26 Jun 2025

All-seeing eye

A New York Times film reviewed by Maria Bustillos; vote for the Hydranym

Screenshot: New York Times

Today: Editor and writer Maria Bustillos.

Issue No. 349

MOVIE REVIEW: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist
Maria Bustillos

HYDRANYM No. 5: Vote!
The Editors

MOVIE REVIEW: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist

by Maria Bustillos

★☆☆☆☆

“May I keep my subscription to the horrid New York Times?” a reader asked The Sophist last week. And much as I rage at the New York Times, practically even in my sleep, I had to agree with The Sophist’s response:

[The New York Times] employs so many extraordinary, worthy journalists alongside so many gullible or mendacious dolts and reactionary buffoons because it employs so many journalists, period. Where else are they gonna work? What else are you gonna read? The Washington Post is being crudely rebuilt into a propaganda machine whose main purpose is to manage its centibillionaire plutocrat owner's relationship with the authoritarian regime. The Los Angeles Times is doing the same but for a pettier and more downmarket plutocrat owner…

Okay there are a lot of worthy journalists still at work at the Post and the L.A. Times as well but otherwise The Sophist is spot on, particularly in advising readers of the New York Times to complain—bitterly!—about where their subscription dollars are going.

Mail them typewritten letters telling them to pitch Ross Douthat into the Hudson with the tide running out. Write in to your favorite outside advice columnist to express your disgust in public.

It was in this spirit that I decided to go ahead and watch Peter Thiel and the Antichrist, the New York Times film that opened on their website today.

First, the title. The Silicon Valley investor turned paymaster and talent broker of American fascism, and the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God. Are we talking allies, or antagonists? This tantalizing ambiguity makes Peter Thiel and the Antichrist a compelling proposition right out of the box. (Did you know his name anagrams to THE REPTILE ??) But longsuffering Times readers will immediately grasp that we’re looking at a filmed interview of Thiel conducted by the aforementioned Douthat, a famous conservative and tradcath convert who will doubtless be deferring to Thiel the whole time, blasting all hopes of a demoniacal exposé.