National Conservatism Architect Yoram Hazony Explains Trump and Vance Ideology

The the­o­ry of nation­al con­ser­vatism has found its most promi­nent polit­i­cal expres­sion through fig­ures like JD Vance and Don­ald Trump, accord­ing to Israeli polit­i­cal the­o­rist Yoram Hazony. On 1 August 2025, The New York Times pub­lished an exten­sive inter­view with Hazony, the founder of the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism con­fer­ences and author of “The Virtue of Nation­al­ism,” who explains the intel­lec­tu­al frame­work behind the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion’s approach to Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty and gov­er­nance. The arti­cle begins:

Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance gave a speech recent­ly that deserved more atten­tion than it got. Vance was accept­ing an award from the Clare­mont Insti­tute, a right-wing think tank. And not just any award — an award for states­man­ship. Vance in this speech sets him­self a few tasks. One is to under­stand the nature of the left. And I’m going to be hon­est, I don’t give him high marks for where he end­ed up. The rad­i­cals of the far left, they don’t need a uni­fy­ing ide­ol­o­gy of what they’re for because they know very well what they’re against. What unites Islamists, gen­der stud­ies majors, social­ly lib­er­al white urban­ites and big phar­ma lob­by­ists? It isn’t the ideas of Thomas Jef­fer­son or even of Karl Marx. It’s hatred. They hate the peo­ple in this room. They hate the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. And most of all, they hate the peo­ple who vot­ed for that pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States in the last elec­tion in Novem­ber. This is the ani­mat­ing prin­ci­ple of the Amer­i­can far left.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-yoram-hazony.html [pay­wall]

Key Points

• Hazony argues that nations are built on “mutu­al loy­al­ty” between fam­i­lies, tribes, and larg­er groups rather than abstract ideals
• Nation­al con­ser­v­a­tives dis­tin­guish them­selves from both lib­er­tar­i­an Repub­li­cans and what they call “racial­ist” move­ments on their right.
• The move­ment advo­cates for a dom­i­nant cul­tur­al cen­ter based on Anglo-Protes­tant tra­di­tions to main­tain nation­al cohesion.
• Hazony found­ed Nation­al Con­ser­vatism con­fer­ences, where fig­ures like Vance, Rubio, and Haw­ley have devel­oped their polit­i­cal philosophy.

Trump’s & the National Conservative Alliance: How the United States Leads the Global Right-Wing Movement

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance unites right-wing move­ments world­wide under shared prin­ci­ples of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions. This ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant shift in U.S. con­ser­vatism away from Rea­gan-era ideals toward nation­al­ist and pro­tec­tion­ist gov­er­nance mod­els. Many Trump appointees have attend­ed Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ences, which bring togeth­er Euro­pean far-right lead­ers with Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives to strength­en transna­tion­al ties and advance shared nation­al­ist ideology.

MAG­A­’s lead­er­ship of this alliance cen­ters on shared com­mit­ment to nation­al­ism, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions, though the move­ment faces sig­nif­i­cant inter­nal com­plex­i­ty. Recent con­fer­ences expose rifts between iso­la­tion­ist Amer­i­ca First advo­cates and tra­di­tion­al­ist hawks, com­pli­cat­ing uni­ty with­in the transat­lantic right. The alliance pur­sues an assertive strat­e­gy through vis­i­ble expan­sion into covert influ­ence oper­a­tions abroad while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly tar­get­ing domes­tic institutions.

The Her­itage Foun­da­tion has piv­ot­ed toward nation­al con­ser­vatism under Pres­i­dent Kevin Roberts, cul­mi­nat­ing in Project 2025 and now extend­ing this agen­da to Europe. Her­itage con­vened closed-door work­shops focused on pro­pos­als to over­haul the Euro­pean Union, work­ing with Hun­gar­i­an and Pol­ish part­ners to chal­lenge EU sov­er­eign­ty and demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. This transat­lantic expan­sion demon­strates how the Amer­i­can nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment seeks to trans­form glob­al gov­er­nance struc­tures while wrestling with per­sis­tent ide­o­log­i­cal divi­sions that make the alliance both ambi­tious and fragile.

Exter­nal References:

• CPAC comes to Europe as alliance between the Trump White House and the inter­na­tion­al right grows
• MAGA goes glob­al: Trump’s plan for Europe
• Her­itage Foun­da­tion and Allies Dis­cuss Dis­man­tling the EU

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.