Know Your Enemy

Over the course of the past year, Peter Thiel—the Trump backing, Vance boosting gay tech billionaire—has been delivering a series of lectures on the Antichrist, using an examination of the Biblical antagonist of the End Times to make an argument about the supposed perils of this political moment. We got our hands on transcripts of these talks as delivered last year in San Francisco, and explain what Thiel said and why it matters. Topics include: Thiel's conservative evangelical upbringing, the influence of Rene Girard on his thinking, and how Thiel's Antichrist lectures relate to his broader thinking and worldview; the place of the Antichrist in the eschatology of different Christian traditions, and the curious similarities between Thiel's understanding of the Antichrist and that found in the work of Timothy LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind novels; Christianity's recent trendiness in Silicon Valley; the way Thiel's account of how the Antichrist will come to power connects to his economic interests; and more!

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Listen again: 

"Rene Girard and the Right" (w/ John Ganz), KYE, Feb 26, 2024

"A Remedy for Envy? Rene Girard Redux," KYE, March 4, 2024 (for subscribers)

Sources:

Peter Thiel, "The Straussian Moment," 2007

Ross Douthat interviews Peter Thiel (transcript), New York Times, June 26, 2025

Max Chafkin, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and the Rise of the Silicon Valley Oligarchs (2021)

Timothy LaHaye, Revelation Unveiled (1999)

Elisabetta Povoledo, "Peter Thiel Fears the Antichrist Is Coming. In Rome, Some Call His View Heresy," New York Times, March 17, 2026

Johana Bhuiyan, Dara Kerr, Nick Robins-Early, "Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist," The Guardian, Oct 10, 2025

Peter Thiel & Sam Wolfe, "Voyages to the End of the World," First Things, Oct 1, 2025

Emma Goldberg, "Seeking God, or Peter Thiel, in Silicon Valley," New York Times, Feb 11, 2025

Kate Lucky interview w/ Michelle Stephens, "‘Wouldn’t It Be Funny if We Tricked a Bunch of People into Going to Church?’" Christianity Today, Aug 11, 2025

Laura Bullard, "The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession," Wired, Sep 30, 2025

John Ganz, "What Happened Here," Unpopular Front, Feb 4, 2025

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Once more we take up religion and politics, this time a conversation about President Donald Trump's attacks on Pope Leo XIV—the first successor of St. Peter from the United States—mostly, though not only, over the pope's pleas for peace as Trump rages war against Iran. Why is the incredibly unpopular Trump going after the beloved pontiff? Why does Trump's Catholic vice president, J.D. Vance, argue that Leo should stay out of politics and stick to morality, as if politics was not irreducibly a moral enterprise? Who is Pope Leo, and what seem to be his priorities for his papacy? How to make sense over the arguments about just-war theory that Leo's various statements about war and peace—notably, that God does not hear the prayers of those who wage war—have generated? We answer all these questions, and more!

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Sources:

"Rerum Novarum: Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Capital and Labor," May 15, 1891

"Reflection of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV at the Prayer Vigil for Peace," April 11, 2026

"U.S. Bishops’ Chairman on Doctrine Issues Clarification on Just War Theory," April 15, 2026

Chris Cameron, "Vance Says Pope Leo Should Stay Out of U.S. Affairs," New York Times, April 13, 2026

Matthew Sitman, "Pope Francis and Civil Unions: We Need Clarity, Not a Media Blackout," Commonweal, Oct 27, 2020

Jason Horowitz & Natalie Kitroeff, "Pope Francis’ Views on Same-Sex Civil Unions Were Cut From a 2019 Vatican Interview," New York Times, Oct 22, 2020

Gerald W. Schlabach, "Just War? Enough Already," Commonweal, May 31, 2017

In 1897, a small group of Jewish Marxists on the outskirts of the Russian empire founded the General Jewish Labour Bund. The Bundists were revolutionary socialists, unapologetic internationalists, champions of the Yiddish language, and implacable foes of nationalism of every stripe, including (especially) Zionism. Bundists helped found the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, organized militias to defend Jews against pogroms, fought on the frontlines of the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, fought fascists wherever they found them, and helped lead the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. 

The history of the Bund is largely forgotten today — in part because Bundists were such early and prescient critics of Zionism. As one of its leader said in 1933, "If Jewish nationalism, as a general rule, is not bloodthirsty, this is only out of necessity, not virtue; if an appropriate opportunity arose, Jewish nationalism would show its sharp teeth and nails no less than the nationalisms of other nations.” Thankfully, Crabapple spent the last seven years rediscovering the Bund's fascinating history for her new book: Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. It was thrilling to have her on to discuss it. “For leftist Jews longing for resources within our own past for combating the Zionist death cult," Crabapple says, "the Bund is a model.”

Further Reading:

Molly Crabapple, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund, (April 2026)

Sam Adler-Bell, "For leftist Jews, the Bund is a model’: the radical history behind one of Europe’s biggest socialist movements," The Guardian, Apr 7, 2026.

Max Strasser, "What Does Judaism Look Like Without Zionism?" NYTimes, Apr 6, 2026. 

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Last month, our very own Sam Adler-Bell published a deeply reported article in New York magazine about "the women leaving the New Right." That is, the women who've come to realize, as Sam pithily puts it, this truth about the MAGA movement: "Sexism wasn’t merely the price of entry; it was the theme of the party." MAGA-style misogyny is different than the oldfangled, pre-Trump, pre-Fuentes, pre-Tate brothers iteration that marked the conservative movement in decades past. In this episode, Matt interviews Sam about the article, and they discuss misogyny on the right, old and new; what the women he spoke to describe experiencing during their time on the New Right, the bargain they thought they were getting by joining its ranks, and what they found in reality; the nasty misogyny that, even more than his racism and antisemitism, animates Nick Fuentes; dating and romance on the New Right; rightwing religion, patriarchy, and the 19th amendment; and more.

Sources:

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Young Women Leaving the New Right," New York, March 12, 2026

Ian Ward, "Doug Wilson Has Spent Decades Pushing for a Christian Theocracy. In Trump’s DC, the New Right Is Listening," Politico, May 23, 2025

Mariel Padilla, Grace Panetta, & Mel Leonor Barclay, "Who’s Questioning Women’s Right to Vote?" The 19th, Aug 12, 2025

Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958)

There’s perhaps no living person who better embodies the themes, contradictions, ethos, and pathos of “Know Your Enemy” than William Kristol, this week’s guest. Today, Kristol is editor-at-large of The Bulwark, a valuable redoubt of unreconstructed Never-Trumpism, which he helped found in 2018. But before dedicating himself, full-time, to the admirable if quixotic mission of undermining Donald Trump from the center-right — alienating many of his one-time friends in the process — Kristol was best known as an influential practitioner of neoconservatism: a staffer in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations; cofounder (in 1995 and 1997, respectively) of The Weekly Standard and the Project for a New American Century; a prominent champion of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and faithful son of one of neoconservatism’s First Couples: Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb. Kristol was also trained in political philosophy by the Harvard Straussian (and frequent KYE subject) Harvey Mansfield. As such, we had an enormous amount to discuss in a limited amount of time. A few things we covered: What was neoconservatism? How should political theory inform political action? Why didn’t Never-Trump conservatism work? Where did Trumpism come from? Are Straussians to blame for the Iraq War? And, why does Kristol (a longtime proponent of regime change in Iran) oppose Donald Trump’s current war with the Islamic Republic?

Further Listening: 

"Harvey Mansfield on Political Philosophy," Conversations with Kristol, Jun 30, 2014

"Know Your Frenemies (w/ Samuel Moyn)," KYE, Aug 10, 2020. 

Further Reading: 

William Kristol & Robert Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,"  Foreign Affairs, Jul 1, 1996.

William Kristol & David Brooks, "What Ails Conservatism," Wall Street Journal, Sept 15, 1997.

Justin Vaïsse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement, (2011)

William Kristol and Steven Lenzner, "What was Leo Strauss up to?" National Affairs, Fall 2003. 

Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, (2004)

Sam Adler-Bell, "How the War on Terror Fuels Trump," Jacobin, Aug 13, 2016.

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