The Antichrist has long haunted American politics. Now it's rearing its head again | Matthew Avery Sutton

"Two scenes from the past two weeks capture something unsettling and familiar about American public life. In San Francisco, a tech billionaire delivered a soldout, offtherecord lecture series on the antichrist. In Michigan, a man rammed his pickup truck into a Latterday Saints meetinghouse during Sunday worship, opened fire and set the building ablaze, apparently believing that Mormons are the antichrist. The antichrist is clearly back. But perhaps he has never really left."

"As a historian of American apocalypticism, I've traced how this symbol a protean figure cobbled together from obscure biblical passages has repeatedly migrated from pulpits to politics and back again. Almost a century ago, fundamentalists mapped European dictators and New Deal bureaucrats on to biblical prophecy. During the cold war, evangelicals scanned Moscow and Jerusalem for signs of the Beast."

"Peter Thiel's Antichrist lectures, consisting of four sessions organized by the ACTS 17 Collective, were marketed as explorations of the theology, history, literature, and politics of the Antichrist. Tickets sold out. Reports and attenders who shared details with the media and online say Thiel warns that fear of technological progress and especially efforts to regulate AI could become the pretext for a charismatic power to centralize control in the name of peace and safety,"

Two recent incidents—a billionaire's sold-out lecture series on the Antichrist and a violent attack on a Latter-day Saints meetinghouse—illustrate a resurgence of antichrist imagery in American public life. The Antichrist figure has moved repeatedly between religious pulpits and political discourse, historically mapped onto European dictators, New Deal officials, Cold War adversaries, and Middle Eastern leaders. Surges in antichrist rhetoric have accompanied perceived threats to American power and rapid social change. Contemporary iterations link antichrist fears to AI, deepfakes, venture funding, and regulatory debates, with warnings that technological fear and regulation could enable centralized, charismatic control.

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