got rich after he like sold PayPal, so he he funds this thing. And the theme of the conference is politics and the apocalypse, and the type like that theme was suggested by Wolfgang
Palava like before they were planning the event. So this is obviously is a couple of years after nine to eleven, and people who are you know, what you'd call mimetic theorists.
These folks who like buy into a lot of Girard's beliefs about me medic rivalry are trying to figure out like did the was nine to eleven, Like an example of like planetary mimetic rivalry, this like was it did it come out of anger from one part of the world at like all of the things that the West has that they don't have, which is very much kind of in line with like a lot of what Bush was saying, you know, not exactly, but that you can see some people they're jealous of our freedoms, right, So
kind of one of the questions that these these Girard fans, these mimetic you know, theoreticians are talking about, is like, is that kind of does that explain what was going on there? Or is there something else for us to to take out of this? And Teal's attitude was that the primary that nine to eleven showed us is that the West can't protect itself. He wrote a paper right before this event in which he stated, the brute facts of September eleventh demand a re examination of the foundations
of modern politics today. Mere self preservation forces all of us to look at the world anew, to think strange new thoughts, and thereby to awaken from that long and profitable period of intellectual slumber and amnesia that is so misleadingly called the Enlightenment. And his big attitude here is that, like Osama bin Laden is thinking rationally in a modern political sense, But the West is not right and we
haven't realized the actual nature of the fight. And if Karl Schmidt were in charge of things, our response to nine to eleven, the just response would be to call for a crusade against Islam, right, of course, that's the rational response.
Yeah, irrational to try and eradicate our religion, I find generally, I.
Mean yeah, and that is like literally, like Teal's argument is that, like this is where this is like the fundament irrationality that the West indulged in is not seeing it as a holy war, is not seeing it as a fundamental clash of civilizations. We didn't do that enough, which like, I mean, we did the people you would have supported then, George W. Bush, like that is how they framed it and it failed.
That was very much how Alan Jackson was describing the situation. Again, he's like, really recommending anti Christy behavior, we must say, yeah, I also realize I keep saying it like anti pasto, But yeah, what if it was delicious?
Yeah, what if the Antichrist tasted better? But if the olives but was less filling at the same time.
Just a nice cold snack on a summer's day, right, you know when you got pasta coming later.
Yeah, like I'm on tucky cold snack, Yes, exactly. So Wolfgang, like Peter is a huge fan of him, specifically because of how Wolfgang interpreted a lot of Carl Schmidt's writing and like some essays that he wrote on like what Carl Schmidt meant and kind of his like how his concept of the political functioned, and that's what he bases a lot of his like well we were doing the wrong things after nine to eleven on is his ideas
of like how Schmidt would have handled things instead. And I want to quote from an article in Wired kind of summarizing this journey, It would quickly become apparent that Teal had spent some time considering the paper Palavar presented the day the two men met in nineteen ninety eight, The strange new thoughts Teal wanted his audience to entertain, where it turned out largely those of Karl Schmidt, but
where Palaver had been repulsed. Teal extolled Schmidt's robust conception of the political, in which humans are forced to choose between friends and enemies and everything else's delusion. The high point of politics, Palaver quote Schmidt is saying, are the moments in which the enemy is in concrete clarity recognized as the enemy. In Teal's mind, Osama bin Laan was capable of this kind of politics. The West, with its
fetish for individual rights and procedures, was not so. Palaver is quoting Schmidt as being like, this guy believed that the high point in politics was the defining of an enemy, right, and getting a group of people, getting a community to recognize an enemy. And that's a lot of I mean, that's where Schmidt kind of goes in with Girard Is. They both had this concept of like scapegoating as being important. But Schmidt is like, this is how you gain power.
This is actually how you destroy democracy is by finding an enemy, defining them as not part of the community, and excising them, and then you continually push that barrier.
And if you don't do that, year a moron.
Right, And Palaver is saying that's what Schmidt believed because he was bad, right, and that that's a that's an awful thing to believe, But like, this is what Schmidt was advocating, and Teal is like, no, that's awesome, and like their relationship over the last twenty years has been polov gradually realizing. Peter Teal likes him because he describes accurately what a monster believed, and Peter Teel is the same kind of monster.
Yeah, what a fun day at Stanford.
It's it's awesome. To continue from that Wired article, Schmidt, Teal conjectured would have responded to nine to eleven by calling for a holy crusade against Islam, but the West was instead slipping beyond politics altogether. Teal seemed to fear towards the creation of a bland world, embracing economic and technical organization. This was schmich nightmare scenario, and such a world, Teal said, a representation of reality might appear to replace reality.
Instead of violent wars, there could be violent video games instead of heroic feats. There could be thrilling amusement park rides instead of serious thought. There could be intrigues of all sorts, as in a soap opera. But that counterfeit reality, Teal argued, would be just the brief harmony that prefigures the final catastrophe of the apocalypse. The harmony in Schmid's telling of the anti Christ. Teal's discussion of Schmidt didn't mention the Hitler or the Nazis.
Once irrelevant who cares?
Great, Yeah, why does it matter that this guy was a Nazi and arguing for Nazis? And what matters is that when he was we need to take his idea about picking an in me And it's actually a really bad thing if like people are playing video games instead of fighting in real wars, that like that is the path to the anti Christ. Like we're replacing the cult real heroism with fictional hero It's a very fascist idea. It's fundamentally a very fascist idea.
So basically he's like, yeah, like if we don't become fascist, we're gonna we have to become fascist to protect ourselves from the Antichrist. Sweetie.
Yeah, And kind of the the conclusion Teal draws from Pilaver's writing about Schmidt is that because Schmidt's fundamentally suggested, like we have to have these dramatic solutions to the problem, like to deal with the enemy, like.
Final we kill them.
Right, he's a Nazi, right, Teal pulls back from that, but he's his solution is a you have to fortify the modern West, and you can't do that through democracy, right, So you have to you have to hide, you have to trick people into it in order to get around democratic institutions because those aren't going to like you can't actually work through them. So I'm going to quote from
Teal directly. Instead of the United Nations filled with interminable and inconclusive parliamentary debates that resemble shakespeare in tales told by idiots, we should consider the secret coordination of the world's intelligence services as the decisive path to a truly global packs Americana. In other words, that we need to do is develop government. Yeah, no, no, no, no, just a one world surveillance supersystem controlled by Peter Teals, not a one world government, no, no, we need we do need.
Teal says, a political framework that operates outside the checks and balances of representative democracy. But that's not a one world government, right, It's just a surveillance state that I'm in charge of, you know.
Basically saying it would be terrible if somebody did the things that I want to do myself. It has to be me.
Right exactly. God, Yeah, it's it's awesome, you know, and it there's that Wired article does a really good job of talking about Pilaver's kind of dawning horror as he realizes that like he's been reading all the old papers of mine about Schmidt, but interpreting them is like, this guy's awesome, and I want to do all the things he's suggesting.
Like when Oliver Still realized all these guys were getting into finance because they loved his movie that they never saw the last quarter of apparently.
And it's been like Girardians in general, like people who are like like our followers of Renee Gerard and his intellectual tradition have like this has been kind of a
growing horror for a lot of them. I think they probably should have started earlier, because, like it has often been said that Renee Gerard was kind of the inventor of the like button on Facebook for good reason, because Peter Thiel has justified him betting on Facebook by saying, quote, I bet on mimicis right, like on on mimetic, This idea that like memetic rivalry is the underpinning of Facebook, right, it's the underpinning of social media that I'm going to
beat both people being jealous and wanting to imitate the lives of other people that they see once it right, And so people have been saying since the early two thousands that, like, Girard is kind of Girardian philosophy is kind of baked into a lot of the most toxic
stuff about social media. But what really fucked a lot of these people up is kind of more recently because JD when they saw JD Vance during the twenty twenty four election start lying about Haitians and like spread knowingly spreading like lies about like Haitians eating dogs and stuff, because this is classic scapegoating, right, And this is again
Girard was saying it's bad to do that. Vance, who calls himself a Girardian, is clearly just saying like, oh, Gerard kind of explained how scapegoating works, and I like that, right.
It feels like reading a book on or an article on child abuse and like the psychological effects that beating your child has on them, and your takeaway is like, Wow, if I beat my child, they're going to be a lot more obedient and do more cares. I'm going to do that. Hey, everybody, this article says you should beat your child, And the person who wrote it is like.
What, Yeah, exactly, it's this. It's so like I'll quote like, here's because Vance has directly stated that coming to understand Girard influenced his Christianity.
Quote thank God.
Yeah, he spoke of his theory of a medic rivalry, that we tend to compete over the things that other people want. Spoke directly to some of the pressures I experienced at Yale. But it was his related theory of the scapegoat and what it revealed about Christianity that made me reconsider my faith.
It made me realize that I could be a Christian in an absolute dick wat you care about you beings were human suffering, and that was very conspiring to me.
Yeah, Gerard's saying Christ was killed because he was turned into a scapegoat by these powers, you know, doing the thing that that author Terian monsters always do, which is create and destroy scapegoats to distract people from the fact that the system is unjust in making them unhappy. And Vance is like, yeah, this changed. Like the idea of Christ as a scapegoat made me realize that I could lie about Haitians to become the vice president. Like that's basically what Vance has said.
That's nice, Yeah, yeah, it's there.
It's cool.
I think Jade Vance could have had less education and would have been just fine. Yeah, less access to education for one Apple action.
Right to continue from that Wired article. For some Gerardians, this was a breaking point. The memetic theorist Bernard Peret lambasted Advance and his billionaire mentor in a French political journal, accusing them of casting a shadow over Gerard's legacy. Within months, several more prominent Girardians followed suit. It's difficult to claim Gerard who fundamentally believes that violence is linked to exclusion and at the same time accuse Haitians of eating dogs.
Girardian scholar Paul Dumoche told a Canadian newspaper, either you didn't understand your ride or you're a liar.
I mean when you put it that way.
And I guess this is where we'll kind of close, you know, calling.
The burn unit for Peter Teal and they satisfying little.
Way and jd Vance, yeah, this little I mean fucking Polaver's apparently. Yeah, emailed him a few times being like, how are you okay with this? You know, how is anyone okay with this?
It's like they may have way too much power and it may be horrifying to contemplate, but nothing will ever make them less idiotic than they clearly are. And there's something nice about that. It's scary, but at least we can feel superior.
Yeah, there's a there's a good bit at the end of that wired piece where I think Polaver kind of reveals that he has Teal's number. What I've observed are traces of deep fear, he told me, fear of death, fear of terrorism, and it all comes down to a lack of trust in a craving for security. Pilaver suspects. There are so many cases where he expresses fears and concerns and need for protection. Palaver says, and if your main thing is seeking protection, you play with fire.
Huh.
And I guess that's like, okay, Yeah, I mean I would say it's Peter can recognize that fears of the apocalypse and the end of days could allow an Antichrist to take power, but doesn't understand that in his own life, your own fear of that is leading you to embrace what is effectively the Antichrist, Right, you're so scared of dying that you are embracing apocalyptic like just extremely dangant.
You're playing with fire, you are embracing authoritarianism, you are welcoming the Antichrist in because you're so scared of death.
And there you go, and because you're so rich, everyone else has to welcome the Antichrist along with you.
Apparently, and none of your weird like hoax medicine attempts to extend your life have proven to work. And you get just gonna blame Greta Tunberg by saying she's anti science because you can't just acknowledge that the thing you wanted is something that rich, powerful people have always wanted and never gotten because it's impossible and you're no different from the pharaohs, and.
They're never going to get it.
Nope, No, you will die and be forgotten.
And you know, and that's kind of nice.
That's good, it's good. That's why I'm fundamentally optimistic because of death. Right. I think it's a good thing in the long run that people die and that we're never going to like, immortality is not real and I don't think it ever will be.
Right, none of these people are ever going to be around forever, and a lot of them are going to like nothing, will be choke on a bit of toffee or something. And sure, you know, not enough of them, but yeah, no.
Not enough, but they all something will get all of them, like it will everyone, and that's good. It's good that people die. If if someone actually created an immortality cure, I would I would want to stop that. I think that that's broadly, I don't think it's possible. It's a silly thing to even theorize, but it's bad. It would be bad if it was real.
Well also, like even if that didn't exist, then it would only exist for like the worst people in the world, you.
Know exactly, yes, yeah, and it would be the end of progress fundamentally, if like people stopped dying, you know, like that's just it's it's not even good theoretically. I get people get angry whenever I bring this up, where they're like, so you don't want to cure cancer. I'm like, if you cure cancer, people will still die. You won't cure cancer. Also, but like.
Also, there's like eight million cancers to cure, you know, you just pick one and just keep going until you got a Bengo.
No, I believe if we do cure, if we were to cure all of the current cancers, then we would start seeing different, weird cancers that people don't get right now because they just don't live long enough for them to happen. But we'll keep experiencing new.
Cancers, start getting the like Publical Patriarch eight hundred year old guide cancer exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And also it's like, think about how bored people are now and how much more bored we would be if we were immortal, you know.
Yeah. Again, that's the thing, and that's the thing Gerard like, that's kind of something Gerard was dealing with, is like this, you know, when people's needs are met and they're still unhappy.
Like, I imagine the trouble we would cause for each other if we lived forever.
Yeah, how much how much worse mimetic rivalry would be? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, well anything else, Well, thanks for telling me about someone so horrible and embarrassing that they I have come around to your moral of, well, let's embrace death because at least he's going to get that guy.
Yeah, yeah, I love let's embrace death, Like let's all cheer death on as it goes after Peter Thiel.
Death wielding a sickle like a Polo mallet, right uping towards another billionaire.
Yeah, exactly, you know, And let's all encourage Peter Teel to explore the ocean floor like those other guys.
I hear. There's a lot of good stuff still down there. You could find those other guys, Yeah, could bring up their vaporized you could.
Save them there. No, they're they're all They need to be rescued.
They're playing park cheesy.
Only you, Peter, only you can save them with Poseidon. Yeah. Ah.
The Antichrist is down there.
Pluggables before we roll out here.
Yeah. So well, I you can find me at my show You're Wrong About, where we talk about the folly of man and iconic bimbos and misunderstood history and all kinds of fun stuff, and also at my new show
The Devil you Know, which is from CBC Podcasts. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts, and it's about the Satanic panic and also all the horrible things that people do and use Satan as an excuse to do, which is of course very relevant to today and it's we got to talk to some amazing people, and I'm so happy to get to share their stories with everybody.
I'm happy too, both for that and because the episode is over, and so I get to not work anymore. All right, everybody, you stop working too. I don't care what you're doing. If you're a heart surgeon, I'm listening to this. Cut stop walk away, walk away us Are you raising a bridge? Get out of there, pilot, jump out of the plane, you know, put on your put on your backpack with the thing in it, and get out of there.
Everyone quit working, right and everything whatever.
Robert Anti christ Evan says.
If you're the Antichrist, stop antichristing this minute. You got a footbath to go.
I would. I would be such a good Antichrist. Uh yeah, But unfortunately Greta Tunberg took the job from me.
You know.
Yeah, she's pretty good too.
Yeah, the podcast is over. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash At Behind the Bastards