Control lurks behind the rhetoric of freedom, but how might an explicit acknowledgement look like in practice? In this interview, Uriel Aublof explores how the politics of Margaret Thatcher and Benjamin Netanyahu disguised liberty as control, and why Albert Camus’ emphasis on choice over control could change our politics for the better.

Harry Carlisle: Your recent paper ‘Cosmic Political Theory’ describes a universe overcome with dread. If we’re concerned with fear and the human condition, another thinker that came to mind was Camus and his ‘Absurd’. Was this an idea you also had when writing the piece? Is cosmological thinking ultimately an extension of the Myth of Sisyphus?