This week we had a worldwide cover about what is becoming a worldwide movement. National conservatives are not to be confused with the conservatives of old: Reaganites, Thatcherites, country-club conservatives, knights of the shire, pro-business round-table types, traditionalists, neocons, national-security hawks and any of the other Tory tribes.
By contrast with all these, national conservatives are revolutionaries. They sense that they own conservatism now, and they may be right.
National conservatives do not see the West as a shining city on the hill, but as Rome before the fall—decadent, depraved and about to collapse amid a barbarian invasion. Rather than being sceptical of big government, they think ordinary people are beset by impersonal global forces and that the sovereign state is their saviour. Not content with resisting progress, they want to destroy the remaining values of classical liberalism.
These fierce nationalists are part of a growing global movement with its own networks of thinkers and leaders bound by a common ideology. Some of their stars include Donald Trump and Viktor Orban, Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen and, hidden away, Binyamin Netanyahu and Geert Wilders. They share a contempt for multilateral organisations, migration and pluralism, especially the multicultural sort. National conservatives are obsessed with dismantling institutions they think are tainted by wokeness and globalism.
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