Nah, it's advanced SEO. He almost certainly didn't even come up with it himself; billionaires and even centimillionaires can have teams of PR people just coming up with this shit for them all the time.

Boris Johnson (or his PR team) did it with the bus thing, and cheese [0].

Yes, Thiel has nutjob beliefs. Utterly insane.

No, this wasn't one of them. Too calculated. Too sweaty.

We're talking about one of the guys connected to Cambridge Analytica here.

0 - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/boris-johnson-google-search...

Maybe we should be clear about which beliefs we're talking about.

If your claim is that he doesn't believe Greta Thunberg specifically is the Antichrist, then sure. But that's just listening to the words that he says. He never says he believes Greta is actually the Antichrist.

However I believe he does actually believe what he actually said, which is not any more sane: "In our world, [the Antichrist] is far more likely [than Edward Teller] to be Greta Thunberg."

So yes OP is correct that Thiel said and does actually believe Greta "is potentially" the Antichrist. But that's a different claim than saying that she actually is the Antichrist. There are thousands or potentially millions of people (most unknown to Thiel) who could fit into the Greta-Antichrist category broadly. So it's a much weaker claim than that Greta is herself singularly the Antichrist.

Both claims are equal levels of insane and intellectually bankrupt though.

Exactly. The literal claim is just a fig leaf for being able to say 'oh, he surely doesn't mean that' whereas the subtext is far more important and he definitely believes that based on this and many other statements and actions in the past.

Smart people are also good at convincing themselves.

I never said he's really smart. I think he's a garden variety - well, I'd say psychopath, but maybe that's not the whole of it or even the central bit. I think he's one of the quite common people whose first and basically only need, is to always be in control of the situation, including knowing where he has other people. He's willing to lie about what he believes to get that control. He might say something off-the-wall (like bringing up the antichrist) because seeing how you respond to it is more valuable to him than appearing consistent or not-crazy. He probably thinks he can work with it however you respond.

People like this don't hold many sincere beliefs, they spend their time thinking about what they should present to you, not what they should actually believe.