Factions of the Rightosphere - National Conservatives
The four factions of the fledging 'National Conservative' movement.
Of all the groupings of the ‘Third New Right’, it is the ‘National Conservatives’ (NatCons) that have gotten by far the most mainstream conservative backing. They are not as respected by establishment liberals as the Postliberals. In fact the opposite; they are frequently attacked as ‘far-right’ in the mainstream media, and there are no National Conservatives that get to write for the New Statesman (like Sohrab Ahmari does).
But in terms of the right-wing think-tank scene, particularly in the United States, they have been much more successful than the Postliberals, who I discussed in my last article, in part because of their closer (to varying degrees) acceptance of right-wing economics. The Heritage Foundation, once firmly subscribing to the Reaganite paradigm, is now fully on board with the National Conservative vision, of various variants, under current President Kevin Roberts.
Project 2025, the brainchild of Heritage under Roberts, can broadly be described as NatCon. National Conservatism has succeeded at being the ‘intellectual underpinning of Trumpism’. However, serious divides exist in this big tent label, hence why I have split it into various factions.
As the Woke magazine Salon reported in late 2022, there has been discord between the National Conservatives and Postliberals. The Postliberals, particularly the Catholic New Dealers, accuse the NatCons of selling out to the neoliberal establishment on economics, whereas the NatCons see the Postliberals as both uncomfortably left-wing economically and dangerously theocratic, the latter particularly with Vermule.
Yoram Hazony, the President of the Edmund Burke Foundation who spearheaded National Conservatism with his 2018 book ‘The Virtue of Nationalism’, and is the key figure organising the annual NatCon meetings, is an Orthodox Jew. Therefore, Adrian Vermule’s justification of the Mortara case (when the Papal States took a Jewish boy who had been secretly baptised away from his parents) naturally leads to an irreconcilable rift between them.
In the liberal media, ‘National Conservatism’ is the most common term used to describe the breadth of opinion that is the ‘Third New Right’, i.e., the idea that Woke is so embedded in institutions and culture that state power is needed to attack it, but also that there is a chance of success in this goal whilst still maintaining multi-party representative democracy and universal suffrage (my distinction between Third New Right and Dissident Right). The unapologetic use of state power to smash Wokeism is what the liberal media focuses on when discussing National Conservatism, as opposed to their particular characteristics compared to other Third New Right groups, which is of course, the focus on the nation state and a sense that each nation should be able to decide its own moral framework within its own borders.
The National Conservative Statement of Principles was signed by numerous groups, all four of the factions I will mention in this article, as well as one other faction that I think is sufficiently distinct to merit separate categorisation (Paleoconservatives).
To quickly summarise these principles that define National Conservatism from the broader ‘Third New Right’, NatCons believe: 1) the nation is supreme, over and above concepts like ‘universal human rights’, and international institutions claiming to protect these by interfering in national domestic affairs, 2) mass immigration and demographic displacement are existential crises for the long-term survival of western nations, and this process should be immediately halted, and 3) that the traditional national religion and the traditional family should be openly supported by the state, and an impossible standard of neutrality should be abandoned.
Whilst many are religiously conservative, and therefore think their religion is the real one, NatCons are very distinct from groups like the ‘High Integralist’ Postliberals because they respect that the religious traditions of particular nations are distinct, and don’t wish to impose a set of values on other nations, regardless of their personal beliefs.
The page ‘nationalconservatism.org’ is a good article depository and reading list, basically deciding what is canonical literature in the Third New Right and what isn’t (Deneen’s books ‘Why Liberalism Failed’ and ‘Regime Change’ are included, whereas Ahmari’s ‘Tyranny. Inc’, with its excessive focus on left-wing economics at the expense of the culture war, is not). I highly recommend checking it out and following it.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban looms large in the imagination of all NatCons. Indeed, he is the hero of the ‘Third New Right’, proof that Wokeism can be defeated through the framework of democracy (Hungary is still democratic, despite the screeching of the Western liberal establishment). However, it is difficult to put him into a precise faction, partly because of the realities of governing a country, but also because Hungarian ideological tendencies are different to those of the Anglosphere, which this series is primarily focusing on. So I will just say he’s a NatCon and not any of these specific factions.
As mentioned previously, this is a movement that is extremely diverse. Some are religious, some are secular, some believe that neoliberal economics are compatible and even complimentary with National Conservatism, others completely reject the Fusionist paradigm and want to move towards a statist, interventionist conservatism (though not full on Social Democracy like Sohrab Ahmari).
Here are the factions of National Conservatives in the Anglosphere.
Orthodox Neoconservatives
This faction is centred around the Claremont Institute, and the numerous other entities in their orbit (American Mind, IM1776, Claremont Review of Books). As you can probably tell from the logo, they are specific to America.
Claremonters, who refer to themselves as ‘West Coast Straussians’, would heavily object to being called ‘Orthodox Neoconservatives’. They are not foreign hawks, what Neoconservatism is usually reduced to being, and are very opposed to the managerial state, indeed blaming it for virtually all of America’s modern problems. So on the surface this indeed would be a strange label, given that the Neoconservative movement is said to have originated from the managerial state and left-wing anti-communist hawks.
However, the reason why I call them ‘Orthodox Neoconservatives’ is because of their subscription to the philosophy and historiography of Leo Strauss, albeit coming to very different political conclusions than most Neoconservatives at present.
I believe we need to re-emphasise what Neoconservatism truly means, because as Claes G. Ryn has pointed out in his book ‘The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not Taken’ (2022), if left unaddressed, major philosophical weaknesses can disable the entire movement, which they arguably did with the American conservative movement and the influence of Neocon/Straussian ideas. There has been some debate as to whether Straussianism can be called NeoCon, with Paul Gottfried and Sam Francis separating Strauss himself from the Neoconservatism that was inspired by him. But I take Ryn’s position in recognising there are clearly some important similarities that justify labelling West Coast Straussians as ‘Orthodox Neoconservatives’.
The important similarity with mainstream Neoconservativism is that the Claremonters, founded by students of the scholar Harry V. Jaffa, believed in America as a propositional nation, detached from its Anglo-Saxon inheritance and having universal applicability. They fully subscribe to the creed of the Declaration of Independence, ‘all men are created equal’, and on that basis, claim that ‘equality’ is a conservative principle. They see Abraham Lincoln as having fulfilled the promise of the Declaration, with the Founding Fathers unable to be true to their own principles by compromising over slavery, even though they justify this as being due to pragmatic political considerations around ratifying the constitution.
Straussians reject historicism, the idea of contextually judging attitudes and ideas in their historical place, in favour of a fundamentalist view of ‘natural rights’. Jaffa, known to be a very confrontational person, was adamant in his devotion to the theory of ‘natural rights’, condemning Robert Bork for not fully embracing this rights-fundamentalism and subscribing to what he pejoratively referred to as ‘legal positivism’ (which I support unironically). The Claremonters passionately hate the Confederacy and Southern Traditionalism, with Jaffa accusing anybody who didn’t take such a universalist view of the American Founding as the ‘Heirs of Calhoun’, which sharply distinguishes them from the Paleoconservatives, despite their alignment in terms of modern policy. They also see the Civil Rights Movement as (mostly) justified.
This would seem a left-wing interpretation of the American founding, and indeed in the late 1950s Jaffa would have represented the dominant historical narrative of the American Cold War Liberal establishment. It is the one that Neoconservatives also share, who would go on to form the ‘East Coast Straussian’ tendency.
But there are subtle differences between East and West Coast Straussians which, whilst seemingly subtle at first, butterflied in completely different directions.
Harry V. Jaffa mostly supported the Civil Rights Movement, seeing Jim Crow as a betrayal of Lincoln’s reaffirmation of the principles of the Declaration. However, he and modern Claremonters like Christopher Caldwell, whilst condemning Jim Crow, also criticise the 1964 Civil Rights Act, specifically Title II and Title VII, for being the law which created a ‘second constitution’ (1). They do not see anything wrong with a strong federal government, but believe that those two articles of the 1964 Civil Rights Act went beyond the mandate of the 14th Amendment, and in fact betrayed it.
Whilst the East Coast Straussians expanded their view of ‘natural rights’ to include the progressive orthodoxy of their day, the Claremont Institute and the ‘West Coast Straussians’ can be said to be ‘late 1950s liberals that stuck to their guns and did not change with the times’, so that when it comes to the Overton Window of today, they are seen as far-right extremists, the Roy Hattersley’s or Chen Yun’s of the American Right. I have respect for people like this, that change from left to right, or from right to left, simply by staying where they are, showing they have principles independent of the Overton Window.
The Claremont Institute were famously the first intellectual backers of Trump, and indeed Michael Anton’s essay ‘The Flight 93 Election’ has gotten much media attention. As Academic Agent has pointed out, there are many elements of the Claremont worldview that are similar to Trumpism: the lack of concern for State’s Rights and passionate pro-Americanism, and the valorisation of Lincoln (I have done more for African-Americans than any President with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.)
People who lazily call Donald Trump a Paleoconservative due to his anti-immigration, non-interventionist, and protectionist stances should remember that he competed against Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination in 2000, and referred to Buchanan as a ‘Hitler lover’ who ‘hated blacks and hated gays’. On the surface, the Paleoconservative label makes sense for Trump, but dig deeper into his philosophy, and Trump is much more an Orthodox Neoconservative than he is a Paleoconservative (some Neoconservatives, like Jeane Kirkpatrick, were not hawks after the Cold War).
The Claremonters are one of the few secular anti-gay marriage groups aside from myself and more ethno-nationalist types. Indeed the urgency of the ‘Flight 93 Election’ essay and their support for Trump must be seen in the light of Obergefell vs Hodges, a link that has not often been made. Even though Trump was supportive of gay marriage, the Claremonters felt he was the only thing stopping total Democrat court domination that would make similar corrupt, lawless rulings to impose and manufacture consent for Wokeism.
You’d think this faction was very inconsistent, and I do. But I do respect them for doing a great deal to link up the establishment right with the online Dissident Right, having moved passed the argumentative nature of their ideological founder, and making concrete policy plans and building up personnel to take America back from Wokeism. They are very much involved in creating ‘Project 2025’ and shaping the Heritage Foundation in a much more radical direction.
Their combination of condemning Jim Crow whilst seeing Title II and Title VII of the 1964 CRA as the poison that led to so many modern ills is a stance I agree with, and was the stance Barry Goldwater took. In fact, Jaffa was involved in Goldwater’s 1964 campaign and wrote his famous ‘moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue, and extremism in defence of liberty is no vice’ line. I too, as a personal preference, would like the line to be drawn around 1963.
But I see the doctrine of ‘natural rights’ as inevitably leading to modern Wokeism, and in fact being the core falsehood that underpins Wokeism. What is surprising to me about the Claremont Institute is that such a Woke-adjacent ideology and view of American history could have resisted the radicalisation of their own core ideas. I’m glad they don’t take their beliefs to their logical conclusions.
In regard to my use of the term ‘Orthodox Neoconservatives’ and not just ‘Claremonters’ to term this faction, I also use it because some of the more explicit Neocons have likewise resisted the destructive conclusions of their own ideas. For example, for all the continuing bitterness around the Mel Bradford Affair, William Bennett, the person who replaced Mel Bradford and is still resented by Paleoconservatives, actually didn’t move with progressive orthodoxy, and would go on to align himself with Trump, recognising the apocalyptic scenario of a liberal majority court.
The Claremont alignment with the National Conservatives, and why I have not classed them as part of a separate group like many others have done, is because of both the formal co-operation between the two-groups, as well as the fact they see the American constitution and the Declaration’s emphasis on ‘natural rights’ as the ‘American National Conservative tradition.’ And in fairness to them, at least now that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) have long since been an ethnic minority in the United States, in modern times it is indeed the most powerful national tradition that can unite American’s against Woke.
This is what ‘MAGA’ is at its most sophisticated and inspiring, using the spectre of the founding fathers, Lincoln, the constitution, and rhetoric of the ‘shining city on a hill’ that Reagan famously spoke of in the brief ‘1980s Renaissance’ his rhetoric represented, to defend against Wokeism. The language of Anglo-Saxon heritage or State’s Rights that characterises Paleoconservative conceptions of American identity means very little to most Americans today. I do not understate the utility of national myths, even though they do remain myths.
Representatives of this tendency include Michael Anton, Victor Davis Hanson, John Eastman, Scott Yenor, Inez Stepman, Charles R. Kesler, and Christopher Caldwell. Chris Rufo was a Claremont Fellow but I will put him in a different faction which I believe he fits better. Publications include the Claremont Institute main website, Claremont Review of Books, American Mind, and IM1776. Books include Christopher Caldwell’s ‘The Age of Entitlement’, which I consider canonical literature for the Third New Right and Dissident Right.
The Neo-Hamiltonians/National Developmentalists
There is an America-specific version of this faction, Neo-Hamiltonianism, that is worth mentioning. However, when applied elsewhere, it’s name would be ‘National Developmentalism’. I will discuss both the American and the general tendency.
The key figure in American Neo-Hamiltonianism is Michael Lind, who has many similarities with the Catholic New Dealers discussed in the last article, but who comes at it from a much more secular NatCon-style angle that I think warrants distinction. Other advocates of this tendency include Oren Cass of American Compass, and Julius Krein, the editor of ‘American Affairs’, which is arguably the flagship journal of Neo-Hamiltonianism.
A good way to describe them would be ‘American Gaullists’. They advocate industrial policy, high tariffs, immigration restrictions, and a collective bargaining system for trade unions. They embrace the use of the federal government to accomplish economic policy objectives, very similar to the Catholic New Dealers. However, they are distinct from the Catholic New Dealers in that they see the culture war as a distraction, and something that can never be won. They want to move past focus on the culture war, whereas the Catholic New Dealers are doctrinaire social conservatives even if not as culture-war focused as other factions.
Michael Lind’s anti-Wokeness is very shallow, with this article in particular reinforcing the taunts and humiliations from the cultural left. Some of his comments here, particularly his repetition of demoralising social attitude surveys, makes me inclined to exclude him based on my personal ‘red lines’ on who is a part of the Rightosphere and who isn’t. But whilst Michael Lind is ideologically quite distinct from the Third New Right, let alone the Dissident Right, his alignment in terms of policy with them, and his association with National Conservative circles, make him deserve mention. This is supposed to be an impartial description of the factions, combined with some of my own thoughts.
To his credit, whilst I absolutely reject the political approach of the neo-Hamiltonians, the narrative Michael Lind has towards American history is interesting. It manages to oppose slavery and Jim Crow without embracing the same rights-fundamentalism that the Claremonters do.
Lind’s basic premise is that Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Party were correct, and the Jeffersonians, later personified in Andrew Jackson, were wrong. He argues that the Federalists had a more consistent, balanced view of human nature and hierarchy. This made them far more elitist on the surface, but in practice, actually far fairer and more consistent, whereas the Democratic-Republicans and Jacksonian Democrats preached rights-fundamentalism, but were always hypocritical in this. For instance, the Jeffersonians supported universal suffrage, but only for white men, and held a fundamentalist view of ‘natural rights’, but which included ‘the right to own slaves’. Andrew Jackson increased the power of the average white American, but was far more vicious in his treatment of Indians and his defence of slavery than the Federalists were (2). Lind thinks that if America had adopted the more elitist ideas of the Federalists, who wished to model the United States off of the Westminister system, a lot of racial strife would have been avoided. Slavery would have been phased out gradually, as they had neither a fanatical devotion to the natural rights of slaves or slave owners, avoiding the Civil War, and also meaning America would have industrialised earlier (3).
As a Brit, I’m more partial to the Federalists like John Adams, who’s more grounded and realist sensibilities marked him out as essentially still an Englishman, compared to the utopian idealism of the Democratic-Republicans like Thomas Jefferson, who is a much more distinctly American figure. Therefore, Lind’s account affirms my national sensibilities and biases. After all, we did abolish slavery peacefully.
Michael Lind sees the political orientation of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, particularly Teddy’s ‘New Nationalism’, as the trajectory America should follow, and rejects neoliberalism and globalisation from a right-wing nationalist perspective. Lind supports industrial policy, high tariffs, immigration restriction, corporatist labour relations, and state planning.
Michael Lind is a close associate of Sohrab Ahmari, frequently writing for Compact, and sharing his emphasis on the New Deal Consensus needing to be restored through a multi-racial working-class coalition. Both men put economics above culture, and so Ahmari isn’t bothered by Lind’s culture war heresies.
American Affairs, founded by Julius Krein and Gladden Pappin (who I mentioned in the last section as being more of a Populist Christian Democrat) is the key outlet of Neo-Hamiltonianism. With Lind as a key contributor, American Affairs always tries to downplay the culture war, seeing a victory as impossible, and instead wants to get to the root of what it sees as the structural causes of Wokeness; the collapse of the cross-cultural working-class coalition of the New Deal. It is very focused on developing American manufacturing against China, and completely rejects the idea of the managerial class being the enemy, instead believing that the promises of Trumpism are impossible to implement without an expansion in the power and size of the managerial class.
Other American members of this faction include Oren Cass and his think-tank ‘American Compass’. This think-tank desires to give more of an intellectual basis to Trumpism, and make it an ideological movement beyond just the personality of Donald Trump. Some of its ideas, like on education and university reform, have fans across the American right, though its protectionism, and particularly its views on state planning, are much more divisive. It’s clear that it has greatly influenced the conservative movement, with Trump more explicitly advocating for high tariffs in his 2024 campaign. It likewise adopts this neo-Hamiltonian economic policy, though American Compass tends to be more moderate and in-tune with mainstream conservative principles than other members of this faction. I am a fan of many of their policy suggestions and think they should be applied in Britain.
When outside the US I will refer to this faction as ‘National Developmentalism’. To give a British example, one should look at Boris Johnson and his rhetoric around ‘Levelling-Up’ the Red Wall. The 2019 Conservative Manifesto was not focused on social issues but around utilising Brexit to create a more developmentalist state. Whilst Boris himself was way too lazy and distracted to ever give any of this a real shot, Ben Houchen, Regional Mayor of Teeside, really did oversee some impressive development in his area, most accurately personifying the promise of ‘Red Wall Populism’. Unfortunately, due to the draconian Blairite regulations around ‘transparency’, Houchen has been smeared as ‘corrupt’ in his dealings with businesses, and his promising Freeport project has therefore been stillborn by politically motivated regulators.
National Developmentalists love pointing to the example East Asian Developmental success stories, particularly Park Chung-hee of South Korea, who is indeed an admirable figure responsible for much of that country’s success. As aforementioned, Charles de Gaulle is another towering figure they look to, as an example of a developmentalist, democratic nationalist leader, who was a conservative that embraced industrial policy and state planning.
However, there is one comparison which has been levelled by opponents of this tendency, which has hit pretty hard; that of Juan Domingo Peron, the populist President of Argentina, who many blame for turning one of the world’s richest nations into an economic basketcase.
Particularly since the rise of Javier Milei, a reaction against the Peronist status-quo in Argentina, this charge has stuck. Bronze Age Pervert did a great article in defence of Milei and against the state-developmentalism of this group and the Catholic New Dealers. He highlights that the eerie parallels between the rhetoric of Juan Peron in the 1940s and this faction today, making a strong case that Argentina was an example of them getting everything they wanted. Not only was it an economic disaster, but embracing the economic left didn’t hold back the cultural left, as the Peronists introduced gay marriage (though Michael Lind no doubt doesn’t care.)
The spectre of Peronism is indeed something one must be careful of, particularly when combining state planning with empowering trade unions (South Korea under Park didn’t do this, and combined state planning with wage suppression.) I do not think the more moderate American Compass-style policies are necessarily Peronist, but the calamity this similar line of thinking has led to in Argentina, a nation that should be one of the wealthiest in the world, means we should be cautious of state-led development. The Michael Lind/American Affairs approach is too close to it in my opinion, and is therefore unattractive.
The national developmentalists often pushed for bipartisan co-operation on infrastructure and industry bills, supporting much of Biden’s economic agenda. However, when GOP populists have co-operated with Democrats on ‘industrial policy’, they have often ignored the small-print DEI provisions the Democrats sneak in; such as with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the CHIPs Act, which make such bills a Trojan Horse to facilitate yet more entrenched taxpayer funding for Wokeism. They also give political wins to a Democratic President, who, with the support of his whole party, is committed to using his office to appoint corrupt liberal judges that make up constitutional ‘rights’ in order to impose Wokeism, and who support the mutilation of children, which makes them an existential threat to the United States and not legitimate political rivals.
Javier Milei has meant the wind is blowing against this tendency currently. But the Peronist charge shouldn’t mean we reject everything they say, particularly some of the well-crafted proposals of American Compass. I think that the best trade policy depends on specific national conditions; Argentina needs total economic liberalisation and free trade, whilst the United Stated did industrialise and create the highest living standards on earth under a highly protectionist regime, with the era of turbocharged free trade since the 1990s indeed seeing a decline in real wages for the American worker. The support for state planning however and working directly with the left, particularly embraced by Michael Lind and American Affairs, I’m less convinced by.
To conclude, whilst I like many of the ideas of American Compass, particularly those that have more obvious utility against Wokeism (even if not explicitly said), I very much dislike Michael Lind’s abandonment of the culture war, despite finding his interpretation of American history interesting. Unlike Ahmari, Michael Lind isn’t a social conservative really at all, and is purely about these economic policies, which have the potential to be very damaging if not done extremely carefully.
New Fusionists
This is a very diverse group. A friend of mine, when I was discussing my idea for this article series, thought that this faction was too broad, pointing out the distinction between a secular libertarian strand exclusive to Britain, represented by J’Accuse, Pimlico Journal, and Poppy Coburn, and the likes of Chris Rufo and more religious oriented proponents of this tendency like The European Conservative and Kevin Roberts.
There is indeed a big Christian/secular divide within this group, like with the Paleocons. However, I think there are important similarities that justify putting them together.
Basically, the belief of this tendency is that the combination of economic neoliberalism with social conservatism (Fusionism), whether that be religious-right oriented social conservatism or anti-Wokeness, are not contradictory, and in fact are often complimentary.
But rejecting the narrative of Catholic New Dealers which suggests Fusionism only benefitted libertarians, New Fusionists argue Woke was able to become so dominant because Fusionism was not actually tried. Instead, conservatives made too many compromises with the managerial state, that kept on funding Wokeness through the institutions and mandating it through the law.
In contrast to the focus on economic populism that the Postliberals and the National Developmentalists have, the New Fusionists don’t see anything wrong with the neoliberal economics of mainstream conservatism, they just want anti-Wokeness and anti-immigration to have a stronger part in the coalition.
They see the managerial class that James Burnham talks about, universities, white collar workers, managers, and urban professionals in areas like HR departments and consultancy, as the key group spreading Wokeism, not capitalists, a view that is better supported by evidence. It is the university system that creates both a Woke accreditation cartel and the manufactured perception of Woke being powerful, which leads to corporations trying to appeal to young graduates on the basis of self-reinforcing statistics of youth support for Wokeness, manufactured by activist NGOs oriented around campuses.
Even if they aren’t hardcore neoliberals themselves, New Fusionists recognise the importance of getting a section of the elite on one’s side. Understanding that billionaires are the only section of the current elite that is both persuadable in an anti-Woke direction, and has the resources to carry out a cultural and institutional counter-revolution, they are indispensable and cannot be alienated with divisive economic populism, aimed at a group that isn’t our core base and actually matters very little. For the wealthy to become anti-Woke, the anti-Woke also need to give them a convincing economic offer that will enhance their profits and power.
Some notable New Fusionists in the United States are Ron Desantis and Chris Rufo, Rufo a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Rufo has advocated withdrawing taxpayer money from institutions promoting Wokeism, introducing universal school choice for K-12 education though vouchers, and making most universities and colleges responsible for taking on their own student loans and liable for student bankruptcy, requiring them to become more focused on employment. In this, he is advocating neoliberal means to achieve anti-Woke ends, weakening and dispersing the managerial regime, something writers at American Affairs lament due to their misplaced priorities.
Kevin Roberts, the current leader of the Heritage Foundation, is also a New Fusionist, as is Heritage generally. Having taken the helm of a think-tank still subscribing to Zombie Reaganism, he has been a great bridge builder between big money conservative donors and the National Conservative movement, being in large part responsible for the development of Project 2025 and its heavy NatCon bent. He is also a practicing Catholic, and supports their socially conservative positions such as on abortion, though he has been very critical of the Postliberals and the High Integralists in particular.
In Britain, whilst some Tory MPs made appearances at NatCon, people like Jacob Rees Mogg mostly LARP as reactionaries but in actual fact are passive acceptors of mass immigration and Wokeism. However, there are some on the right-wing of the Tory Party that have been moving closer to New Fusionism in the past year, even if still held back by the fifth column in their own party and the Woke infested civil service. Examples would include Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, and Priti Patel. Nigel Farage is mostly a gatekeeper so I wouldn’t include him.
An interesting magazine that could be classed as ‘New Fusionist’ is ‘The European Conservative’, mostly British but linked with the Hungarian think-tank and donor network. They claim the NatCon label, and are committed to fighting Wokeism, but in many other ways are quite old school Fusionist, being anti-Russia and pro-Israel, having Sven R. Larson (a Swedish neoliberal) as the economics writer, and talking a great deal about Christianity and pro-life. It is a good publication that is a home for a much weaker European religious right. One could say they are ‘The American Conservative’ for Europe, and funnily enough Rod Dreher now writes for them since leaving TAC, but they are more hawkish and neoliberal than their American namesake, which is one of the the two large Paleoconservative publications (the other being Chronicles Magazine, which is more secular).
Other British New Fusionists include Eric Kaufmann (who describes himself as a ‘Liberal National Conservative'), as well as the Substack ‘J’Accuse’, Pimlico Journal, and the British commentator Poppy Coburn, who I have talked about extensively in my ‘Two Types of Individualism’ article. Carl Benjamin, formerly known in the Anti-SJW Era as ‘Sargon of Akkad’ but who has become a much more erudite and sophisticated intellectual in recent years, is also very much a New Fusionist.
My friend said Coburn and J’Accuse represented a unique tendency, critical of the distinctly British strand of Postliberalism represented by establishment politicians like Theresa May, and distinguishing themselves due to their lack of religious belief and greater focus on immigration and demographic change than people like Chris Rufo.
However, I think these all warrant the name ‘New Fusionism’ because they share a profound scepticism of international institutions and ‘human rights law’, and are all very anti-immigration, whilst more-a-less accepting neoliberal economics.
To conclude, whilst this is a diverse faction in many respects, they are united by their support for free-market economics, fiscal conservatism, and deregulation, combined with much tougher immigration restrictions and anti-Wokeism.
Protestant Nationalists
The final faction that comes under the banner of ‘National Conservatism’, who are America-specific, are what I term the ‘Protestant Nationalists’, often just referred to as ‘Christian Nationalists’ by the liberal media in an exclusively pejorative fashion.
Protestant Christian Nationalists believe that America should be oriented around Christian principles, and are highly critical of the managerial state, wanting it to be dismantled and a more localist, Jeffersonian means of economic organisation to emerge, supported by the social security the church historically provided. However, they do not see their devout Christianity and American Nationalism as contradictory, but rather complimentary.
Protestantism can basically be defined here as ‘not Catholic’ and ‘not seeing the Pope as the head of the One True Church’. They believe all following Nicene Christianity are saved, but are suspicious of Catholicism’s anti-pluralism, desiring a ‘Pan-Protestant’ American majority.
Whilst very socially conservative, this group is more pluralistic, and just more ‘American’ than the High Integralists, that seem to hate the very idea of America. Their idea of ‘Pan-Protestantism’ was the norm in the US prior to WWII. They do believe in a marketplace of protestant churches, with people being able to associate with who they wish. Unlike the Integralists they would allow divorce in certain instances.
The Protestant Nationalists only really want to restore the pre-1960s status quo. They want pornography banned, abortion banned in all circumstances, and the end to no-fault divorce; measures that are unquestionably extreme by today’s standards, but again, normal before the 1960s. However, they do have a traditional American commitment to ‘States Rights’ that the High Integralists do not, which would suggest they would only implement these radical policies on the state level.
There is a link between this group and White Evangelicalism, indeed the Christianity is partially an expression of whiteness, and there is an overlap between this group and Paleocons. Stephen Wolfe’s 2022 book ‘The Case for Christian Nationalism’ is an example of this fusion between Christian and White Nationalism.
I would say they are Third New Right and not Dissident Right because they still operate within mainstream conservative circles and do not completely reject the idea of electoral democracy, they just want the pre-1960s status quo-ante restored, and Christianity explicitly made the state religion, which it already was de facto before the 1960s.
‘American Reformer’ is the key publication of this faction, which does write some interesting articles even if you don’t agree with their Christian Nationalist stance. However, it exists elsewhere as well. The YouTuber ‘Redeemed Zoomer’, who talks about Christianity through Minecraft, is involved in an interesting project called ‘Operation Reconquista’ to take back control of the Mainline Protestant Churches. Even as a non-Christian, I wish them luck in that regard, as Mainline Protestantism’s capitulation to Wokeism has been a devastating blow to American culture.
Pre-1960s Britain, with its established state church and the law reflecting biblical morality, would technically be ‘Christian Nationalist’, and the views of American Reformer are actually less theocratic than that as they do not advocate for one particular form of Christianity to be the ‘State Church’. Perhaps a comparison can be drawn with pre-1973 Irish Republic, but with Protestantism instead of Catholicism, with no formal role for religion in politics but the law reflecting Christian law.
The more more ‘nationalist’ brand of Christianity of the Protestant Nationalists makes them National Conservative rather than Postliberal. American Reformer is not a formal part of the Postliberal movement which is Catholic at its core, but they signed the ‘National Conservative Statement of Principles’, making the NatCon probably more fitting label.
Some individuals that represent this tendency include Stephen Wolfe, Doug Wilson, Nate Fischer, Ben C. Dunson, Bradford Littlejohn, Timon Klein, and Redeemed Zoomer. (18 March 2024 Edit: I previously put Aaron Renn in this category, but he clarified himself as not belonging to it, so I have removed him.)
Conclusion
All of these factions are united by broadly subscribing to the doctrine of ‘National Conservatism’, even though they differ on what that means precisely. They place emphasis on the nation state and its demographic survival, very much ‘conservative’ in the sense of not wanting uncontrollable cultural change through immigration. They also all believe that the nation state should be sovereign over and above international institutions claiming ‘universal rights’, as it views morality as nation and religion dependent in a political sense, even if they personally believe their religion is true.
I mentioned the Paleoconservatives a lot throughout this article, so many will wonder why I didn’t include them. I have a number of reasons for this, mostly relating to its unique historical origins and ideological distinctions. I will explain this in my next article, which will finish off the remaining, ungrouped tendencies of the ‘Third New Right’, and also include some surviving remnants of the ‘Second New Right’ of which Paleoconservatism is one.
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Bibliography
Caldwell, C. (2020). The Age of Entitlement: America since the sixties. Simon & Schuster.
Lind, M. (1995). Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution. Simon & Schuster.
Lind, M. (2012). Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States. Harpers.
Loving this series thus far. Great stuff.
Someone sent me this. Interesting take. I will continue reading this year.
I should point out that I am not a nationalist, Christian or otherwise, as I see nationalism a concept that doesn't resonate in America. I said this directly in my NatCon 3 address, as well as explicitly rejecting Christian nationalism. See:
https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/christian-nationalism
https://americanmind.org/features/what-is-christian-nationalism/nationalism-isnt-american/
Of these groups, my policy preferences are actually towards the neo-Hamiltonian view (I've written for American Affairs multiple times). Though I am Protestant and believe it is undeniable that America is a historically and culturally Protestant country.