The Acceleration of the Apocalypse

Today I am providing my English translation of an article by Stefano Vespo, originally in Italian and published on ComeDonChisciotte.org on Tuesday 17th March 2026.
(All formatting original).

“War is yours, and power comes from you, not from us” (XI,4-5)

The Scroll of War

“This is madness, shameless madness. Let it have nothing to do with my reason!”

These are the words of Pentheus, king of Thebes and protagonist of Euripides’ Bacchae, spoken as he desperately opposes the entry into his city of the cult of Dionysus, an irrational and orgiastic religion, an enemy of order and reason: the city walls must protect men from the power of the irrational, from its mortal danger.

It is the most direct and sincere expression of the dismay and fear harboured by rationality towards that archaic and sacred dimension which the Greek mind, through Euripides, would wish to banish from itself. The tragedy ends, however, precisely with the unleashing of those very dark forces that were to be denied, and with the death of Pentheus himself, at the hands of his mother Agave, blinded by madness.

The dark forces, so feared, have burst into the city, completely out of control.

The Greek world, as well as having mapped out the horizon of the West’s possible development, also pointed to its inevitable, insurmountable outcomes: even the most tragic ones. Euripides anticipates the outcome of a violent, Enlightenment-style rationality, which hates and excludes the sacred and the irrational, yet paradoxically fails to drive them away, and indeed ends up nurturing them within its own bosom, albeit in a distorted, ambiguous, destructive form.

The very madness that Pentheus sought to banish from the city returns in a vengeful and inhuman form.

We have reached an age in which the unprecedented triumph of technological rationality openly embraces humanity’s most archaic and savage impulses: indeed, it justifies itself on the basis of apocalyptic and esoteric visions, distorted by the darkest and most deadly impulses of the human soul.

Among many others, the war in the Middle East has brought to the fore particular apocalyptic doctrines, doctrines capable of driving entire armies to act, with the aim of accelerating the process of the end times.

These doctrines are the true backdrop to everything that is happening these days.

The Third Temple

What prompted the US to intervene alongside Israel in what is now shaping up to be an epoch-defining conflict against Iran?

No analyst has managed to define the economic or strategic interests of a nation that already held a strategic advantage in the Middle East and control over its energy sources.

An attempt was then made to find an explanation in the declassified documents relating to the Epstein case. These would, in other words, be a weapon of blackmail in the hands of Israeli intelligence to push Trump towards a war that the US military itself immediately described as dangerous and doomed to failure.

The attack left the whole world stunned.

We will probably never be able to identify the true motives behind such a baffling decision as long as we continue to seek them in economic interests or strategies for the management of political power. The real motives do not fall within the realm of economic or scientific rationality: a form of rationality concerned with finding the best ways to ensure the preservation of life and personal and collective well-being.

But it is now clear that this is a rather thin veil, insufficient to conceal another, deeper level, where unsuspected logics are at work.

It is a complex and hidden plot, difficult to grasp and reconstruct. However, certain crucial points can be outlined.

The date chosen by Israel for the attack on Iran was 28th February 2026, the Saturday on which Shabbat Zachor falls, the Saturday preceding the festival of Purim. On this day, it is customary to read the biblical text recounting Amalek’s attack on the tribes of Israel, and thus God’s exhortation to take vengeance against him through a veritable “sacred extermination” of his people:

Now go, strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that belongs to him; do not spare him in the least (1 Samuel 15:7-9)

The Amalekites were all exterminated, down to the last one, by Joshua’s army: children, women and animals included. The date of the attack is therefore laden with significance for Judaism, a significance that is naturally taken to extremes: it interprets the biblical text literally, bending it to a political purpose.

The most chilling episode of this first attack is undoubtedly the slaughter of the girls at the school in Minab, Iran: a massacre carried out by a US missile, a Tomahawk. The school was outside any military perimeter, and so it cannot be explained as a targeting error. One may legitimately suspect that it was a deliberate target, a deliberate choice.

But what logic could ever explain an act so alien to the concept of humanity? Here too, one must draw upon the religious underpinnings that fuel this conflict. A religiosity, I repeat, that is distorted and aberrant, which offends the richness and depth of the biblical text. It is Psalm 137 that suffers this fate, a prayer expressing Israel’s grief over the Babylonian captivity, which ends with two disturbing verses:

O daughter of Babylon, you destroyer,
blessed is he who repays you as you have done to us.
Blessed be he who seizes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock.

It was the hand of the United States that dashed the little ones against the rock.

This detail gives rise to the suspicion that the ties between the American president and Israel go far beyond mere blackmail. It is a genuine collaboration: they probably share more than one might imagine.

In April 2018, to mark the seventieth anniversary of the founding of Israel, the nascent Sanhedrin minted a coin featuring the profiles of Cyrus the Great, the Persian emperor who in 538 BC permitted the reconstruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and Donald Trump.

The juxtaposition of the two profiles sends a crystal-clear message. Trump is deeply tied to one of the most important tenets of Israel’s orthodox far right. The construction of the Third Temple is one of the cornerstones of the doctrine driving Israel’s current ruling class.

Eschatological Zionism links the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem to the final fulfilment of history: the apocalyptic end of time. The site where the Temple is to be rebuilt is the one on which the Al-Aqsa Mosque stands, the third holiest site in Islam.

For this reason, any attempt to destroy Al-Aqsa or the adjacent sanctuary, known as the Dome of the Rock, could provoke an unpredictable reaction across the Muslim world.

That the project is being tenaciously pursued, both in Israel and in the US, is demonstrated by a seemingly bizarre episode. Israel has recently imported a certain breed of cows to a settlement in the West Bank: these are five red heifers reared on a Christian Zionist ranch in Texas.

Over the last three decades, various Christian Zionist breeders in the United States have sought to breed a red heifer that is 100% purebred which, according to an obscure and ancient priestly purification rite recorded in the Book of Numbers (chapter 19), refers to the Jewish sage Maimonides and to various rituals, including animal sacrifices, within a reconstructed Third Temple.

It is therefore necessary to find a pure red heifer before the purification ritual can be performed in the rebuilt Third Temple.

The Children of Light

This eschatological, apocalyptic view of history therefore concerns not only Zionism, but likely constitutes the ideological cornerstone of the elite currently guiding the USA.

An elite that has fully identified with the expression used by Monsignor [Carlo Mario] Viganò in 2020: “In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two camps that I would describe as biblical: the children of light and the children of darkness”. The expression children of light simply refers to Trump’s followers and supporters.

The children of darkness, on the other hand, would be his political opponents. At least, so it would seem.

This is a very common expression in the writings of Paul and John, that is, in the canonical texts of the Christian Gospel. But to fully understand why it has appealed so much to Trump and his supporters, a less canonical investigation into the origins of that expression is required. It appears, in fact, with a very specific apocalyptic significance, in one of the famous texts discovered at Qumran in 1947: the so-called War Scroll.

Qumran is the site where a Jewish community lived during the Second Temple period, around the 2nd century AD. The War Scroll presents itself as a detailed guide for facing the final battle against the forces of evil.

The narrative of the War Scroll describes an eschatological conflict between the “children of darkness”, opposed by the “children of light”, also designated as the “remnant” of Israel who have remained faithful to God. But this clash serves as a prelude to another subsequent conflict. The text foresees a massive return of the exiles of Israel and Judah to the territory of Judea, an event that would allow for the reunification of the twelve tribes. After this, the way would be opened for a war against all the enemies of Israel scattered throughout the then-known world. It is hard not to see exactly what is happening these days in the Middle East.

Trump is strongly linked to pro-Zionist evangelical fundamentalism, which holds that the rebuilding of the Third Temple will usher in the messianic age. In 2025, he himself established an Office of Faith at the White House, led by Pastor Paula White-Cain, one of the most prominent figures in this movement. Pete Brian Hegseth, the Secretary of Defence, is also an exponent of Christian reconstructionism, largely inspired by this millenarian idea.

But the videos and photos in which Trump is surrounded by a crowd of preachers, with White-Cain at the forefront, as they invoke the protection of angels upon him, would suffice: the meaning of that gesture, of that blessing, is clear if one connects it precisely to the messianic expectations of pro-Zionist evangelicals. Even clearer if linked to that ancient text found on the shores of the Dead Sea.

The war described in the Qumran text is a war waged above all with God’s assistance; man prepares for war, but it is God who grants him victory: this is the underlying message of the entire text.

The Technological Apocalypse

Silicon Valley has produced, in addition to a technological revolution that has profoundly transformed the world economy, a new way of thinking, a new conception of humanity and history, strangely intertwined with apocalyptic expectations.
Some of the architects of that transformation have become the priests and prophets of a new era: an era that is drawing near, evoked by the magic of the technical progress achieved thanks to their own efforts.
One of the most emblematic figures, for the discussion we are following, is undoubtedly Peter Thiel. Thiel is one of the most powerful figures on the global technological and political scene. A billionaire entrepreneur and ideologue of the technological far-right, he has developed a philosophy that could be described as a secular theology of the Apocalypse, marked by the paradox of simultaneously nurturing and fearing the forces of the Antichrist, whose unleashing is expected to hasten the end of time.

Thiel’s story begins in 1999, when he founded PayPal and began his partnership with Elon Musk. Together with him and others, he launched or financed some of the most influential tech companies of the following decade: Facebook, Musk’s SpaceX and, above all, Palantir Technologies.
In effect, he created that network of power, money and influence which has now become the ideological core of the Trump administration. Palantir is, in fact, the company that more than any other embodies our era, in which the union of data and power is realised.

Over time, Palantir has built technology capable of integrating logistics, payments, energy, security and biometrics, transforming people into operational profiles. Its platforms are now at the heart of the decision-making systems of armed forces, intelligence agencies, law enforcement and major multinationals worldwide.

Trump has initiated contact with Palantir to build a centralised database of personal information on American citizens: centralised files on citizens, essential for undermining civil rights and civil liberties. Palantir’s power lies in its invisibility: it operates in the shadows of the systems that govern our lives, and is rarely visible.

Thiel has become one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, and Palantir is the system through which the war in the Middle East is now being waged.

Thiel would therefore be one of the most powerful architects of the transformation of our society into a system of total control, of absolute prediction and prevention, of the widespread denial of any form of freedom.
Yet, according to Thiel, the very realisation of this vision—surpassing any form of totalitarianism imaginable to date—would be the best way to hasten the end of time: to bring about the messianic expectation.

His theology of the Apocalypse and his conception of the Antichrist are founded on this paradoxical stance. Thiel sees potential antichrists in people and institutions that take a critical stance towards progress: communism, the United Nations, regulation of technology, the creation of a single world state. Pope Leo XIV himself is regarded as a representative of the Antichrist, guilty of having emphasised that AI is not merely a technological challenge but an anthropological one, dangerously transforming our view of humanity and society.

Yet, according to Thiel, it is precisely this progress, this transformation, that will lead humanity to the brink of a salutary abyss, allowing the final battle between good and evil to unfold and hastening the advent of the messianic age. The true Antichrist is that which halts this acceleration of time. Paradoxically, therefore, those who warn us of an imminent danger in technological progress become the true agents of Evil.
In his lectures, Thiel calls for accelerating technological progress, taking far greater risks, and bringing the world to a point of near-apocalypse in order to hasten the final battle against the Antichrist.

To better understand this paradox, one must consider that the apocalyptic process consists of two stages: the first involves an acceleration of time, in which the Antichrist’s triumph appears to be total. Yet it is precisely upon reaching this climax that the historical process collapses in on itself, making way for the fulfilment of the times.

The control systems generated by AI are those systems that would accelerate the realisation of a society of total control, a society which, in Thiel’s vision, should be the full expression of the Antichrist. Yet, paradoxically, it is precisely these systems that would bring about the liberating Apocalypse and fulfil the messianic expectation.

The Children of darkness

The term used by Thiel, the Antichrist, or Satan, together with his ambiguous relationship with this eschatological figure, marks the emergence of another aspect, which has recently come to light as one of the most disconcerting traits of the world’s political and economic elite.
The declassified documents on the investigations into Epstein have not only brought to light the perverse and immoral conduct of the politicians who govern us, but have revealed certain practices we believed had long since been consigned to the distant past.
Sacrifices and violent rituals, of inhuman brutality, timidly emerge from the documents.
Yet, for us Italians, this should come as no surprise.

I refer to the research of anthropologist Cecilia Gatto Trocchi, who repeatedly denounced the presence in Umbria of powerful satanic sects, whose leaders, linked to black Freemasonry, were accused of practising bloody rituals. The scholar died by “suicide”, throwing herself from the fifth floor of her building, even though she lived on the first!

Another extremely significant case is the one that the Roman magistrate Paolo Ferraro attempted to investigate, gathering testimonies from female “survivors”—that is, women who had passed through the hands of the powerful black Masonic lodges present in our country without going completely mad or losing their lives. Their statements bear witness to the practices used for the mind control of the victims, reduced to mere tools in the hands of their manipulators; but they are also peppered with descriptions of the abuse and ritual violence to which abducted children in various parts of Europe were subjected. This goes far beyond what the Epstein documents have revealed so far. Something in the face of which the outburst of a disgusting sexual perversion appears naive and innocent.

The magistrate, a prominent member of the CSM¹, was removed from office shortly after the investigation began on grounds of mental incapacity and subsequently, in 2011, was suspended from the judiciary.

We pause at the threshold of a dark world, concluding simply with one observation: what is propagated as messianic expectation is probably nothing more than a grandiose manifestation of the self-destructive forces that lurk within man. Attempting to intervene directly in the end times, seeking to hasten what ultimately depends solely on God, is a truly satanic act: in the sense that, in the name of the end times, one ends up justifying every misdeed, and any extermination ends up becoming a necessary sacrifice.

Even the use of the atomic bomb, now cited as the quickest way out of a failed conflict for the US and Israel, can only be explained by the deep apocalyptic impulses of the elites. If decisions were guided by the rational pursuit of maximum benefit with minimum risk, no one would turn to the atomic bomb: both Israel and Iran would suffer irreversible damage, as would the entire conflict zone, so vital to the global economy.

And yet, if Israel were to reach the point of losing the conflict, what action might one expect from its ruling elite, seduced by the idea of having to hasten the Apocalypse at all costs?

A rationality reduced to a mere tool, severed from any connection with the moral or sacred dimension—the rationality of Pentheus—is the one that will ultimately have to be sacrificed, along with humanity.

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1. Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura, Italian for Superior Council of the Judiciary