Who is Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal who in Italy speaks of the Antichrist now a guru of the sovereignist base

So far, the only concrete thing noticed is a welcome banner that appeared overnight near the Colosseum and a protest flash mob.

The Roman days of Peter Thiel, the controversial billionaire and entrepreneur from the United States, founder of Palantir and financier of the Maga movement, remain shrouded in secrecy.

His highly secured tour of lectures began yesterday afternoon at Palazzo Taverna, just a few steps from Piazza Navona: here, the co-founder of PayPal will present his theses on the Antichrist to a select audience, outlining his “creed” that “democracy and freedom are no longer compatible” and urging a rebellion against the “technological stagnation”.

“A very interesting conference, there was a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence,” recounts one of the attendees at the first seminar. “Thiel is a mind that should be listened to because he has experience to share.” The participants, including journalist Daniele Capezzone and entrepreneur Guido Maria Brera, were imposed an absolute ban on disclosing its contents. The locations of the upcoming events remain top secret.

The visit to Italy responds to the invitation of the cultural association Vincenzo Gioberti of Brescia, which in a statement released in recent days speaks of a “great privilege that has been granted to us” and of “immense gratitude” towards one of the major sponsors of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race and direct financier of Vice J. D. Vance. “The association considers it a special honor and a gift from Providence to host in the Eternal City one of the most original thinkers of our time.”

As for the theme of the Antichrist, it would not be, according to Gioberti, “a late medieval whim” but rather “a bath of reality, recognizing that in our present there are incessantly operating forces, more or less hidden, engaged in dismantling what remains of the West.”

A vaguely apocalyptic tone is also present, announcing a Latin Mass, “celebrated according to that rite which, in recent decades, has been opposed and vilified,” planned in a church in the historic center of the Capital.

On the political front, the opposition attacks and insists on the alleged ties between Palantir and the Ministry of Defense, which emerged from an investigation by the newspaper Il Domani.

“We are truly disturbed at the idea that Thiel's company, a man who theorizes the need to weaken democracy and delights in conferences on the Antichrist, could have access to databases containing fundamental information about Italian citizens and for the protection of national security,” states Elisabetta Piccolotti of Avs.

Andrea Casu (Pd) urges the government for “an official response on what meetings and agreements with Thiel's companies are in place or planned.”

For Luca Sforzini, president of the National Renaissance Study Center, a think tank of the National Future with Vannacci, “the reactions being read in these hours say much more about the intellectual weakness of the Italian right than about Thiel himself. A right that carries weak thought.”

Meanwhile, in front of the Ministry of Defense, No Kings activists staged a flash mob: “A technoligarch with blood-stained hands with whom the Meloni government conducts business through the Ministry of Defense, keeping it hidden from citizens and the parliamentary debate,” they claim.