Peter Thiel Isn’t Coming: Milo Rau’s scandal in waiting at the Wiener Festwochen

On May 27, 2026, Geoffroy De Lagasnerie – French philosopher and public intellectual – made a long post on Instagram, stating:

             I was invited to deliver a keynote speech on June 11 at the Vienna Festwochen on art and political resistance. After learning that Peter Thiel had also been invited to the festival, I decided to cancel my participation.[1]

 Peter Thiel? At the Festwochen? Obviously not.

 Peter Thiel is a German American venture capitalist and right-wing, technofascist billionaire who, through a casual use of theological terms, has positioned himself as if an intellectual in an era of Joe Rogans and Theo Vons. The Festwochen’s (€25.00) event «Armageddon and Antichrist? From Theology to Realpolitik» was scheduled for June 7 at 8:00pm at Vienna’s InterContinental Hotel: a public debate for an audience of 600 between Peter Thiel and Austrian theologian Wolfgang Palaver moderated by artistic director Milo Rau. According to the event page, both participants had «confirmed their attendance»[2] with the event framed within the Festwochen’s «Republic of Gods.»

 Great… super… as Milo Rau would say «fantastico».

 But following De Lagasnerie’s post, Rau and the Festwochen faced public scrutiny. Even Veronica Kaup-Hasler, Vienna’s executive city councillor for cultural affairs and an adamant supporter of Rau, moderately criticized the decision as ill-thought out, questioning the merit of the invitation.[3]

 Still, the scandal served as a serendipitous testing ground for the Festwochen’s cancellation protocol, developed with such great wisdom and foresight in the 2024 Vienna Declaration and elaborated at the Vienna Congress’s (2025) Cancel Culture weekend. Amidst the commotion, on May 29, the Festwochen held a separate public debate with Rau, Palaver, dramaturg Sara Abbasi, and political scientist/member of the Festwochen’s Council of the Republic Monika Mokre, moderated by head of communication Judith Staudinger. Yet the response in the room was a resounding «Meh», and while some audience members questioned why the Festwochen was giving Thiel a stage, by-and-large the response praised the Festwochen as a space of dialogue. The debate concluded with Rau and his team assuring the audience they would announce their decision on Thiel within 24-hours.

 Late the next day, the Festwochen announced Peter Thiel’s invitation was withdrawn and Rau issued the following statement:

 Not at any cost: I take the critical voices very seriously. Out of my responsibility for the overall programme, I unfortunately had to decide against the planned event with Peter Thiel, although I found it extremely compelling and thematically consistent within the framework of the REPUBLIC OF GODS. However, insisting on the event would run counter to my appreciation of our artistic programme and everyone involved in it.[4]

 So that’s that.

 Peter Thiel isn’t coming, but Milo Rau and Festwochen are on everyone’s lips and, in the subsequent days, reports (positive and negative) about the provocative political theatre-maker and scandal were abound.

 But here’s the thing. It’s not just that Peter Thiel isn’t coming, it’s that – at least from where I stand – he was only ever coming in the sense of Godot.

 I can’t confirm or deny if an invitation was actually sent to Peter Thiel, that is between Rau and his (republic of) gods. But I can’t shake the suspicion that Peter Thiel doesn’t care about the Festwochen, and while the tight timeframe of the invitation and withdrawal provide an aura of plausibility, there are also hints that Thiel’s imminent arrival in Vienna were unlikely. Around the start of the scandal, Peter Thiel moved to Argentina (out of sympathy for its Trumpian president and an apparent desire to escape California taxes), and on May 24, mere days before De Lagasnerie’s post, Thiel attended a chess tournament at a Buenos Aires chess club – his go-bag for Vienna surely packed in anticipation at the mansion door.[5]

 Rau is no stranger to controversy. He’s built a career around the serial production of scandal. What should stand out when we consider this scandal is that Rau is not so naïve as to think that this invitation would not incite exactly this result. This invitation was meant to be scandalous. It was meant to provoke. It is a media event, but was it meant to invite?

 As De Lagasnerie points out, when we offer people like Thiel stages, we subtly endorse them. The invitation suggests that Peter Thiel’s use and abuse of Christian terminologies are equal to an actual expert (in this case Palaver). But not every doomsday conspiracy theorist is a theologian, and vice versa. We live in a media ecology oversaturated with this kind of rhetoric and offering people like Thiel a theatre only provides further cultural capital. Peter Thiel is a public, media figure, intertwined with the current media landscape and with power over both medium and message. We don’t need to share a room with Thiel to talk about his conceptions of «Dark Enlightenment» or «Antichrist», we have them at our fingertips. So, an era of political podcastification, what does it mean for us (on the left) to provide these physical, literal stages? To insist that by engaging in a debate that the better side will win, especially when we know the other side isn’t engaging in good faith? When we as moderators, protagonists, and the choir being preached to aren’t engaging with them in good faith either?

 Rau’s recent trial projects – The Vienna Trials (2024), Vienna Congress (2025), Trial Against Germany (2026), and Tribunal of Faith (2026) – are rooted in French political scientist Chantal Mouffe’s concept of agonistic pluralism. An idea that asserts by creating democratic spaces for conflicting political views to co-exist, we can productively engage with each other. However, Rau’s trials frequently find themselves reduced to simplistic protagonist-antagonist binaries. Once we stand in these binaries, it isn’t about a good faith engagement from either side, but a Besserwisser mentality. This easily slips into something uncomfortable, at times even mean spirited, scoffing at a private person alone in a public situation (for example Ulrike Guérot in The Vienna Congress). Not engagement so much as mockery.

 Not that it matters, Peter Thiel isn’t coming.

 Previous projects invited figures from the German and Austrian Far Right as experts, most notably Frauke Petry, a far-right German political figure and former head of Germany’s AfD. At The Vienna Trials’ second weekend (the trial of the FPÖ), Petry and her husband Marcus Pretzell served as defense council and were probably the event’s biggest winners. The pair approached the trial with a genuinely theatrical self-awareness (hurling out such bangers as «communist artistic director Milo Rau» and the «Soviet Republic of Vienna»), inviting the audience to laugh with them rather than at them. Short clips circulated on right-wing corners of the internet, giving the couple further exposure just as their localized celebrity waned, all devoid of a larger 18-hour context. Regardless of who won the trial (how the jury or the Council of the Republic voted), the couple won the day.

 This should have come as no surprise to anyone. Cherry-picking is a tried-and-true methodology of the right-wing media ecology: It doesn’t matter who has the better argument, all that matters is the soundbite, the clip, the turn of phrase. Right-wing politicians and would-be influencers know this, and it’s why they appear on these stages.

 But Peter Thiel, in terms of power, influence, accessibility, and availability, is on a different planet than Frauke Petry. Petry is a local figure, with a hyper-localized sphere of influence (and a fair amount of free time). Thiel is international, with more money than he will ever be able to spend. That said, Peter Thiel also isn’t a Jordan Peterson or Charlie Kirk type, not part of the well-worn «Change my mind» or «Owns the libs» media ecology. Peter Thiel is not participating in public or open events. Tickets for his lecture in San Francisco on September 25, 2025, cost $200.00 and the entire event was strictly «off the record».[6] Thiel’s «theological» talks in Rome were held at an undisclosed location and completely closed to the media.[7] With this in mind, if Rau got Peter Thiel, would he actually uninvite him? And if Thiel were invited, do we really think he would meekly retreat, like a scolded child, if uninvited?

 But let’s play out the hypothetical, let’s assume Peter Thiel wanted to come. As De Lagasnerie asked: What does it mean to treat these men and their ideologies as entertainment (something they are already doing)?

 Underpinning Rau’s trials, tribunals, and public debates is a philosophy of liberal humanism, which asserts that we will somehow be more clever and less seduced by the rhetoric should we hear it in person. It asserts that presence is the key to seeing through deceptions, lies, and conspiracies. Through the power of presence, we will see that the emperor has no clothes. But are we just attempting to engage with Peter Thiel on his own terms? Why would we want to engage with him on his own terms?

 Rau alongside many us on the left constantly underestimate the media savvy of the far-right. Why ignore the joke when you can use the platform. Control the media, control the message. Vox populi, vox dei. After all, you can edit the clip to cut out the clothes, you can tell your online audience the clothes are too high-tech to be seen by the naked eye. We also overestimate our media literacy as consumers. We assume we can see through the veneer, even though we’re also buying into a fiction. We’re assuming that both the man and his argument will collapse under (live) scrutiny, but there isn’t really an argument to collapse. No spine or connective tissue. Just a straw man.

The problem is that we are assuming this is an emperor when it’s really a snake oil salesman.

 Furthermore, if Thiel were coming, we’ve created a space friendly enough for him to accept the invitation, and by handing him the microphone, we accept his credentials to enter the debate. But what even is the debate? Rau framed it as both limited to theology but also radically open, according to the May 29 debate, «no questions are off limits.» So, is it entertainment or a theological debate? Because actual theological debates are seldom entertaining.

 In an interview with Die Zeit on June 2, Rau declared «Thiel knew that it was a dangerous room for him.»[8] But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Peter Thiel isn’t Frauke Petry, he doesn’t need the extra media attention. Peter Thiel is explicitly not appearing on antagonistic stages, so if he agreed it would be in an event where he knew the rules of the game. Where he would be allowed to say what he wanted. Peter Thiel isn’t interested in a spirited debate about theology. If he were, there would be a Peter Thiel theology lecture tour, or he would buy a streaming service for «The Thiel-ology Hour». Lord knows he has the time and money. For all we know Peter Thiel has a cabinet of theologians in his Buenos Aires home. But this cancelled event ties into another mythology, one separate but not altogether distinct from Thiel, and one that we should look at with a bit more suspicion.

 «Armageddon and Antichrist?» is a perfect event. In its «if only» utopian tense, it would have gone perfectly according to plan. Thiel would have followed the rules set out. He would have laid out his dense theology that would have been expertly countered by Palaver while Rau would have strictly moderated. The intellectual curtain would have been pulled back for the 600 spectators and we would have seen that Peter Thiel is no theologian, no intellectual, that his rhetoric was flawed.

 But that’s the advantage of a fictional space, it’s always utopian – and Peter Thiel isn’t coming.

 So how far we are we willing to suspend our disbelief?

 Can we believe that Peter Thiel was seduced by the Festwochen’s siren song? When asked if Peter Thiel was being paid for this appearance, the answer was no. So are we ready to believe Thiel would fly from Argentina to Austria to take part in an unpaid debate at a fully disclosed location selling bargain bin tickets of €25.00? What would make this event so uniquely appealing to one of the leading shadowy, Bond villain-esque, techo-oligarchs of our time?

 But Peter Thiel isn’t coming.

 Still let’s keep going: Is Peter Thiel an expert in theology? What does Peter Thiel gain from participating? Why is the Festwochen inviting Peter Thiel?

 And once again, what would we – as an audience, as civic actors, and as a critical apparatus – gain from this encounter?

 Let’s start with the first question: No.

 Peter Thiel is not a theologian.

 He has enough money to play theologian: to buy a podium, a stage, and enough followers to fill a theatre. While Thiel uses biblical terms to talk about a political ideology that is inseparable from his billionaire and venture capitalist status, this does not a theologian make. What we see is a reverse-engineering of genius. A Halo Effect – genius as a transitive property – where we assume that success in one area (especially where money is involved) automatically translates to other fields. Thiel’s theology is not about theology, it is about money and power. But that’s the thing, his invitation also isn’t about theology. It is about the gasp that inevitably accompanies his invitation because of who he is and the numbers in his bank account. Thiel is not interesting because he uses words like «antichrist,» «apocalypse,» or «doomsday,» he is interesting because he has more money than god and uses it to manipulate politics, global economies, and the media. But questioning Thiel’s intellectual prowess in theology opens another door to questions about the other geniuses we might believe in.

 The second question concerns whether we enter the fiction that «Peter Thiel is coming»… Schrödinger’s tech billionaire. This is what Harry Frankfurt would call the essence of bullshit, «grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true.»[9] If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? Here, when we look closely, there was no tree, there was no Thiel, and whether or not he was ever even there doesn’t seem to matter. For Frankfurt, the essence of bullshit is marked by an indifference to truth.

 If I invite Donald Trump to my next aerobics class, write an email to donald.j.trump@hotmail.com, then uninvite him for whatever political, moral, or ethical reasons, it creates a fiction and, without explicitly saying anything, implies something about me.

 What we see is an assumption about controlling and manipulating focus, which is helped by a lack of questions from our side as a critical apparatus. The question becomes why are we reacting and not asking? But with no less than fascism is on the table, how can we be expected to notice that the fascism is – in this singular case – a red herring, as is the alleged Peter Thiel. When the threat of techno-oligarchs is real – even if the debate is not – how are we supposed to react? And therein lies the barely concealed root of the stunt.

 It’s a curated scandal, and Peter Thiel isn’t the subject but an object, a prop, in a bigger (less significant) play.

 The paradox of the would-be (but definitely won’t-be) event is that it isn’t about Peter Thiel. It’s about Milo Rau. The entire debacle whispers that Rau, on the one hand, is up to moderating someone like Peter Thiel and, on the other hand, has enough power, prestige, and influence to get Thiel to come. It is not that Peter Thiel has been anxiously staring at his inbox – peter_thiel_1967@aol.com – hoping and praying for the right invitation, but that this invitation could only come from someone with the status and cultural capital of Rau.

 Also implicit is that Rau has the power to cancel Peter Thiel – or an event with Peter Thiel in it, which is how the term Cancel and Cancel Culture is frequently employed by the Festwochen. That he’s brave enough to invite Peter Thiel and wise enough to listen to the masses of artists pulling out. That said, it is unclear which artists, other than De Lagasnerie, pulled out of the Festwochen – although in all fairness journalist and politician Michel Friedman did announce in his forty-minute opening speech for The Tribunal of Faith that he thought about pulling out.

 But what does any of it matter anyway?

 What evidence might be produced to prove the (un)event’s reality or unreality? An email from Peter Thiel’s personal account (wHaTs_ThE_bIg_Thiel@yahoo.com)? From some assistant? We live in a catfish era. Here, amidst the layers of self-fashioning, the truth is hard to ascertain and perhaps even irrelevant, because Peter Thiel isn’t coming. The paper trail around the affair is thin and our sources are filtered through one narrator. And even if Peter Thiel was invited, was he intended to come?

 The problem is that Rau wants his audience on his side. Wants to be liked. Wants to win – a very human and extremely recognizable impulse. But this creates a cycle: The provocation is aimed at scandal, the scandal is aimed at a media cycle enamoured with scandal, the scandal keeps Rau in the feuilleton, and the feuilleton loves Rau.

 So what is this? Some sort of Valie Export Action Pants performance art where the event may or may not have happened? Where the mythology becomes more important than the event itself? But all without the effort of faking the photographs with the machine gun outside the porno cinema?[10]

 Inviting Peter Thiel is provocation, but not a brave one. Inviting Peter Thiel is an easy scandal because it contains a hollow pathos.

 This stunt is rooted in cynicism. The cynicism comes from an assumption, even a certainty, that a specific response can be triggered. Anyone would have seen this scandal coming, and Rau acutely understands the connection between scandal and media. But the problem with scandal is that it becomes predictable. To maintain a career in scandal you must keep upping the ante, and there is unfortunately an asterisk on scandal. Namely, that it is rooted in follow through.

 The pathos of this provocation is lazy. It triggers an expected reaction and immediately retreats. When the Festwochen press release says, «Not at any cost»[11] that is technically true because Peter Thiel isn’t coming, but the point overlooked is that the threat of a boycott is not a boycott, the threat of pulling out is not pulling out. De Lagasnerie concretely pulled out, but who else? Was there – as Tessa Szyszkowitz pondered in her article – political pressure from town hall and if so from whom specifically?[12] The tickets for the Peter Thiel event had not yet gone on sale and Peter Thiel was not going to be paid for his participation, so what is the cost?

 Perhaps the most interesting thing would have been to commit to the performance art. To sell the tickets, rent the hall, sit with Palaver and 600 other people, like Vladimir and Estragon, for two hours waiting for Peter Thiel. Then – like Cliff Cardinal in his As You Like It (2021) – pull back the curtain, you say: «Of course Peter Thiel isn’t coming! Why would he? But why did you buy tickets to see him? Why did you sit here and wait? What does that say about you?»

 Instead, Thiel’s politics are being weaponized, but not by or for Thiel… although Thiel wins an accidental goal because we’re talking about him. But that’s not the point. The point is that we’re talking about someone else’s politics, someone else’s political art and engagement in a situation that is ultimately – because of the utter lack of Peter Thiel – a non-engagement.

 Instead, we’re backed into a corner. Any act of critique requires us to participate in a fiction, to play in the (cultural) rubble of what’s (not actually) left behind. Rau gains more from this fiction than from the fact. It forces us, as critics and spectators, into a space in which we must engage as if Peter Thiel would and is coming when common sense tells us he isn’t and wasn’t. Because when we are dealing with Thiel – a technofascist and one of the most powerful people in the world – there is a prerogative to take seriously what is non-sense. The closer you look at the claim, the more its probability falls apart, but the seriousness of the implication (Peter Thiel is coming) combines with the non-sense of the situation (Peter Thiel isn’t coming) and it muddies the field of serious political engagement.

 Because in the end – regardless of anything – Peter Thiel isn’t coming.

 «Well? Shall we go?» «Yes, let’s go.» (They do not move)[13]

Footnotes:
[1] Geoffroy De Lagasnerie, «Instagram Post», May 27, 2026, https://www.instagram.com/p/DYz0N4oDeKT/?img_index=1.

[2] Festwochen, «Should Peter Thiel Speak at the Vienna Festival?,» May 28, 2026, festwochen.at, accessed June 3, 2026, https://www.festwochen.at/en/should-peter-thiel-speak-at-the-vienna-festival.

[3] Stefan Weiss, «Veronica Kaup-Hasler zu Milo Rau, Peter Thiel und Lueger: ‚Kann die Kritiker verstehen‘,» May 20, 2026, Der Standard, accessed June 4, 2026, https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000322733/veronica-kaup-hasler-zu-milo-rau-peter-thiel-und-lueger-kann-die-kritiker-verstehen.

[4] Festwochen, «Not at all costs: Debate with Peter Thiel Cancelled,» May 30, 2026, Festwochen, https://www.festwochen.at/en/not-at-all-costs.

[5] Emma Bubola and Ryan Mac, «Why Peter Thiel Is Decamping to the End of the World,» May 28, 2026, The New York Times, Accessed June 4, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/28/world/americas/peter-thiel-argentina.html.

[6] Johana Bhuiyan, Dara Kerr, and Nick Robins-Early, „Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist,» 10 October 2025, The Guardian, accessed 3 June 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist.

[7] Christopher Lamb, «Peter Thiel’s secret lectures on Antichrist in Rome spark debate,» March 19, 2026, CNN World, accessed June 6, 2026, https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/16/europe/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-rome-intl.

[8] Sven Behrisch and Carlotta Wald, «Thiel war bewusst, dass das ein gefährlicher Raum für ihn ist,» June 2, 2026, Die Zeit, accessed June 3, 2026, https://www.zeit.de/2026-06/milo-rau-wiener-festwochen-absage-peter-thiel-debattenkultur.

[9] Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 33-34.

[10] For more about the mythology and misunderstandings of Valie Export’s Aktionhose: Genitalpanik see: Hilary Robinson, «Actionmyth, Historypanic: The entry of VALIE EXPORT’s Aktionhose: Genitalpanik into art history,» n.paradoxa, 32 (2013), 84-89.

[11] «Not at any cost: I take the critical voices very seriously. Out of my responsibility for the overall programme, I unfortunately had to decide against the planned event with Peter Thiel, although I found it extremely compelling and thematically consistent within the framework of the REPUBLIC OF GODS. However, insisting on the event would run counter to my appreciation of our artistic programme and everyone involved in it.» Milo Rau in Festwochen, Instagram post May 30, 2026, https://www.instagram.com/p/DY-UiYSFg1w/.

[12] Tessa Szyszkowitz, «Milo Rau turned tribunals into theatre. Now his own moral judgement is on trial,» June 7, 2026, The Guardian, accessed June 7, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/jun/07/milo-rau-turned-tribunals-into-theatre-now-his-own-moral-judgement-is-on-trial.

[13] Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

 [TB1]I am nit sure if I understand what you refer to as "the joke". (Maybe I am slow and stupid)

 [TB2]I am not sure if I can understand you here. In H C Andersens fairy tale there are no clothes, so what do you mean by : cut out the clothes?

As for the next sentence, it makes more sense, but still I think that the readers will be confused trying to figure out what you mean. I presume you mean that Peter Thiels' presumed intellectualism is a ficttion,l ike the Emperor' clothes, that is: not existing. But when you say below that he isn't an emperor but a snake oil salesman, is it may be not necessary with all this rhetoric?

 [TB3]The saying or expression "God knows", would I translat into "Gud vet", or: Gudene vet, in Norwegian. It is a standing expression, but it actually has the opposite meaning from the way you are using it here. I mean: who knows / Or: Nobody knows / can say if... so and so