The NatCons in Europe and America

The movement that frightens the left

I registered for the National Conservative conference in DC next week. I have differences with the NatCons. And I hate the conference format of “sit and watch the talking heads.” But I want to see what sort of people show up. If you are going and want to meet at some point, let me know.

I think that the NatCons are more important in Europe than in America. In Europe, there really is a question of how much authority France or Germany should cede to the European Union project in Brussels. The NatCon answer, of course, is “not much.”

Here, there is a related but different issue concerning how much authority the stalwart “somewheres” should cede to the cosmopolitan “anywheres.”¹ But the question of whether we are one nation or not is pretty much settled. Meanwhile, the entire conservative community is in the shadow of Donald Trump. And while he is the tribune of the “somewheres,” he represents an ego, not an ideology.

The mainstream media will label the NatCons “far right” or “populist.” I don’t think of them as populist at all in terms of social class. They are elites who want more power and status. To call them populists is to recall the joke about the guy chasing after troops who are marching. He says, “I am their leader. I should be in front.”

I worry that the NatCons do not want to have any other conservatives (or—heaven forbid—libertarians) in a coalition. Last year, I wrote,

they also aim their fire at people with other conservative persuasions and other ethnic backgrounds.

They see themselves as surrounded by adversaries. And they are correct.

What the NatCons get right is that people do not like the disruption that comes with mass immigration. Libertarians are instinctively on the wrong side of that issue. We believe in the freedom to exit from a political jurisdiction where one is dissatisfied, and that requires the freedom to enter another. And I have to say that I do not feel as threatened by the throngs of Latin Americans coming here to mow lawns, repair roofs, and clean hotel rooms as I would be by the immigrants from Muslim countries flooding into Europe, seemingly with less eagerness to work.

In France, the NatCons are represented by the National Rally party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. Against them, the French left is ready to man the barricades.

Frank Furedi writes,

Having framed the situation in France as comparable to that of the 1930s, the militant sections of the French Left claim that they have the duty to take matters into their own hands. In recent weeks there have ben numerous violent demonstrations directed against the very existence of the RN. Many of these demonstrators have indicated that should the RN win the coming election they will not accept its legitimacy. In effect their behaviour indicates that should the RN triumph, they are ready to unleash a conflict that is tantamount to a Civil War.

Of course, I have said that this is a plausible scenario for the American left if when Mr. Trump wins in November. Another similarity with America:

Groups of civil servants have joined the campaign to undermine the RN should it be elected to form a government. ‘In conscience and responsibility, we will not obey’ the decision of an RN Government, stated a statement by a group of 200 civil servants in France’s education sector. The casual way they expressed their decision to ignore the legitimacy of an elected government highlights the contempt with which they regard the results of a democratic election not to their liking.

Ed West points out that the new conservative movement has gained traction with young people, especially young men.

Across continental Europe, the young are moving to the right. In the Guardian, Albena Azmanova warned that we are ‘witnessing something new: the first signs of a populist insurrection of the young. In both European and national elections, voters under 30 have given their support to far-right parties… 32% of the French youth, irrespective of gender, supported National Rally. 

In the UK,

What should alarm the Tories most of all is the that fact that Reform may have twice as many young voters. Farage is surrounded by young activists, and is outperforming everyone on TikTok, appealing to young men in particular, just as the populist right has done across the continent.

There is so much in West’s essay worth excerpting. For example,

Guy Chazan, in the Financial Times article on why the right is appealing to young Germans, cited an AfD politician who said that the left has lost its cool [I take this to mean cool in the sense of status, not composure]. This is likely to happen when any idea becomes hegemonic, and comes to attract ideological drones and scolds.

The NatCons may be providing a vehicle for people to express secret preferences.

Timur Kuran wrote,

Preference falsification has been central to the trajectory of DEI. People who abhor DEI principles and methods came to favor these publicly through a preference cascade. Every instance of preference falsification induced others to pretend they consider DEI just, efficient, beneficial to marginalized groups, etc. In time, a false consensus effectively displaced the search for truth as the university’s core mission, replacing it with DEI. Most professors watched in concealed horror the transfer of enormous powers from themselves to rapidly growing DEI bureaucracies. …The stage was set for a preference cascade in reverse. The shock that unleashed the ongoing cascade in reverse was the Hamas massacres of October 7. The chain of events that they triggered in the U.S.—anti-Jewish demonstrations, the Congressional hearings, the plagiarism revelations—brought to the surface outrage that had been building up quietly for years.

He means outrage against social justice activism and its institutional and linguistic hegemony.

It will be interesting to see what happens in forthcoming elections in the UK, France, and the U.S. Perhaps establishment parties will do well, because constituents who are disaffected and young tend not to vote. Or perhaps there is a growing “preference cascade” of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment that will bolster the far left. Or perhaps the main “preference cascade” is anti-Woke, and it will benefit National Rally, Reform, and Mr. Trump.

substacks referenced above: @

Farage's children

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Civil War In France?

1. I refer, of course, to David Goodhart’s terminology.