The invitation-only conference in Rome, from Sunday to Wednesday, has proven so controversial that the Catholic universities initially associated with it have all denied official involvement.
www.pbs.org
If he were not a billionaire and able to buy attention, he'd be laughed out of the room as a kook and sell nary a single ticket. It could be a living, breathing demonstration of an appeal to authority fallacy: he's got billions, so surely the crazy-ass shit he's got to say about the antichrist is worth something.
I can't help that the Biblical antichrist is perhaps interesting because he's offering stuff that people want. Yeah, power, riches and juicy, tasty apples are great, but you need to resist temptation. Thiel's monstrous ego however roars to the fore, because his antichrist conveniently represents what he already dislikes. Implicitly then he is a moral paragon, the Jesus of his quasi-religious schema: and that makes him no better than the average, grubby, cult leader exploiting his adherents.
The other thing here is the ego fantasy that he's an incredibly clever man, and should be considered amongst the great intellectuals of the era. So he's modelled himself on one of his ex-professors, and this is him acting out his pretentions to be viewed as a thinker, philosopher. He is, however, mostly just a twat.