James Orr & the National Conservative Movement: JD Vance’s “Philosopher King”

James Orr Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has emerged as a key influ­ence oper­a­tion tar­get­ing Euro­pean pol­i­tics through care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed con­fer­ences and intel­lec­tu­al net­works. On June 23, 2025, The Brus­sels Times pro­filed the Cam­bridge phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor whom Politi­co labeled “J.D. Vance’s philoso­pher king,” reveal­ing how his Edmund Burke Foun­da­tion spreads hard­line con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy across Europe while fac­ing sus­tained oppo­si­tion from anti-fas­cist activists who have suc­cess­ful­ly can­celed five events in Brus­sels over 14 months. The arti­cle begins:

A string of hard­line con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal events in Brus­sels have been forced to close over the last few months after a tar­get­ed cam­paign by far-left activists. In total, five such inci­dents have de-plat­formed far-right events in the last 14 months, where­by local activists had suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed right-wing speak­ers from talk­ing in the Bel­gian cap­i­tal, now offi­cial­ly labelled an offi­cial “anti-fas­cist” city. In the most notable inci­dent, just over two weeks ago, pro­tes­tors egged Brus­sels’ Stan­hope Hotel in a bid to force the venue to aban­don its plans to host two con­ser­v­a­tive speak­ers. The event was forced to hasti­ly move to a new, secret venue, at which media were banned from attend­ing. Oth­er events have also faced sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, but have man­aged to take place regard­less. These repeat­ed can­cel­la­tions have sparked a debate not just about free speech, but about where the bound­aries lie between defend­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues and plat­form­ing ide­olo­gies accused of under­min­ing them. At the cen­tre of the Stan­hope con­tro­ver­sy was a man once described by Politi­co as “J.D. Vance’s philoso­pher king.”

Read more: https://www.brusselstimes.com/1582416/the-national-conservative-who-grew-up-in-belgium-and-won-j-d-vances-ear

Key Points

• Orr’s con­fer­ences reg­u­lar­ly fea­ture far-right Euro­pean lead­ers, includ­ing Vik­tor Orbán, Nigel Farage, Éric Zem­mour, and Suel­la Braver­man, cre­at­ing a transna­tion­al net­work of hard­line con­ser­v­a­tive influence.
• The Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment explic­it­ly aims to place “God and the Bible at the fore­front” while oppos­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and pro­mot­ing “nation­al inde­pen­dence” across Euro­pean democracies.
• Despite venue can­cel­la­tions, Orr’s Edmund Burke Foun­da­tion main­tains a per­sis­tent pres­ence in Brus­sels along­side oth­er hard-right think tanks like MCC Brus­sels, con­tin­u­ing influ­ence oper­a­tions in the EU capital.
• The move­men­t’s suc­cess coin­cides with far-right par­ties becom­ing the sec­ond-largest in mul­ti­ple Euro­pean democ­ra­cies, with Orr declar­ing lib­er­al­is­m’s “monop­oly is over” while pro­mot­ing “oikophil­ia” (love of home) against “oiko­pho­bia.”

Edmund Burke Foundation & the GNCA: Ideology, Influence, and Risk

The Edmund Burke Foun­da­tion has become a cen­tral force in reshap­ing West­ern con­ser­vatism, notably through its high-pro­file inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences that unite US con­ser­v­a­tives and Euro­pean nation­al­ists around themes of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and cul­tur­al preser­va­tion. This move­ment, iden­ti­fed by the GIOR as the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA), rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture from Rea­gan-era free-mar­ket ideals, instead empha­siz­ing pro­tec­tion­ism, strict bor­der con­trols, and tra­di­tion­al val­ues, as high­light­ed in analy­ses of nation­al con­ser­vatism and its geopo­lit­i­cal impli­ca­tions.

These ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional con­nec­tions have cre­at­ed new oppor­tu­ni­ties for influ­ence oper­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly as gov­ern­ments like Rus­sia and Hun­gary seek to exploit the movement’s net­works for infor­ma­tion war­fare and ide­o­log­i­cal con­ver­gence, a trend doc­u­ment­ed in GIOR reports on the risks posed by such alliances. While the Edmund Burke Foun­da­tion and the GNCA pro­mote the renew­al of nation­al tra­di­tions and inde­pen­dent gov­er­nance, crit­ics cau­tion that their hos­til­i­ty toward glob­al insti­tu­tions may fur­ther polar­ize soci­eties and under­mine demo­c­ra­t­ic norms—a con­cern echoed by The Atlantic, which has ana­lyzed the rise of nation­al con­ser­vatism as a transna­tion­al alliance of nation­al­ists who pri­or­i­tize nation­al iden­ti­ty over uni­ver­sal­ist ideals.

Exter­nal References:

1. Edmund Burke Foun­da­tion | Homepage

2. The Ter­ri­fy­ing Future of the Amer­i­can Right

3. Nation­al con­ser­vatism — Wikipedia

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.