Common thread collective6/16/2023 Indeed, the status of National Conservatism is fairly unclear. Part of the reason why commentators have attacked the NatCons from three or four opposing ideological perspectives simultaneously is because the NatCons are clearly divided and ambiguous. Imposing US-style constitutional and cultural norms on Britain would defeat the whole object. In any case, the point of National Conservatism is to privilege the right of each individual nation to govern themsel ves in line with their own constitutional, cultural and religious traditions, which will be particular to each. NatCon-adjacent Patrick Deneen’s new book Regime Change, due to be published this summer, takes Benjamin Disraeli as one of his key influences. Yoram Hazony’s book Conservatism: A Rediscovery cites figures such as John Selden, Richard Hooker and Edmund Burke as its intellectual godfathers. Ironically, some of the leading figures in the National Conservative movement have taken inspiration as much from British political thinkers as American. Imposing US-style norms on Britain would defeat the whole object Funny that it doesn’t preclude the same sorts of commentators from impugning British “systemic racism” and importing wildly incongruous US-style racial politics when it suits them. Suddenly this “fascist rainy island” is a beacon of liberal tolerance when it’s rhetorically convenient to bash the Yanks. Of course this hard-edged brand of conservatism has no appeal to secular-minded, relatively liberal Brits! Commentators whose political education consists of reading Rawls as an undergraduate, watching endless re-runs of The West Wing, and following US presidential campaigns with breathless, obsessive excitement suddenly find taking inspiration from American politics to be terribly silly and déclassé. Who amongst the liberal-left doesn’t love another chance to have a crack at them?Ī common thread amongst these critiques is that this is a silly American phenomenon rooted in the sort of hard-right “guns, Bibles and flag s” politics that has been common currency amongst US evangelicals (and perhaps nowadays Catholics) for years, reaching its apogee in Trump. The fact that Jacob Rees-Mogg, Suella Braverman and David Frost are speaking at the conference has given a pretext for painting National Conservatism as merely a collective term for the pro-Brexit right-wing of the Conservative Party, seen itself as a British offshoot of the worst excesses of vulgar, Koch Brothers-style US libertarianism. Criticised simultaneously as a reheated version of American pro-free market Tea Party style populism, quasi-fascist far right quackery, old-school dirigiste social democracy in disguise, and atavistic religious fundamentalism, almost every newspaper is running an obligatory “Why National Conservatism is a dead end for the Torie s” piece this week, in anticipation of its conference in London next week.Īttacks from the left mix the smugly dismissive (“well, this is obviously a regressive low status import from those dreadful Americans - no chance of it catching on here!”) with the panicky-moralistic (“fascism is on the rise! The far right are coming!”).
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