For anyone with a basic grasp of history, a political conference called “National Conservatism” likely carries disturbing echoes of “National Socialism.” But the organizers of the “National Conservatism Conference,” which met in Washington, DC last week, take issue with that. “It’s not the 1930s,” said Christopher DeMuth, the former president of the American Enterprise Institute, in his opening remarks—DeMuth insisted that the better historical analogy would be the religious “Great Awakenings” in England and America in the 18th and 19th centuries. But with speaker after speaker assailing “cosmopolitan elites” and promoting racially exclusive economic populism, the whole event had a very 1930s vibe.
Tucker Carlson, whose Fox News show has become easily the most influential white nationalist media platform in the United States, gave a keynote address dripping with venom against the press, minorities, and the organized left, at one point openly expressing skepticism of democracy. University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, in a panel on immigration, mused that “our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.” John Bolton, Donald Trump’s national security advisor, invoked the term “America First” during his remarks. “We all know the historical association ‘America First’ has for some people,” he said, before dismissing those concerns out of hand.
This is not the first time conservative nationalists in the US have been fascist-curious while simultaneously disavowing the openly Nazi right. The similarities between “national conservatism” and the America First Committee and its fellow-travelers in the pre-World War II era are unignorable. In November 1939, Rep. Martin Dies, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, appeared at a “MASS MEETING FOR AMERICA” at Madison Square Garden, where he condemned Nazis and Communists as thoroughly un-American—even though one of the organizers of the meeting, Merwin Hart, was a staunch supporter of Francisco Franco and his fascist regime in Spain and a prominent supporter of immigration restrictions to prevent New York from being overwhelmed by Jewish refugees.
FOR ANYONE with a basic grasp of history, a political conference called “National Conservatism” likely carries disturbing echoes of “National Socialism.” But the organizers of the “National Conservatism Conference,” which met in Washington, DC last week, take issue with that. “It’s not the 1930s,” said Christopher DeMuth, the former president of the American Enterprise Institute, in his opening remarks—DeMuth insisted that the better historical analogy would be the religious “Great Awakenings” in England and America in the 18th and 19th centuries. But with speaker after speaker assailing “cosmopolitan elites” and promoting racially exclusive economic populism, the whole event had a very 1930s vibe.
Tucker Carlson, whose Fox News show has become easily the most influential white nationalist media platform in the United States, gave a keynote address dripping with venom against the press, minorities, and the organized left, at one point openly expressing skepticism of democracy. University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, in a panel on immigration, mused that “our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.” John Bolton, Donald Trump’s national security advisor, invoked the term “America First” during his remarks. “We all know the historical association ‘America First’ has for some people,” he said, before dismissing those concerns out of hand.
This is not the first time conservative nationalists in the US have been fascist-curious while simultaneously disavowing the openly Nazi right. The similarities between “national conservatism” and the America First Committee and its fellow-travelers in the pre-World War II era are unignorable. In November 1939, Rep. Martin Dies, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, appeared at a “MASS MEETING FOR AMERICA” at Madison Square Garden, where he condemned Nazis and Communists as thoroughly un-American—even though one of the organizers of the meeting, Merwin Hart, was a staunch supporter of Francisco Franco and his fascist regime in Spain and a prominent supporter of immigration restrictions to prevent New York from being overwhelmed by Jewish refugees.
Like that earlier generation of right-wing activists, today’s national conservatives are obsessed with immigration. True, David Brog, one of the organizers of last week’s conference, insisted that national conservatives are not anti-immigrant. But this is a fig leaf. Wax explicitly made an argument for limiting the number of nonwhites entering the US. Carlson, in his keynote, doubled down on Trump’s recent attacks on Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar. “We rescued you from a refugee camp,” Carlson said. “Stop lecturing us.” (The next day, Trump supporters at a mass rally in North Carolina broke out into a chant of “send her back” when Trump mentioned Omar’s name.)