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charity
Instead of Charity, Peter Thiel Told Elon Musk to Use Billions for Right-Wing Crusade Against 'Antichrist'
Thiel also accused environmental activist Greta Thunberg of being one of the Antichrist's "legionnaires."
Oct 10, 2025
Right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel recently told an audience that he pushed Tesla CEO and fellow billionaire Elon Musk not to give money to charity and instead horde it so it could be used to battle a future "Antichrist."
According to a Thursday Reuters report, Thiel told attendees of closed-door event in San Francisco last month that he pressed Musk to rescind his commitment to the Giving Pledge, the charitable campaign cofounded by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates that asks signatories to leave a majority of their wealth to a charity of their choosing.
Thiel said he warned Musk that his wealth was likely to end up going "to left-wing nonprofits that will be chosen by Bill Gates" and that his fortune would be better served to fight against a potential Antichrist figure that might emerge. Musk appeared receptive to these concerns, Thiel added.
Investigations have found that while Musk has pledged donations to charities and has donated money to charitable organizations, the funds have often either benefited his own interests or have not been properly distributed. His philanthropic group, the Musk Foundation, failed to donate the legally required amount to qualify as a charitable foundation last year for the third consecutive year.
He pledged nearly $6 billion worth of Tesla shares—just 2% of his net worth at the time—to the United Nations in 2021 to help feed 42 million people who were at risk of starvation for a year, but instead sent the money to his own foundation.
As Reuters noted, the Antichrist is a figure prophesied in the Christian Bible, and Thiel personally believes that this figure will emerge to "create a one-world government on the promise of something like stopping nuclear, AI, or climate-induced disaster."
The Washington Post, which along with Reuters got a transcript of Thiel's lectures on the Antichrist, added some more context to Thiel's personal conception of the Antichrist in a Thursday report.
Specifically, the Post reported that Thiel told his audience that environmental activist Greta Thunberg and artificial intelligence critic Eliezer Yudkowsky were "legionnaires of the Antichrist."
"In the 17th, 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science,” Thiel said. "In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer."
The Post also reports that Thiel complained during his lecture that he's had a much harder time in recent years avoiding paying taxes.
“It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money,” he said. “An incredible machinery of tax treaties, financial surveillance, and sanctions architecture has been constructed.”
Thiel, a cofounder of digital payment platform PayPal, has long been an associate of both Musk and Vice President JD Vance, whose 2022 US Senate campaign he generously funded.
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Real-Life Scrooges Are Hoarding Charitable Donations in Foundations and Funds
Current rules enable wealthy donors to bank their tax break immediately, but the donated funds may remain sidelined for decades.
Dec 05, 2024
For as long as we can remember, the end of the calendar year has marked the start of America’s giving season.
The holidays that light up our darkest months also invite us to celebrate (and practice!) generosity. Food banks, youth groups, arts and civic organizations, and community service programs heavily depend on the support they receive in November and December.
Year-end giving is big for tax purposes, but many people donate without regard to whether they’ll get a deduction. In fact, fewer than 10% of donors claim a tax deduction for charitable giving.
So, big donors: You want a tax break? Make sure the money gets to a working charity—and fast.
The super-wealthy, who do take advantage of itemizing their tax returns, give differently. They give more to large hospitals and universities, where you can get your name on a building. That kind of giving can be valuable too.
But a less visible difference is crucial to recognize.
Increasingly, wealthy donors are parking money in entities they control, like private foundations and donor advised funds (DAFs). These intermediaries then, in theory, donate money to working charities.
But private foundations are only required to “payout” 5% of their assets a year to these other charities. And DAFs have no requirement to payout at all. So wealthy donors bank their tax break immediately, but the donated funds may remain sidelined for decades.
According to a new report we co-authored, Gilded Giving 2024: Saving Philanthropy from Wall Street, over 35% of all charitable donations now go to one of these two intermediaries.
There’s now $1.7 trillion parked in private foundations and DAFs—money that could be flowing to working charities in a timely way to solve problems. We estimate that by 2028, half of all donations will go to private foundations and DAFs.
As wealth has concentrated in fewer hands over the last four decades, so has this kind of dubiously “charitable” giving—a trend we call “top-heavy philanthropy.” And it’s increasingly profitable for financial advisers to the ultra rich.
Wall Street financiers promote DAFs as a way for donors to receive immediate tax reductions in the year they give, but then they sit on those funds and collect wealth management fees. The financiers have no financial incentive to ever see the money go to a mental health center, food bank, community theater, or other working charity. It’s more profitable for them to keep assets under management.
The rest of us subsidize this system. For every dollar a billionaire donates to charity, including to their own foundation or DAF, the rest of us chip in up to 74 cents in the form of lost tax revenue.
So how did we get a charity system that works for multi-millionaire donors and wealth managers but not for nonprofit charities, small donors, and the taxpaying public? In part, it’s because lobbyists for the financial industry and DAF sponsors fight vigorously against any change.
But a growing coalition of donors, nonprofit charities, and people who care about tax fairness are pushing back. They point out that lawmakers could easily fix the rules to increase the flow of charitable funding, increase transparency, and shut down the tax avoidance and self-dealing practices currently corrupting philanthropy.
The message is getting across. A 2024 Ipsos poll found that 71% of respondents believe Congress should raise the annual payout rate for private foundations and require the same for DAFs. Across the political spectrum, a clear majority of Americans believe if a donor gets a tax break, they should move the money in a timely way to a working charity.
So, big donors: You want a tax break? Make sure the money gets to a working charity—and fast. You want other taxpayers to subsidize your giving preferences? Tell us where the money’s going.
Don’t like these rules? Then don’t ask the rest of us to subsidize it. Let’s make sure the season of giving actually centers on giving, not hoarding.
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Simple Charity Reforms Could Unlock Hundreds of Billions for Nonprofit Sector
An estimated $1.7 trillion in donations, ostensibly earmarked for philanthropy, are currently languishing in private foundations and donor-advised funds—while charities like Feeding America and Habitat for Humanity are under-resourced.
Aug 09, 2024
Thanks to outdated charity tax laws, the U.S. is missing out on hundreds of billions of dollars that could flow toward housing and food security, health research, education, advocacy, and other crucial nonprofit efforts aimed at uplifting the common good—but simple reforms could unlock some of the extreme wealth that is currently "warehoused" in private foundations and donor-advised funds.
This is according to a new Institute for Policy Studies analysis that shows charitable groups currently hold an estimated $1.7 trillion in donations that are "ostensibly earmarked for philanthropy," but are able to "languish in go-between funds" while working charities remain under-resourced.
The foundations and donor-advised funds (DAFs) are able to collect tax breaks while sitting on billions of dollars thanks to provisions in the Tax Reform Act of 1969 that haven't been updated in decades, wrote IPS associate fellow Helen Flannery and associate director of charity reform initiatives Bella DeVaan at Inequality.org, a project of the organization.
"Initially, in the Tax Reform Act of 1969, private foundations were mandated to give away 6 percent of their wealth or the annual net growth from their investments: Whichever was higher," wrote Flannery and DeVaan. "Foundations' tax benefits wouldn't provide license for funds to just grow forever and ever, and they were to be consistently responsive to shifting economic reality. A decade of revisions to payout requirements reflected those principles and eventually created our flat 5% mandate. But that 5% is overdue for re-evaluation, and our elected representatives have fallen asleep at the wheel."
"It's worth imagining a future in which billions more flow towards life-saving medical cures, food security, housing access, and environmental protection through organizations that are already woven into our social fabric."
While the nation's largest foundations give charitable donations at a rate of about 5%, "their gains in the market have averaged 9% over the last five years," they explained.
In other words, said Flannery and DeVaan, the funds "are growing faster than the rate at which they give" while donations to working charities like Habitat for Humanity, United Way, and Feeding America fall behind.
The wealth of DAFs has skyrocketed by 411% in the last decade, with the funds stockpiling an estimated $230 billion in assets in 2023.
IPS noted that billions of dollars in DAF gifts have been directed as dark money contributions—whose donors "might well have second thoughts" if tax laws were reformed to require both boosted payouts and more transparency.
In its policy brief, IPS proposes reforms that would:
- Increase the minimum payout rate requirement to 10% for foundations with assets of $50 million or more, and increase it to 7% for all other foundations;
- Exclude private foundation overhead expenses above 1% of assets from counting towards payout;
- Exclude grants from private foundations to DAFs from counting towards payout;
- Require DAFs to pay out funds within five years of receipt (and provide individual account-level transparency);
- Exclude grants from DAFs to other DAFs from counting toward payout; and
- Generate excise tax revenue from intermediaries that don't meet the new requirements.
The new rules would generate more than $110 billion in additional funding for working charities each year, as well as $339 billion in donations over three years.
"It's worth imagining a future in which billions more flow towards life-saving medical cures, food security, housing access, and environmental protection through organizations that are already woven into our social fabric," wrote Flannery and DeVaan, "or organizations that could and should be with strengthened access to funding."
IPS released the analysis as legislators prepare to overhaul the tax code in 2025.
"We're hopeful that this can be a watershed moment for charity reform akin to 1969," wrote Flannery and DeVaan, along with IPS program director Chuck Collins.
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