National conservatism, a movement created by Israeli Zionist Yoram Hazony, has gained some degree of respectability over the last decade. People associated with the movement have been given space on mainstream platforms. His conferences get a large crowd of academic types, most of whom get a speaking role. The event is one part academic conference, one part networking event. Of course, it is all made possible by billionaire Peter Theil who underwrites it.

Therein lies the first puzzle. Look at the collection of people associated with the movement and it is hard to find common ground. Peter Theil calls himself a libertarian, but he supported Trump. Granted, the space between Trump’s 1980’s civic nationalism and libertarianism is not that great, but most libertarians threw their dresses over their heads and went squealing into the night when Trump arrived. They joined their friends on the Left in calling him a fascist.

It gets fuzzier when you see paleos like Paul Gottfried and Daniel McCarthy, along with varieties of the “new right” like Michael Anton and Josh Hammer. The only thing these people have in common is support for Trump. Otherwise, they do not have much in common with one another, at least on the surface. Then you have people like Rod Dreher and David Goldman speaking at these events. Hazony’s events are the bar in Star Wars for dispossessed right-wing intellectuals.

Things get more muddled when you look at where some of these people come down on the key issues of the day. Here is John O’Sullivan giving a speech about Ukraine at the most recent conference. He clearly knows nothing about the Ukraine or the war, but he is happy to defend the Global American Empire’s meddling. Here is someone writing the “national conservative case” for arming Ukraine. He thinks war with Russia will help in the war with China to come.

Those two are not outliers. Here is Yoram Hazony making the rather farfetched claim that Ukraine was just minding its own business when for no reason at all Russia decided to invade them. If one were to take Hazony’s book, The Virtue of Nationalism, at face value, you would expect him to take the opposite position. After all, Hazony’s book is an argument against empire and it is the Global American Empire that is the cause of the war in Ukraine.

Of course, no one can read Hazony’s book and not see that it is mostly a way to give Europeans the language to defend Zionism. The prevailing ideology of Western elites is explicitly anti-nationalist. An ethnostate like Israel falls far outside of what Western elites consider acceptable, so you can see the problem. Israel ethnically cleansing the West Bank does not fit the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion pogrom. The Hazony project is mostly a way to square that circle to Western conservatives.

As an aside, Hazony makes the claim in his book that a people have a right to a homeland if they have the ability to keep and maintain it. He makes this qualification for two obvious reasons. First, it sets a size limit for a nation. Otherwise, three people could get together and demand independence. The other reason is it allows for the easy dismissal of Arab claims in Israel. The Palestinians have no claims because they cannot keep their own lands.

The fact that this argument is best applied to Israel is never addressed. After all, Israel would not exist without the British then the Americans. The entirety of Israeli foreign policy for over half a century has been to use any means necessary to gain favor with great powers in order to fend off the Arabs. Israel is the product of empire. Now that the Global American Empire is looking weak, Israel is now cutting the Ukrainians loose in favor of the Russians.

Putting that aside, the question remains, what is national conservatism? At this point, the best answer is that it is a holding area for people not welcome at reputable events who never want to be associated with disreputable events. For example, Jason Richwine is welcome at a Hazony event, but at that same event Hazony will rage against “race science” like a grievance studies major. Mark Krikorian is welcome, but anyone associated with VDare is banned.

The result is that national conservatism is sort of island of misfit toys. The only thing holding them together is a desire to get a seat at the table. Thiel’s money lets them put on extravagant conferences at world class facilities, which draw in famous people looking for some street cred as an outsider. For example, Marco Rubio, a product of Conservative Inc., gave a speech at Hazony’s event and now talks about himself as an implacable foe of the Washington political establishment.

Otherwise, national conservatism is a term without meaning. The nationalism expressed by people like Hazony is situational. Israel can build settlements in Arab areas because it is in their national interest. Russia, meanwhile, is guilty of imperialism when she moves to defend ethnic Russians from Ukrainian fanatics underwritten by the Global American Empire. This sounds like the same old neoconservatism that has plagued us since the middle of the last century.

As for the conservatism, there is not much agreement. Hazony claims that American conservatism is rooted in Burke. The umbrella group that sponsors his activity is called the Edmund Burke Foundation. On the other hand, the Claremont people that freely circulate in these events reject that claim. They are Lockeans, at least with regards to the American founding. Others are social conservatives rooting their moral claims in the authority of their religion.

There is nothing wrong with heterodoxy. In fact, more events where disparate people can socialize and debate is a good thing. As a movement, however, there has to be something more than Peter Theil’s money and estrangement from the cool kid’s table of the prevailing orthodoxy. Without a common goal or even a common narrative, it is just a collection of outsiders desperate to get back in, terrified of the ominous sounds coming from the darkness to their right.

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