Hitler, Franco, & Mussolini all headed coalitions of Nationalist Fascist & Conservative factions, & all subscribed to a far-right ideology which we may call National Conservatism, & which involves scapegoating minorities & the Left as threats to 'Western Civilisation'.
Should we be concerned that it was Britain's turn to host the National Conservatism conference aka #NatCon, aka the #NatC conference?
Unless you've been living under a rock you'll know that in May, the American hard Right came to England. Calvin Robinson did not speak at it.
Unlike in Hungary, where last year's gathering of Europe’s extreme-right figures was an offshoot of the Trump & Bolsonaro supporting US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the NatCon conference here was backed by the Edmund Burke Foundation.
Last year, Nigel Farage told CPAC the "greatest threat we face" is from "the fifth column within our nations who are trying to destroy the family unit, Judeo-christian culture, our history & our pride", happening in "our universities".
#NatCon participants may not be so brazen in supporting white nationalism as their counterparts in #CPAC, but their preoccupations with ‘faith, flag & family’, birth-rates & ‘traditionalism’ also speaks to an Alt-Right & Christian conservative agenda.
Several organisations represented at NatCon eg Policy Exchange, the Common Sense Society, Free Speech Union, & Legatum Institute, are linked to the 'anti-woke' Koch-funded ATLAS Network, a pro-corporate network which grew out of the #TuftonSt-based IEA.
In Britain, a small densely inter-connected homophily of political actors who share media platforms & cooperate with think-tanks, campaign groups & ‘educational charities’ wage the 'war on woke'. #Spiked is #1 & #GBNews the #2 'anti-woke' media outlets.
The favoured politicians of the contemporary National Conservatives include Italy’s Giorgia Meloni & Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, & their politics are socially conservative, anti-immigration, anti-abortion, 'anti-woke', authoritarian, & invested in an idealized version of “the West.”
In her recent article entitled 'Why So Many Conservatives Feel Like Losers', Helen Lewis wrote about her experience of attending #NatCon, suggesting that 'despite all of its victories, the populist right can’t stop moping.'
Lewis writes NatCon was a safe space for people who had won a true populist triumph—Brexit—& yet still felt like losers. “Why are so many people in Britain today so utterly disillusioned & despondent at the state of the country?” asked Matt Goodwin, in a typically doomy speech.
“Why do so many of us walk around with a palpable sense that something has gone fundamentally wrong, as though we are trapped in a car with the doors locked being driven to some nightmarish destination?”
Why indeed Matt - nothing to do with Brexit or 13 years of Tory misrule?
Goodwin then segued into an anti-woke greatest hits, including the “glaring cultural problem” caused by immigration, through the value of marriage & family, & on to the assertion that “our schools have become a Wild West” because 'they teach children that there are 72 genders'.
In the opening session, Tory MP & evangelical Christian, Miriam Cates, who with Danny Kruger established the New Social Covenant Unit to "strengthen families, communities, & the nation", identified low birth rates as THE biggest problem facing the West.🤪
Tory MP Miriam Cates attributed the low birth rates apparently threatening 'western civilization' to policy challenges & a form of liberal individualism that she deemed “completely powerless to resist a cultural Marxism that is systematically destroying our children’s souls.” 😬
Tory MP Danny Kruger devoted part of his speech to condemning a “new religion” of “Marxism & narcissism & paganism.”
The historian David Starkey claimed that critical race theorists “do not care about Black lives, they only care about the symbolic destruction of white culture.”
Starkey's (& ultranationalist misogynist provocateur & Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes's) far-right edicts echo identitarian rhetoric, which seeks to sanitize hatred of brown immigrants & their liberal supporters by positioning them as a threat to "white culture" & tradition.
Rejecting any criticism, National Conservatives claim to be fighting against a ‘political correctness’ & a 'woke tyranny' perceived as 'censorship'.
If criticized, they mobilise 'Victim-perpetrator reversal' to stylize themselves as 'the real' victims.
Helen Lewis writes that she began to keep score of how many speakers asserted that Britain had been through 'a cultural revolution', the only evidence for which was that students are quite left-wing & annoying. Over & over, echoing Farage, this was attributed to “indoctrination.”
Next was Yoram Hazony, the Israeli credited with coining 'national conservatism', who said the UK is plagued with woke "neo-Marxist" agitators & called for a return to mandatory military service. As Lewis notes, Hazony has done his bit to avert babygeddon by having nine children.
Lewis writes that carping sorts might say that any phrase beginning with national & ending with -ism carries unfortunate echoes of the 1930s, & in branding terms should be avoided as a political slogan, along with, say, “We make the trains run on time” or “Work makes you free.”
Lewis realized that none of the #NatCon speakers had mentioned homosexuality, which would have been a staple of a similar conference in 1990, or even in 2000.
'Sorry, gay men, your time as the biggest threat to Western civilization is over; childless women are the problem now.'
According to Lewis, "the tonal difference between the US & Britain was striking, & I think indicative of the two countries’ relative appetites for nationalism - above all else, British people are suspicious of enthusiasm. This has proved a great defence against fanatics."
In the 1930s, P. G. Wodehouse caricatured Oswald Mosley’s fascists as the “Black Shorts,” while Nancy Mitford wrote an entire novel mocking her sisters’ eager embrace of Hitler.
'Too many #NatCon speakers resembled someone who would harangue you at a party about their pet cause, oblivious to your glazed eyes. Watching Matt Goodwin work himself into a lather about the fall of civilization made me want to give him a cup of tea & a reassuring biscuit.'
'Eventually, the point of NatCon became clear. This wasn’t a political conference so much as a group-therapy session. Here were people who were obviously, startlingly correct about the evils of the modern world, & yet they weren’t being listened to. There must be some mistake.'
In that context, the endless, conspiratorial references to the “elite” began to make sense.
The elite is NOT NatCon chair Christopher DeMuth, former president of the AEI think tank, who attended Harvard before serving in the Nixon Reagan administrations.
The elite is NOT Prue Leith's son Danny Kruger, who told delegates that conservatives had to fight the “intelligentsia, the globalized elite, whose loyalties are to everyone and no one,” and who went to the same boarding school as Prince William.
The elite is NOT Jacob Rees-Mogg, who lives in a 17th-century Grade II-listed Manor House in West Harptree, Somerset, & whose wealth has been estimated to be in excess of £100 million when combined with his wife's expected inheritance.
The elite is students. The elite is the “woke mind virus.” The elite is a shadowy Them composed of anyone closer to the political centre than national conservatives are. The elite is whoever is stopping you from getting whatever you want without having to make any compromises.
Throughout NatCon, delegates kept returning to one question: Can national conservatism succeed in Britain?
The answer has to be no. Just look at #Brexit, that great populist triumph now dismissed as a failure even by its proponents, a mere shadow of what they were promised...
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After eight years as US President, on Janury 17, 1961, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, former supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during WWII, warned us about the the growing "military-industrial complex" (and Trump2.0) in his prescient farewell address.
Before looking at that speech, some context for those unfamiliar with Eisenhower, the 34th US president, serving from 1953 to 1961.
During WWII, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army.
Eisenhower planned & supervised two consequential WWII military campaigns: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–43 & the 1944 Normandy invasion.
The right-wing of the Republican Party clashed with him more often than the Democrats did during his first term.
In England, 18% of adults aged 16-65 - 6.6 million people - can be described as having "very poor literacy skills" AKA 'functionally illiterate'.
This leaves people vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation, and poses significant challenges for society and democracy.
Being 'functionally illiterate' means that a person can understand short straightforward texts on familiar topics accurately & independently, & obtain information from everyday sources, but reading information from unfamiliar sources or on unfamiliar topics can cause problems.
Adult functional illiteracy—lacking the reading, writing, and comprehension skills needed for everyday tasks—poses significant challenges for a country, society, and democracy.
The first asks "Is it OK to smoke while I'm praying?"
The Pope replies "No! You should be focused on God!"
The second Priest asks "Is it OK to pray while I'm smoking?"
The Pope replies "Of course, there's never a bad time to pray"
Nigel Farage’s rhetorical technique of framing controversial or inflammatory statements as questions, often defended as “just asking questions,” is a well-documented strategy - sometimes called “JAQing off” in online discourse - that has drawn significant criticism.
This approach involves posing questions to imply a controversial viewpoint without explicitly endorsing it, thereby maintaining plausible deniability. Farage often uses this strategy to raise issues around immigration, national identity, and 'wokeness' or 'political correctness'.
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was a response to the atrocities of WWII and the Holocaust, designed to prevent such horrors reoccurring.
Withdrawing risks weakening human rights, international isolation, destabilised peace agreements, and authoritarian drift.
Adopted in 1950 by the Council of Europe, the ECHR was a collective response to the Holocaust, during which about 11 million people, including 6 million Jews, were systematically exterminated, exposing the urgent need for a legal framework to prevent such horrors from recurring.
The Council of Europe, established in 1949 to promote democracy, rule of law, and human rights, made the ECHR a cornerstone of its mission.
Influenced by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the ECHR ensured states uphold fundamental rights.
Comparing political rhetoric across eras is a sensitive task, as context, intent, and historical outcomes differ vastly.
In 1990, Ivana Trump said her husband Donald owned a copy of “My New Order” – a printed collection of Hitler's speeches – which he kept by the bedside...
Some of Trump’s statements have been noted by historians, critics, and media for echoing themes or phrasing used by Adolf Hitler, particularly in their dehumanizing language, scapegoating of groups, and authoritarian undertones.
Below, with @grok's help, I’ll provide examples of Trump’s quotes that have been cited as resembling Hitler’s rhetoric, alongside Hitler’s statements for comparison, drawing from credible sources, focusing on specific language & themes, ensuring accuracy, & avoiding exaggeration.
Most people know very little about Trump's new best friend, El Salvador’s strongman leader, Nayib Bukele, who's been sat in the White House being adored by Trump and his team of fawning, dangerously unhinged sociopathic bootlickers...
Read this excellent article by Professor of International Politics at Lancaster University, Amalendu Misra, the author of seven critically acclaimed monographs on conflict and peace, whose primary research concerns violence in the political process.
Trump has unleashed a string of controversial policies since returning to the White House that have put his administration at odds with most of the world. He's also forged an alliance with one country that is willing to do his bidding abroad: El Salvador.