American Conservatives Embrace European Nationalists
There was once a time when Con Inc. attacked the Euros for being racist
American conservative media gushed over the nationalist victories in the European Union elections this week. Fox News, Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Daily Wire, The Blaze, and many others celebrated the results. Fox even praised the election as a strong rebuke to “socialism” and “far-left policies.”
The American Right didn’t always treat Euro nationalists with adulatory coverage. Not that long ago, conservative outlets would warn about the dangers of these parties and slander them with the same hysteric claims liberal journos deploy. The positive coverage of Euro nationalists is another positive development for the American Right. Cuckservatism is no longer the reigning ideology.
In the past, the success of Euro nationalists was treated as the second coming of Hitler. When the Freedom Party joined Austria’s conservative governing coalition in 2000, the international press treated it as exactly the same as allowing the Nazis to join the government. EU governments cut ties to Austria and America formally condemned the move. A similar international reaction erupted when National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the French presidential runoff in 2002. The nationalists were not seen as a normal part of politics. They were declared dangerous outsiders that must be kept to the fringe. American conservatives shared this sentiment with liberals.
Some of the hysteria tampered down in the 2010s as the nationalists built up support, but American conservatives still didn’t want to do anything with them. For instance, conservative outlets strove to declare that Marine Le Pen (daughter of Jean-Marie) was no conservative–she was something very, very bad. When Le Pen finished a strong third in the 2012 presidential races, National Review rushed to inform readers that she was definitely not a conservative. The magazine called her “anti-immigrant” (like it was a bad thing) and, worst of all, a big government socialist.
This attitude was shared by the rest of conservative media. When I started working at the Daily Caller in 2014, I ran an article about an election the National Front did well in. I was instructed by the editors to be careful in how we covered the party as we wanted to make sure readers didn’t see the nationalists as the same as the Tea Party. It was not a wise choice to openly praise Le Pen and other Euro nationalists.
This began to change with Trump’s election in 2016. A populist nationalist winning in America made it more acceptable to praise populist nationalists in Europe. But it was still the minority position. When Le Pen made it to the presidential run-off in 2017, many American conservatives still wanted to declare her a foe. She was condemned as a socialist, the candidate of the “alt right,” and anti-conservative. Pundits acted like they would strip the conservative credentials from any of their peers who said a nice thing about Le Pen. Some conservatives even asserted Emmanuel Macron was the true conservative in the race. However, there were some, such as your humble author, who pushed back against this and argued for Le Pen’s Trumpian credentials. (My pro-Le Pen op-ed earned me an appearance on Fox to discuss the French election, despite not knowing any French.)
Formal ties between American conservatives and Euro nationalists increased during Trump’s tenure, even though it remained controversial. French nationalist Marion Marechal, a niece of Le Pen, was invited to speak at CPAC in 2018. Con Inc. was not happy. Prominent Never Trumpers such as Jonah Goldberg (whom people still listened to at the time) attacked CPAC for welcoming a racist statist. CPAC chief Matt Schlapp argued Marion was a “classical liberal” and more moderate than her aunt to appease the critics. (Marion is in fact more right-wing than Marine, which is why the younger Le Pen left the National Front.) Now-forgotten columnist Mona Charen ripped into Le Pen and CPAC itself during her CPAC speech that year. “[T]he Le Pen name is a disgrace. Her grandfather is a racist and a Nazi. She claims that she stands for him. And the fact that CPAC invited her is a disgrace,” she declared to boos from the audience.
Even though Marion Marechal was well-received at CPAC, many conservatives still wanted to attack those who linked up with Euro nationalists. Steve King was attacked in his 2018 congressional campaign by Republicans and conservatives for his warm ties with the Austrian Freedom Party. It was a grave sin to be friendly with those evil nationalists.
This has all changed since then. Now CPAC and other prominent groups proudly host events in Europe with prominent nationalists. This year’s CPAC in Hungary was pretty right-wing. Speakers openly condemned the Great Replacement for displacing whites from their own countries and emphasized the importance of preserving Europe’s white character. It was a far cry from the tired platitudes of past CPAC speakers droning on about how the West is defined by free markets and equality. Viktor Orban is a hero, not a villain, in American conservative circles. Prominent voices want America to emulate his example rather than condemn it.
European nationalists haven’t changed much since the early 2010s. What is different is that they are now gaining power. Additionally, nationalism has achieved a foothold within the American Right. Mainstream conservatism is a much different, and superior, creature than it once was. The arguments against Le Pen and other nationalists read like a parody of Con Inc. to right-wingers in 2024. Even National Review now knows impotent shrieks that someone is not a TRUE conservative sound cringe. Only exiled Never Trumpers at The Dispatch still make these arguments, and few conservatives pay attention to them.
The American Right is now far more nationalist and less wedded to the discredited pieties of the past. It embraces the similarities between its Republicans and politicians in National Rally, the Freedom Party, and the AfD. The same rhetoric is increasingly shared between them and immigration animates the Right in both Europe and America.
It’s easy to bemoan the state of American conservatism and conclude that the mainstream Right is hopeless. There is certainly plenty of cringe to go around in the GOP and Conservative Inc. However, the state of the Right is far better than when I first entered politics over a decade ago. The complete change of attitude toward Euro nationalists illustrates this. The American Right has plenty of room for improvement, but it’s made a lot of progress.
Mainstream conservatives would’ve been offended by the “Ausländer Raus” videos ten years ago. Now they celebrate these videos because they share the same sentiments as the chanting Europeans.
Scott for next Wednesday June-Teenth was there a plan to do a special episode on the holiday, and maybe the George Floyd effect now in 2024? Basically how the Republican base and even some of the Democratic base views the holiday now, and the whole George Floyd issue now in general.