Last April, a squad of armed police officers in Brussels, Belgium, marched into a National Conservatism Conference with the intent of shutting it down. The alleged crime? Hate speech.
When the police saw the TV cameras, they turned tail, exited the building, and blocked people from entering. The next day, a judge ruled that the conference could go forward.
But the damage was done: the local political authorities had branded national conservatives a menace to public order. It would soon become clear that the police action was just one of a series of dirty tricks by European leaders to demonize their opponents as “far right” fascists and “Putin sympathizers.”
Today, the media are once again cranking out fearful headlines. “The French election risks torpedoing the global order.” “The UK election has already failed.” “Macron’s election gambit puts democracy on the table.” The threat? “National conservatism.”
What is national conservatism, and why do good Europeans fear it? Why did national conservatives achieve such significant gains in the recent European elections? What do national conservatives want, and how is it different from other flavors of conservatism?
To answer those questions, I sat down with James Orr, leader of the National Conservatism movement in the UK. As an associate professor of philosophy and theology at Cambridge University, Orr belies the image of the fire-breathing “far right” nationalists the news media has sold us.
