National Conservatism Crisis: Movement at Crossroads

The Nation­al Con­ser­vatism move­ment cri­sis has emerged as a defin­ing chal­lenge dur­ing what should be the move­men­t’s moment of tri­umph under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. On 5 Sep­tem­ber 2025, The Dis­patch, a right-lean­ing pub­li­ca­tion, report­ed that Yoram Hazony, the intel­lec­tu­al leader of the nation­al­ist con­ser­v­a­tives, warned atten­dees at the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ence that they may be at the peak of their polit­i­cal pow­er and risk squan­der­ing it, reveal­ing deep anx­i­eties about the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of their influ­ence. The arti­cle begins:

The nation­al­ist con­ser­v­a­tives have won. Don­ald Trump is in his sec­ond term as pres­i­dent, pur­su­ing an agen­da of aggres­sive immi­gra­tion enforce­ment, pro­tec­tion­ist trade pol­i­cy, and an expan­sion of exec­u­tive pow­er. On nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy, the “restrain­ers” are in and the old-school Rea­gan­ites and hat­ed “neo­cons” are out. The cul­tur­al dom­i­nance of wokeism and sec­u­lar pro­gres­sivism has ebbed as a more con­fi­dent and assertive right-wing cul­ture seem­ing­ly ris­es up. This is every­thing the folks orga­niz­ing, speak­ing at, and attend­ing the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ence this week in Wash­ing­ton have been hop­ing for. So why isn’t every­one hap­pi­er about it?

Read more: https://thedispatch.com/article/national-conservatives-crossroads-hazony-vought/

Key Points

• Yoram Hazony warned Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ence atten­dees that this is the best coali­tion they will ever build and urged them to stop com­plain­ing that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has not gone far enough.
• Rus­sell Vought declared that the philo­soph­i­cal agen­da of com­mon good con­ser­v­a­tives does not have all the time in the world and warned there is a point of no return for imple­ment­ing their vision.
• The unspo­ken fear among nation­al­ist con­ser­v­a­tives is that if Trump’s sec­ond term ulti­mate­ly fails, their vision ori­ent­ed around right-wing indus­tri­al pol­i­cy and retreat from the glob­al stage will have lit­tle pur­chase when he exits.
• Rachel Bovard called for per­ma­nent rev­o­lu­tion by demand­ing that Trump’s pop­ulist pol­i­tics, nation­al­ist vision, and per­ma­nent offense strat­e­gy must become the base­line for Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates from now on.

National Conservatism: The Ideological Coalition Uniting Global Right-Wing Movements

Nation­al Con­ser­vatism is an ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion unit­ing right-wing move­ments world­wide under prin­ci­ples cen­tered on nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions. The move­ment oper­ates through a Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) that rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture from Rea­gan-era con­ser­vatism toward more nation­al­ist and pro­tec­tion­ist positions.

The ide­ol­o­gy rests on ten fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples includ­ing exclu­sion­ary sov­er­eign­ty, eco­nom­ic nation­al­ism, harsh immi­gra­tion poli­cies, and tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly struc­tures. Beyond this, Nation­al Con­ser­vatism pri­or­i­tizes eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment over envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, imple­ments restric­tive social wel­fare pro­grams, and pro­motes nation­al­ist edu­ca­tion that empha­sizes tra­di­tion­al val­ues over glob­al per­spec­tives. The move­ment also embraces con­trol­ling media nar­ra­tives and mil­i­ta­rized nation­al secu­ri­ty approaches.

Hun­gary has become the cen­tral hub for this alliance. Vik­tor Orbán’s gov­ern­ment estab­lished sov­er­eign­ty pro­tec­tion mea­sures that inves­ti­gate for­eign-fund­ed NGOs, fram­ing democ­ra­cy assis­tance as elec­toral inter­fer­ence. Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Putin has posi­tioned him­self as an ide­o­log­i­cal leader of this move­ment, deliv­er­ing speech­es that exten­sive­ly ref­er­ence cul­ture war themes and tra­di­tion­al val­ues while oppos­ing what he char­ac­ter­izes as West­ern cos­mopoli­tan elites.

The alliance has expand­ed through Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ences and CPAC events held across mul­ti­ple con­ti­nents, bring­ing togeth­er Euro­pean far-right lead­ers, Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives, and glob­al fig­ures. Many Trump appointees have par­tic­i­pat­ed in these gath­er­ings, under­scor­ing the move­men­t’s influ­ence in U.S. politics.

Accord­ing to research from the Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists group, par­ties like Poland’s PiS, Italy’s Broth­ers of Italy, and Hun­gary’s Fidesz exem­pli­fy the move­men­t’s com­pre­hen­sive imple­men­ta­tion of nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples. The Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics char­ac­ter­izes Nation­al Con­ser­vatism as a post-pop­ulist phe­nom­e­non that has become the de fac­to main­stream right in many polit­i­cal sys­tems, dis­tin­guished by its focus on nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and state pow­er to shape culture.

Exter­nal References:
— Nation­al con­ser­vatism — Wikipedia
— Nation­al Con­ser­vatism: A State­ment of Principles
— Nation­al con­ser­vatism is the new par­a­digm — LSE

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