In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher built a new conservatism around markets and freedom. Today, Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and a motley crew of Western politicians have destroyed this orthodoxy and instead constructed a statist, “anti-woke” conservatism that places national sovereignty above the individual. These national conservatives are increasingly part of a global movement with its own networks of thinkers and leaders bound by a common ideology. They feel like they have conservatism now – and maybe they're right.
Despite its name, national conservatism could not be more different from the ideas of Reagan and Thatcher. Rather than being skeptical of big government, national conservatives think that ordinary people are being ravaged by impersonal global forces and that the state is their savior. Unlike Reagan and Thatcher, they hate the pooling of sovereignty in multilateral organizations, suspect that free markets are manipulated by elites and are hostile to migration. They despise pluralism, especially the multicultural kind. National conservatives are obsessed with dismantling institutions they believe are tainted by wokeness and globalism.
Instead of a sunny belief in progress, national conservatives are gripped by declinism. William Buckley, an old school thinker, once quipped, “A conservative is someone who stands across the grain of history and shouts 'stop.' By comparison, national conservatives are revolutionaries. They see the West not as the shining city on the hill, but as Rome before the fall: decadent, depraved and on the verge of collapse during a barbaric invasion. Not content with opposing progress, they also want to destroy classical liberalism.
Some people expect this will all blow over. National conservatives are too incoherent to pose a threat, they say. Giorgia Meloni, Italy's Prime Minister, supports Ukraine; Mr Orbán has a soft spot for Russia. Poland's Law and Justice Party (PiS) is anti-gay; in France, Marine Le Pen is tolerant. .over, the obsession with national sovereignty would leave people worse off as trade collapses, economic growth stagnates, and civil rights are curtailed. Voters would certainly choose to restore liberalism to the world.
That view is unforgivably complacent. National conservatism is the politics of resentment: when policies lead to bad outcomes, leaders will shift the blame to globalists and immigrants, claiming that this only proves how much is wrong with the world. For all their contradictions, national conservatives have managed to unite around their hostility toward common enemies, including migrants (especially Muslims), globalists, and all their alleged accomplices. Nine months before the US elections, Trump is already undermining NATO.
National conservatives also deserve to be taken seriously for their electoral prospects. Trump leads the polls in America. The expectation is that the extreme right will do well in the European parliamentary elections in June. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany reached a record high of 23% in the polls in December. Ahead of a lost election for Rishi Sunak, the outspoken pro-Brexit and anti-migration Tories are plotting to take over the party. In 2027, Ms. Le Pen could very well become president of France.
And nationalist conservatives matter because if they succeed in gaining office, everything changes. By capturing state institutions, including courts, universities and the independent press, they strengthen their grip on power. That is what Orbán's Fidesz party has done in Hungary. In America, Trump has been explicit about his autocratic plans. The people who work for him have drafted policy documents that outline a program to take control of the federal bureaucracy. Once institutions are weakened, they can be difficult to restore. In Poland, PiS had the same agenda before it was ousted in last year's elections. The center-right coalition that defeated the country is now struggling to maintain control.
How, then, should old-fashioned conservatives and classical liberals deal with national conservatism? One answer is to take people's legitimate grievances seriously. The citizens of many Western countries see illegal migration as a source of disorder and a drain on public resources. They are afraid that their children will be poorer than them. They are afraid that they will lose their jobs due to new technology. They believe that institutions such as universities and the press have fallen into the hands of hostile, illiberal, left-wing elites. They see the globalists who have flourished in recent decades as members of a selfish, arrogant caste that likes to believe they rose to the top in a meritocracy, when in reality their success was inherited.
These complaints have merit, and mocking them only confirms how the elites have become out of reach. Instead, liberals and old-school conservatives need policies to deal with it. Legal migration is easier if the illegal form is restricted. Restrictive planning rules are pricing young people out of the housing market. Closed stores must be separated. To achieve the truly open society they claim to want, liberals must insist that elite intellectual institutions—the top corporations, newspapers, and universities—embody the principles of liberalism rather than succumb to censorship and groupthink. Despite the fact that the illiberal left and the illiberal right are mortal enemies, their heated arguments about wokeness are mutually supportive.
To reduce national conservative fears that people's way of life is under threat, liberals must also stake their claim on the ideas of some of their opponents. Instead of virtue signaling, they should recognize that the left can also be illiberal. If liberals are too squeamish to defend principles like free speech and individual rights against the excesses of the left, they will fatally undermine their ability to defend them against the right. Rather than cede the power of national myths and symbols to political opportunists, liberals must overcome their shame about patriotism, the natural love of one's country.
The great strength of liberalism is that it can adapt. The abolitionist and feminist movements shattered the idea that some people mattered more than others. Socialist arguments about fairness and human dignity contributed to the creation of the welfare state. Libertarian arguments about freedom and efficiency led to freer markets and a limitation of state power. Liberalism can also adapt to national conservatism. It is currently lagging behind.
© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under license. Original content can be found at www.economist.com
