During President Donald Trump’s first term, his former adviser Steve Bannon set himself up as a convener and catalyst for right-wing populists across Europe. He vowed to spread the MAGA revolution and to sweep aside centrist parties that he said had sold out to global capital. But his showy efforts to build a durable coalition of populist conservatives failed to pan out.
What has had more traction, though, is an intellectual-led movement to seed a particular brand of conservatism in Western democracies. National conservatives, or NatCons, prioritize the nation-state and safeguarding its traditions and culture over the promotion of democracy, free markets, and global alliances, marking a break with post-Reagan orthodoxy on the right. There is more appetite for state intervention in the economy. Falling birth rates are seen as a crisis.
The National Conservatism Conference, which started in 2019, has become an annual gathering of like-minded populists and nationalists from the U.S. and other democracies that takes place in Washington and European capitals. Now that Mr. Trump is back in the White House, its proponents wield power: Vice President JD Vance has been a regular speaker and attendee. Speakers at this year’s conference in Washington, which starts Sept. 2, include Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, and Russell Vought, his budget director. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, a NatCon regular who opposed the GOP’s cuts to Medicaid, is also speaking.
Why We Wrote This
National conservatives, or NatCons, elevate tradition and culture over liberal democracy. They gather this week for their national convention amid growing power in the U.S. and Europe.
NatCons are just one faction, albeit a powerful one, in Mr. Trump’s political coalition. The nationalist and populist right has been on an upswing in Europe, including in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Reform UK, a party led by Trump ally and Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, who is speaking at this year’s NatCon, is leading the polls in the U.K. The populist right is challenging for power even in smaller countries, like Portugal, which haven’t seen the large influx of migrants that NatCons see as a destabilizing force in larger countries.
Mr. Bannon’s efforts to unite Europe’s populist parties may have been too early. But the cross-fertilization of conservative thought at NatCon offers a parallel track in democracies that are facing similar social challenges, says Rusty Reno, a theologian and editor of First Things, a religious and cultural journal.
“The West is in a time of disintegration of institutions and loyalties. National conservatism prioritizes a shoring up and re-renewal of national solidarity, so it’s not surprising that you’re seeing the same impulses in different countries, although of course they take different forms,” says Dr. Reno, who helped to draft NatCon’s statement of principles in 2022.
The parameters of national conservatism, and its policy prescriptions, are somewhat fuzzy, deliberately so. NatCon styles itself as a big-tent movement in which conservatives may differ on the public role of religion, for example, but not on the need for greater civic cohesion. It’s often easier to say what it’s against: mass migration, “woke” universities, Davos and other global power centers. Yoram Hazony, an Israeli-born scholar who helped start the conference, has called it an alliance of “anti-Marxist liberals, Christians, and nationalists.”
Despite Dr. Hazony’s mention of liberals, the NatCon project is in many ways a repudiation of liberalism, particularly in economic and social policy, says Angelos Chryssogelos, an associate professor of politics and international relations at London Metropolitan University who studies populist ideologies. Instead, the focus is on building a new politics of conservatism that isn’t tethered to libertarian or socially liberal ideas.
Many national conservatives “have come to consider that liberal democracy as a system is probably not fit for purpose anymore, at least for the interests and the culture of the West, and they’re working towards creating some alternative,” he says.
Populist movement keeps distance from Trump
Last July, Mr. Vance, who was about to be formally named as Mr. Trump’s running mate, spoke at NatCon 2024 about what made America a nation. In his speech, he said the liberal belief that America is a nation based on abstract ideals and principles, such as the Declaration of Independence, was wrong. America, he said, is “a group of people with a common history and a common future. If this movement is going to go anywhere, and if this country is going to thrive, we have to remember that America is a nation.”
As vice president, Mr. Vance defended the far-right AfD party in Germany during national elections in February. His speech in Munich earned rebukes from German politicians who had sought to box the AfD out of power, a strategy that Mr. Vance derided. It was an example, say analysts, of how U.S. foreign policy, which had been anchored in the promotion of democracy and free markets, has morphed into the promotion of a MAGA social and political agenda.
Some conservative leaders in Europe felt uncomfortable with the more religious-right-infused policy of previous Republican administrations, says Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham in the UK. “Trump’s Republicanism is much closer to the populist right that we see in Europe, which is focused on immigration [and] secular and cultural conservative concerns, and not really about democracy promotion,” he says.
That doesn’t mean populist parties are seeking his endorsement. “It’s generally a liability outside the U.S. to be associated with Trump,” says Professor Kaufmann, who spoke at NatCon in London in 2023 and is the author of several books on nationalism and identity. Even Mr. Farage, who campaigned last year with Mr. Trump, tries to play down their association.
In Canada’s election in April, Mr. Trump proved to be a lead balloon for conservatives seeking to unseat a struggling liberal government. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who styled himself as a populist outsider, lost the election and his own parliamentary seat after Mr. Trump threatened Canada’s sovereignty and put tariffs on its trade-dependent economy.
This speaks to the tensions inherent in efforts to build bridges between conservative nationalists who all want to put their own country first. Tariffs have become a zero-sum battle in which the U.S. leverages its economic might, reminding voters in smaller democracies why belonging to the European Union, which nationalists attack as undemocratic, is advantageous.
It’s one reason why the organizers of NatCon have built a broad church for their movement that sidesteps “uncomfortable questions” about trade protectionism and relations with Russia, says Professor Chryssogelos.
“A politics of solidarity”
As president, Mr. Trump has embraced a more interventionist role in the economy than have most Democratic administrations, taking or seeking government stakes in private companies such as U.S. Steel and Intel, and setting prices for U.S-produced rare earth minerals. Trump administration officials have said the government could take stakes in other companies.
U.S. conservatives have traditionally lauded the unfettered free market as a source of U.S. strength and dynamism, in contrast to a leftist vision of state-led development that keeps capitalism in check. Conservative radio host Erick Erickson described the Intel deal as “socialism with an R next to its name.”
Dr. Reno says policy unorthodoxy is what makes national conservatism a viable alternative to what he sees as excessive liberalism and economic openness that has hollowed out Western societies. Preserving social capital is more important than breakneck economic growth.
“I think we’re pivoting towards a politics of solidarity, restored solidarity. And that’s why some aspects of the NatCon right seemed to look like the old left on economic policy,” he says.
To Dr. Reno, Mr. Trump’s reelection was a victory for national conservatism, one that could shift the weight of political thought across the West toward a “reconsolidation” of nations. “He didn’t run on limited government. He ran on ‘Make America Great Again,’” he says.
