The Latest Witch Hunt

Social media is designed to manufacture the three cons: conflict, conformity and consumption. The sheer level of toxicity has led the moderate majority to quietly abandon platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, leaving them largely to the purveyors of outrage who align most perfectly with the three cons. 

The requirement for conformity has produced a chilling effect on free speech and the imposition of a rigid binary. That kind of black and white thinking is anathema to the practice of magic and witchcraft. It is the new puritanism, to which I reply non serviam. 

For the sake of clarity, and those who are not familiar with my fifteen years of public work, books, essays, presentations and lectures, these are the facts:

I hold a bachelor’s degree in political science, where I pursued my utopian dreams for society through a Marxist class-based analysis. It became clear to me that revolutionary socialism was not the answer, and was either unrealistic or unfolded into new forms of tyranny. I turned to the pursuit of magic. I maintain a class-based analysis, rather than the divisive and dangerous ideology of identity, and am perhaps best described as a green anarchist. My views and actions have always been on the political left. 

I have consistently opposed and fought fascism in the occult, in private and in public, when no-one else dared to speak, or criticised me for doing so. I have twice withdrawn my work from publishers who platform people with extreme rightwing views.

To accuse me of being a fascist, a fascist sympathiser, or in any way aligning myself with fascism, is defamation, and frankly, madness. 

So why am I being attacked?

The current nonsense is a result of an hour long conversation with Gordon White on cursing and a work of Jack Parsons, ‘The Witchcraft,’ a text of radical liberation and freedom.

The Twitter mob have been furious with Gordon White for his views on Covid, and also with us for standing with our friend and author and continuing to publish his work. They want him to be cancelled. They seem oblivious to the problems with the mainstream narrative, and that we have published his heartfelt book on animism and not a tract on virology. Some of the most prominent haters are in direct competition with him for Patrons/Members. Again, the three cons of social media are in play.

Please listen to the discussion in full, if you have not done so.

Please listen to what Jack says about The Witchcraft, as these are very close to my values.

At the end of the conversation we talk about the new McCarthyism and I point out that the social justice activists are crying wolf. If you label everyone you disagree with as a transphobe/racist/white supremacist etc. you will erode the support you will need as we approach the inevitable rightwing backlash. Furthermore, if you render these terms meaningless through their misuse, then you will be unable to hold actual fascists to account.  

At no point do I say we should stand with fascists. Such a position would be impossible to square with anything I have ever said, written or thought; and indeed is fundamentally incompatible with The Witchcraft. It violates the basic principles of the entire conversation and the ethos of our fiercely independent publishing house.

To engage in a bad faith reading such as this is all too common. The bad actors on social media have done the very thing I warned about, which rather proves my point. If, as a life-long opponent of fascism, I am now branded a fascist, or fascist-sympathiser, no-one is safe from the illogic of this witch hunt.

The individuals engaging in these personal and ad hominem attacks are functioning as the witch hunters of a corporate-driven ideology. Identity politics is the ideology of division. They manifestly have not done their shadow work and are functioning as tools of the outrage machine at the very time we need unity most. They profit from weaponising resentment.

So I write these words for those who are caught up in the social media maelstrom and perhaps have not encountered my work. I hope you find my ideas challenging, and that they encourage you to think for yourself.

I thank those who have taken the time to write to me, rather than engaging in empty virtue signalling or outrage. There are more dissenters than ideologues, more witches than priests. 

Finally, I write for those who are staying silent, in fear of the mob, and to them I say have courage! The way must be won.

We are the Witchcraft. 

Peter Grey