Why Rod Dreher is Voting for Eugenics in 2028

On the Insanity of Christian Conservatives Allying With Thiel's Favorite Meat Puppet

Historically, American social conservatives have not been, as they say, the sharpest tools in the shed. Over and over again, they have proven themselves to seemingly be the most foolish, simple-minded, and gullible constituency of any political coalition in the past 100 years. In this sense, and only this sense, does their movement have any meaningful “accomplishments” to speak of.

The most prominent individual currently still working in this venerable tradition is none other than longtime blogger, social conservative activist, and earnest Instagram gourmand Rod Dreher .

Rod is known for a lot of things, not all of them good. It would be easy, too easy, to make this article an attack on his personal foibles and failings. Our goal here, rather, is to interrogate Dreher’s shameless and slavish devotion to JD Vance and Peter Thiel for what it can tell us, not only about one man’s duplicity and cowardice, but also about the moral failings of the class of so-called ‘socially conservative Christian’ pundits that Dreher represents.

Needless to say, Dreher is as big a fan of Peter Thiel as he is of his acolyte JD Vance. It is unclear exactly when Dreher became acquainted with Thiel, but it appears likely that it occurred sometime after he met Vance, which, according to Dreher’s own accounting, happened “right before Hillbilly Elegy shot to prominence,” so sometime in 2016.

2016 is a notable year; not only was it the year that Donald Trump won both the Republican nomination and the presidency, but it was also the year that Peter Thiel spoke at the Republican National Convention.

Of course, Dreher’s view of Thiel has radically evolved since then, but at the time his view of both Thiel and his ideological and political project (Gay Space Fascism) was far less rosy than it is now.

In Dreher’s review of Thiel’s 2016 RNC speech, he criticizes Thiel for not appreciating the importance of the conservative ‘culture war.’ He also claimed Thiel was a “transhumanist” who “believes that human nature is determined by our own wills” (which is more or less correct) while also simultaneously appearing to believe that Thiel’s agenda was some kind of Soros-like “globalist” project (which is basically wrong).

A year earlier Dreher also wrote a notable entry coming out against Thiel ally Marc Andreessen’s proto-GSF manifesto.

“Andreessen comes off as an iconic figure of our time: a bona fide genius, wielder of enormous power, and visionary whose vision happens to be, well, evil. I don’t know how else to put it, frankly,” Dreher wrote.

He then adds, in reference to Andreessen and his wife’s decision, like many Gay Space Fascists, to rent a surrogate’s womb for the birth of their child: “These are two fantastically smart, indescribably rich people who farm out the gestation of their own child to someone who carried their baby—thus avoiding the unpleasant parts of being incarnate beings—and who live a life of luxury of which the kings of old couldn’t have dreamed.”

“I think Andreessen and his tribe are so dangerous because they really do believe what they say. They don’t believe in anything but the glorification of the Self and the emancipation of the Self from anything outside of itself. Ye shall be as gods,” Dreher concludes.

Of course none of these criticisms are surprising coming from someone who makes their living as a conservative Christian influencer (and guru of sorts). What has been surprising (at least to those unaware of Dreher’s political and social associations) has been Dreher’s U-turn in recent years from being a critic of Thiel’s Gay Space Fascist agenda to someone who is actively aiding and abetting it. And not just in an inadvertent way but as an active and knowing fellow traveler.

There are, of course, two main aspects to this: Dreher’s support for Vance and his personal relationship with Thiel himself.

Dreher’s support for Vance, whom he seems to believe, in characteristically buffoonish fashion, is some kind of messianic figure, is well documented and really needs no elaboration here.

Preempting the False Claims of Pro-Vance Propagandists

What is important is to preempt a bad faith attack, which I know is coming. Namely the predictable gaslighting that occurs when people attempt to somehow assert that Vance is ‘his own person’ and has only ‘limited’ ties to Thiel, etc.

We can see this take in the wild in the form of a recent spat of tweets from Daryl Cooper in which he tried to undermine the obvious and well-documented connection between Thiel and Vance.

Cooper attempts a classic Thieloid rhetorical maneuver: open gaslighting. Essentially attempting to call into question whether there is any actual connection between Vance and Thiel at all, etc.

Cooper then moves on to the second rhetorical movie, a begrudging admission that Vance is, in fact, a creation of Thiel but also that, well, it’s not really a big deal and anyway the alternative is worse:

And eventually he moves on to the third rhetorical technique, which is basically “Ok, yes, you’re right, oh, and btw, I have Thiel ties too, but here’s why that’s actually good!”

Funny enough, this kind of rhetoric is very similar to Dreher’s own favorite ‘law of merited impossibility.’ The Thielworld version is similar and, boiled down, essentially amounts to the same message: ‘The Thiel network isn’t a thing, and it’s good that it is!’ etc.

The Reality of Vance as Entirely a Creation of Thiel

However, I think we should go over, quickly and succinctly, Vance’s long history with Thiel, so we can quickly dispatch similar kinds of obscurantist arguments:

-Vance first met Thiel during his time at Yale Law School, after which time the two began a ‘friendship.’

-After Vance graduated, his first job, after a stint at a law firm, was with a biotech firm, Circuit Therapeutics. A job that he got via a recommendation from Thiel in spite of having no biotech experience at all.

-Vance then left Circuit Therapeutics to work at one of Thiel’s own venture firms in 2016, a company called Mithril Capital.

-Thiel helped to promote Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, contributing a glowing blurb that was prominently displayed on the book’s jacket.

-Vance then returned to Ohio and started his own venture firm, Narya Capital, almost entirely with funds from Thiel, Andreessen, and others in the Thiel network.

-When Vance decided to try to run for Senate in Ohio in 2022, Thiel gave Vance’s campaign a historic 15 million dollars (a sum that almost certainly helped put Vance over the top in an otherwise tight race). Thiel also steered at least $200,000 to Vance’s super PAC from a group he controlled called Per Aspera Policy, according to the Kansas City Star and OpenSecrets. Thiel also personally introduced Vance to Donald Trump and convinced the then-former president to endorse him.

-Thiel, along with many of his Silicon Valley allies, took part in a pressure campaign on then-former president Trump to have him select Vance as his running mate in 2024. He very much owes his selection as VP to Thiel and his network bringing pressure to bear on Trump.

-Vance has also referred to Thiel as ‘a very close friend’ and also credited him in part for his decision to convert to Catholicism.

This list, which it should be noted is nowhere near exhaustive, is more than enough for any reasonable person to conclude that Vance essentially belongs to Thiel, body and soul. Almost every opportunity he was offered and took advantage of occurred solely because of Thiel’s influence and assistance, from his first non-legal job all the way to the vice presidency. To say that Vance ‘“owes everything” to Thiel is not an understatement in any way.

Furthermore, and just as importantly, Vance will also likely rely on Thiel and his network both for the financing of his future political campaigns as well as for income and employment once his political career is over (a fact that remains true whether he wins or loses in 2028).

What do these people think, that he is going to move back to Cincinnati and chase ambulances? No, Vance is going to go back to work for Thiel and will make large amounts of money working at one of Thiel’s various endeavors after his political career is over.

Therefore there is essentially zero daylight between the two figures. To support Thiel is to support Vance, and to support Vance is to support Thiel. This includes the entirety of Thiel’s biological, technological, and political agenda, all of which will be fast-tracked and pursued vigorously under any potential Vance administration. Which is the entire reason Thiel has supported Vance, who has had open political ambitions essentially from the start.

For Thiel, Vance has been a bet that has already paid off massively and could soon provide him with the ultimate return on investment.

And here we find the real scandal of Dreher’s association with these figures: not that he has ‘friends’ with unsavory views or lifestyles that are not compatible with his ostensible faith (although this is certainly true), but rather that he is actively participating in a campaign to deceive his audience.

Put more simply: Dreher knows very well that there is no meaningful distinction between Vance and Thiel. He also knows that if and when Vance wins in 2028, Thiel’s agenda, in all domains, will receive a massive new boost. A boost that will both multiply Thiel’s wealth by orders of magnitude and ensure his biological and technological agendas become mainstreamed and receive the full backing of the American empire. Again, Dreher knows this and is thus actively lying to his audience, primarily composed of naive religious conservatives, by pretending that his buddy JD is on ‘their side’ and that Thiel is somehow a ‘sincere Christian.’

There is simply no way for Dreher to actually believe this without being a world-historic imbecile; I refuse to believe that he is that stupid.

Then again, I suppose the explanation could be a bit simpler: that Dreher has simply been seduced both by Thiel’s wining and dining of him as well as the ego-boosting illusion of influence he receives by having occasional access to Vance.

Homer Simpson famously sold his soul for a donut. It appears that the cost for Rod’s is likely in the same ballpark.

That Dreher is a bit of a narcissist is not particularly difficult to discern, especially to anyone who has followed his writing over the years. Thus, it makes sense that he would be enraptured to find himself being subsidized by Thiel as well as being invited to various Thielworld-adjacent rubber chicken dinner events. In addition, a recent episode in which he flew into Bratislava on Thiel’s private jet in order to introduce him to a Slovak intellectual shows that Dreher has become something of a point man for Thiel in Central Europe, an active agent of influence:

What Dreher’s self-importance and narcissism prevent him from seeing is that, as the old saying goes, ‘If something is free, you aren’t the customer; you’re the product.’

This is especially true for the influencers, like Dreher, being courted by Thiel. Thiel is not interested in being their ‘friend’; he is interested in the utility they provide for him and his project: namely, ensuring the support of conservative Christian voters when the time comes to pull the lever for Vance in 2028 and 2032. A group that might have second thoughts about Thiel’s more ‘controversial’ activities if they didn’t have influencers like Rod around to assuage their, entirely rational, fears.

Rod, like other ‘Christian’ ‘thought leaders,’ like, say, Patrick Deneen, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Ross Douthat, have deluded themselves into believing, via an almost comical self-regard, that they can somehow positively influence Vance and Thiel through their associations with them. In reality, it is the inverse that is the case: they are the ones being influenced.

Thiel’s Skin Suit Christianity

Dreher would have his readers believe that his ‘friend,’ Peter Thiel, is an honest and ‘sincere’ Christian. This notion is an offensive absurdity, unless we also believe that words have no meaning.

“In listening to Thiel talk, and in personal conversation with him, I didn’t learn much at all about the nature of his Christian profession, but I came away convinced that however misguided he is from an orthodox Christian perspective, he is utterly sincere.” Dreher claimed in a Substack post.

Thiel likes to talk about Christianity; this is true, but there is absolutely no evidence that he has any kind of actual belief in it. I’m not interested in splitting confessional hairs here, but I think there is a big difference between genuine Christians of the various confessions, even very ‘thin’ ones like evangelicals, and what it seems according to all available evidence that Thiel is. Which appears to be something like what Jordan Peterson is: essentially someone who does not believe in the actual claims of Christianity but rather sees it as conveying some kind of mythological or symbolic ‘truth,’ regardless of whether this ‘truth’ is Jungian psychobabble, Girardian scapegoat theory, or something else entirely. For instance, I’m almost positive that Thiel could not honestly assent to the Nicene Creed. Moreover, I don’t even think he could honestly assent to an extremely simple formulation of Christian faith found amongst, say, most evangelicals, such as: ‘I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God and died and then rose from the dead three days later.’

I find myself agreeing with Stephen Diehl’s (who I generally find insufferable, fwiw) assessment of Thiel’s use of Christianity:

“Thiel often discusses Christianity's importance but strategically hedges on affirming the literal, metaphysical existence of the Christian God in the way many devout believers do. Instead, he tends to frame ‘Christianity as true,’ where the word ‘true’ carries a specific, functional weight rather than indicating belief in a supernatural being who intervenes in the world. For Thiel, Christianity's ‘truth’ appears rooted in its perceived efficacy as a foundational moral system and a crucial unifying narrative for Western civilization, providing structure, meaning, and potentially a bulwark against nihilism or societal decay (often from, in his mind, non-Western influences), rather than asserting a philosophical commitment to the objective reality of a supernatural being and the literal miracles described in the Bible.”

Thiel is also a Straussian, and for him, like all real Straussians, Christianity is an important ‘noble lie’ that must be upheld, not only to instill virtue in the populace but also to keep the forces of nihilism at bay.

In no meaningful way does this make Thiel a ‘serious’ or even a ‘heterodox’ Christian, as both of these descriptors imply he believes in it as more than a societally beneficial myth. Arians were ‘heterodox’ Christians; one might even say a believing Muslim is a kind of ‘heterodox’ Christian as well (if you really want to stretch things). Peter Thiel does not appear to be a genuine Christian of any variety, however.

One could forgive, say, a tech reporter, for simply describing Thiel as a ‘self-professed’ Christian for the sake of simplicity or out of disinterest in exploring the details of this claim. But Rod’s alleged expertise is in religion and Christianity. It’s actually his job to dive into the weeds here. Instead Rod chooses to downplay facts that he knows would end up turning many of his readers off to Thiel’s agenda.

Thiel’s personal beliefs are somewhat irrelevant here, though, as even if Thiel was a professed orthodox believer, his actions have made him an advocate for explicit and transparent evil, which is the real scandal here.

Peter Thiel: Hostis humani generis

Thiel, through his various investments, is methodically and purposely working to create a cruel and hellish new world of Gay Space Fascism. He is actively building a networked surveillance state that has been used to murder entire families in Gaza and other war zones and is also already being used to surveil the American populace as well. He himself is a ‘married’ homosexual whose former lover allegedly ‘threw themself’ off of a Miami skyscraper after a fight with Thiel for unknown reasons. He also has several children he procured via surrogacy, that is, ‘rented wombs.’ In addition, he has heavily invested in several different companies, including both Orchid and Nucleus (The heads of both companies, Noor Siddiqui and Kian Sadeghi, are former Thiel fellows, with Nucleus itself having receiving millions in funding from Thiel’s Founders’ Fund) that provide customers with the ability to carry out ‘genetic screening’ on their embryos (including ones born via surrogacy). That is, they are openly practicing eugenics via embryo screening in hopes of breeding a class of genetically enhanced ‘elites,’ a vampire elite, which they then plan on using to rule over the rest of humanity, who will be reduced to living in primitive squalor (this will be ‘trad,’ however, as Thiel’s misshapen goblin servant Curtis Yarvin has repeatedly assured us).

The truth is Rod’s friend, who he would like us to believe is a ‘serious’ if ‘heterodox’ Christian, is, in fact, a genuine psychopath who has access to dangerous amounts of power and will stop at nothing until he accrues even more by electing JD Vance, a man who believes in absolutely nothing aside from the idea that he must continue climbing the greasy pole of politics by whatever means necessary.

Thiel employs the theories of René Girard as a kind of rhetorical squid ink, which he uses to attempt to parry any and all criticism of his goals (“Don’t like me and the objectively evil things I am doing? Sounds like someone is scapegoating!”). Thiel is now employing a similar strategy with his new attempt to paint hapless environmentalists like Greta Thunberg as some kind of existential threat to humanity, literally inferring that they are somehow agents of the anti-christ, a clownish charade Dreher happily nods along with in spite of its obvious absurdity. His glazing of Thiel on this issue is so shameless, he might as well just moo.

Meanwhile, it is, in reality, his own agenda: the promotion of hyper-empowered, ‘creative’ individuals who must be freed of all traditional constraints, including that of traditional morality, the ‘scapegoating’ of the mob, and even death itself, which bears a strange resemblance to that of the traditional understanding of the Christian Devil. His creed, such as it is, is merely a twisted, foul pseudo-Christian antinomianism.

Thiel is a professional manipulator who employs an entire network of other manipulators and psychopaths to do his bidding. That is to say, he is seeking to gain as much power as possible in order to radically transform society, down to the biological level, in pursuit of a new kind of tyranny that has often been described as ‘techno-feudalism.’ One of the main avenues this program is taking is a new regime of eugenics backed and funded by Thiel in the form of a variety of genetic screening startups. This will result, far more quickly than most people imagine, in a grotesque two-tiered society. There is a reason, for instance, that Malcom and Simone Collins Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm (probably the most open and honest advocates of open GSF out there) are backed by Thiel and his network (Simone herself directly worked for Thiel while Malcom was previously involved with the Thiel-backed cult ‘Leverage Research’). It is not a stretch at all to say that their views on many things, particularly surrogacy and eugenic screening, approximate Thiel’s own quite nicely. As Yarvin himself once put it, Peter is ‘fully enlightened.’

Dreher has deployed a number of excuses, most of them trite and predictable, for why he has chosen to ally with both Vance and Thiel. The clearest of which appears to be a 2021 one, in which, after he spends many paragraphs glazing Vance as the equivalent of the second coming, he says this of Thiel:

“If these are the kind of candidates that Peter Thiel is bankrolling, I say hooray for Peter Thiel. They have George Soros; we need a Peter Thiel. I disagree with Thiel on some important issues, but I don’t have to agree with Thiel to be excited about the candidacies of these two men he’s helping make their inaugural runs for the Senate. We are not going to vote our way out of this American crisis, but the men and women we elect can work to create the conditions under which we in civil society can fight back against those who are tearing America down, and tearing Americans apart.”

Reading this rationalization is especially funny in 2026, after Vance and the Trump administration have repeatedly rug-pulled social conservatives like Rod on basically every single possible issue, especially abortion and IVF. More importantly, however, Rod is making a basic category error here by conflating Soros with Thiel.

George Soros is many things, but he is really nothing like Thiel. Yes, Soros does (or did) have a quite formidable NGO empire, which was able to exert itself on the global stage and engaged in many activities that, in my opinion, were quite bad. However, right now, Thiel himself is far more powerful than Soros ever was. His network, while being much less formalized in its structure than Soros’s, is actually more powerful and exerts much more influence in the current GOP than Soros’s did in the Democratic Party, even during its heyday. Furthermore, there simply is no progressive or left-wing equivalent of Palantir, a seemingly all-powerful entity that has now embedded itself in the bowels of the American deep state, where it waxes and grows fat while slowly transmuting America into a 24/7 panopticon security state. In addition, whatever one thinks of Soros’s beliefs, they were quite transparent. There was no secret plot; Soros is a open Popperite (his foundation is literally named after his book!). That’s what he wants; there’s not much more to it than this. Whereas Thiel, the Straussian manipulator, actively misleads the public about what his true beliefs and intentions actually are.

To make matters worse, Thiel’s favored policies, the policies that will be championed by soon-to-be President Vance, make an open mockery of Dreher’s alleged dedication to Christian moral beliefs. In reality, Thiel’s consistent and high level support for transhumanism, embryonic genetic screening, and surrogacy (to name just a few of his more noxious interests) is in reality just as bad for society, if not actually worse in the long term, than anything proposed by the left, including transgenderism.

In fact, Thiel’s only actual problem with transgenderism, aside from the aesthetically displeasing nature of progressive transgender culture, is that, as he told the New York Times, it doesn’t go far enough.

“We want more than cross-dressing or changing your sex organs. We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body,” Thiel proclaimed.

“And then orthodox Christianity, by the way — the critique orthodox Christianity has of this, is these things don’t go far enough. That transhumanism is just changing your body, but you also need to transform your soul and you need to transform your whole self,” he added.

Thus we can see Thiel’s ‘theology’ for what it is: a direct and open mockery of the Christian gospel. The transfiguration first witnessed at Tabor is consciously mangled by Thiel into some kind of grotesque science experiment, the barbaric practice of commercial surrogacy (through which Thiel’s own children were brought into the world) serves as his mockery of the immaculate conception. And Thiel’s same-sex “marriage” (a practice that has now become a craze amongst “conservative” influencers in Thiel’s orbit) a parody of the Christian sacrament of the same name, in very much the same sense as, say, a Black Mass is.

This is the theology that Dreher makes excuses for and attempts to rationalize in the name of political expediency and is the political star to which he has hitched his own personal fortunes via his slavish and uncritical allegiance to JD Vance.

A Quick Reality Check on Dreher’s Fake Crusade Against Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes

Now it must be noted here that Rod Dreher has launched something of a ‘crusade’ in recent weeks and months against both Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. This was initiated by the controversial interview Carlson did with Fuentes a few months ago. Dreher has stated publicly that this was a bridge too far and that both Carlson and Fuentes are now beyond the pale and should be shunned from polite society, etc. He has also suggested that the best way to do this was for his buddy Vice-President JD Vance to make a public statement basically excommunicating the Fuentes, Carlson, and the groypers.

Now, this obviously isn’t going to happen, and Dreher knows this. Tucker Carlson remains an extremely influential individual in MAGA world and commands a significant audience, an audience Vance is going to need if he’s going to win in 2028.

The same is true of Fuentes, who, while he has occasionally been lightly criticized in the past, will not likely ever be fully ‘excommunicated’ in the way that Dreher imagines. Fuentes also commands a significant audience, one that Vance covets. Hence why, as I explained in a recent piece, Thielworld is busy attempting to carrot and stick Fuentes into joining the big tent and telling his followers to pull the lever for team Vance in ‘28.

Dreher has insinuated that if a public statement is not forthcoming from Vance, this may be too much for him. I don’t think even he believes this. Rod likes access too much to throw it away so lightly, especially over something as insignificant as mere ‘principles.’

The truth is that being anti-Fuentes and/or anti-Tucker is an easy and cheap way for him to feel virtuous (literally ‘virtue signaling’) while convincing himself that he is ‘doing something’ about all those bad ‘Nazis’ that are infiltrating the GOP. You know, like Captive Dreamer, the high-profile BAPsphere account Vance actively follows on X:

Yes, Rod’s best friend, JD Vance, an extremely tech-savvy millennial who very much understands what he is doing, actively follows Captive Dreamer (Geoffrey Martin). He does this because he is an active member of an online network that defends everything and anything Vance and Trump do, however absurd or odious. Vance rationally views these activities as beneficial and seeks to encourage this activity in the future. Vance has zero ethical qualms about doing this in spite of Martin being just as much of a ‘Nazi’ as Fuentes, if not more so. Why then does Dreher pretend to expect Vance to ‘do something’ about Fuentes?

Conclusion

Of course, none of this will likely end well for Rod, who I do not believe can be reasoned with in a meaningful way. The pull of access to a man who may soon be the President of the United States and the billionaire behind him is likely simply too great.

But, again, the real scandal here is the effect this self-delusion will have on many of his readers, most of whom are otherwise good people who are being actively deceived by him when it comes to the agendas of both Thiel and Vance. Pointing out, as Dreher sheepishly and reluctantly did in a recent interview that was only published in French, that his pal Peter was “at best — theologically confused” regarding his demented transhumanist beliefs regarding the transfiguration is simply not good enough. The reality is that he has been, and continues to be, a willing tool of Thiel’s agenda and is actively and knowingly misleading his audience by soft pedaling the truth about his ‘friends.’

In his letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul instructed his fellow believers to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” A piece of advice Christians, like Dreher, who have made their Faustian pacts with Thielworld would be wise to finally take…while they still can.