Thelema is inherently political. My most recent Substack article demonstrated this through Crowley’s own political writing, but the larger point should no longer require qualification: a philosophy concerned with liberty, sovereignty, and the conditions under which the individual can discover and accomplish their Will cannot remain politically neutral. Politics determines the material world in which that Work must take place.

Part of the difficulty is that nearly every political discussion online is trapped within a supposedly universal opposition between Left and Right that is, in reality, overwhelmingly American in origin. That framework is not politically neutral. It imports the assumptions of an imperial centre and then expects everyone else to organise their thought around them.

Within mainstream US discourse, the Right is now an ultra-reactionary movement increasingly comfortable with authoritarian government, Christian nationalism, oligarchic power and the dismantling of civil rights. Meanwhile, much of what is presented as the “Left” would be recognised elsewhere as centrist liberalism or even centre-right politics: modest regulation, limited welfare provision, basic protections for workers and minorities, and occasional restraints upon corporate power.

The result is a rigged debate. The political centre is dragged steadily rightward while every attempt to defend public services, organised labour, economic redistribution, universal healthcare, Palestinian life, migrant rights or the elementary dignity of marginalised people is denounced as extremist. Positions regarded as ordinary social democracy across much of the world are recast as dangerous revolutionary demands.

This must change. Those in the United States who oppose MAGA and the broader reactionary project surrounding it will eventually have to accept positions they have been trained to fear as “leftist.” Defending the existing liberal centre will not defeat a far-right movement that has spent decades hollowing that centre out, capturing its institutions and redefining the limits of permissible debate.

Those of us outside the United States must also stand firm. We cannot continue allowing an American political spectrum to colonise our language, distort our histories and determine which ideas are treated as moderate, radical or unthinkable. Refusing this framework is not anti-Americanism. It is a necessary refusal of intellectual and political imperialism.

This shift is already visible in the growing reach of voices such as Hasan Piker in the United States and Zack Polanski here in Britain. Whatever disagreements one may have with either of them, their success demonstrates that unapologetically left-wing politics can speak directly, clearly and forcefully to audiences who have been abandoned by timid centrism.

That is the direction in which political discourse must move. The hour for pretending that exhausted liberal managerialism offers a credible defence against organised reaction has passed. It failed to prevent the present crisis because it helped create the conditions from which that crisis emerged.

Thelema cannot answer every political question for us, nor should Crowley’s personal opinions be treated as scripture. It does, however, force us to confront the relationship between freedom and power. A society in which wealth purchases government, labour remains politically subordinate, religious reaction dictates public morality, and mass suggestion replaces individual judgement is not a society organised around the sovereignty of the Star.

The political implications of that recognition are no longer optional.