The Economist Magazine Cover For 02-17-2024

The Economist Read in browser FEBRUARY 17TH 2024 Cover Story newsletter from The Economist SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image The Economist Zanny Minton Beddoes Editor-in-chief This week we had a worldwide cover about what is becoming a worldwide movement. National conservatives are not to be confused with the conservatives of old: Reaganites, Thatcherites, country-club conservatives, knights of the shire, pro-business round-table types, traditionalists, neocons, national-security hawks and any of the other Tory tribes. By contrast with all these, national conservatives are revolutionaries. They sense that they own conservatism now, and they may be right. National conservatives do not see the West as a shining city on the hill, but as Rome before the fall—decadent, depraved and about to collapse amid a barbarian invasion. Rather than being sceptical of big government, they think ordinary people are beset by impersonal global forces and that the sovereign state is their saviour. Not content with resisting progress, they also want to destroy the remaining values of classical liberalism. These fierce nationalists are increasingly part of a global movement with its own networks of thinkers and leaders bound by a common ideology. We have assembled some of their stars—Donald Trump and Viktor Orban, Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen, and, hidden away, Binyamin Netanyahu and Geert Wilders. They share a contempt for multilateral organisations, migration and pluralism, especially the multicultural sort. All that anger in one place led us to consider a garland of barbed wire. National conservatives are obsessed with dismantling institutions they think are tainted by wokeness and globalism. Here they are marching off, having seized slabs of the globe and turned them into flags. White on a powder-blue background calls to mind the UN, which is apt but has bland, righteous, globalist overtones that rather affirm the national conservatives’ arguments. We also tried a busier and more colourful world, but that was just confusing. We were not done with flags. Some people expect national conservatism to blow over, but we think that is unforgivably complacent. The figure perched on the nationalist summit points to their electoral strengths. Mr Trump is leading the polls in America. The far right is expected to do well in European parliamentary elections in June. In Germany in December the hard-right Alternative for Germany hit a record high of 23% in polls. In 2027 Ms Le Pen could well become France’s president. The boot made of flags suggests something more sinister. When national conservatives win elections they set out to capture state institutions, including courts, universities and the independent press. In this way Mr Orban’s Fidesz party has cemented its grip on power in Hungary. In America Mr Trump has proclaimed his autocratic designs. Once institutions have been weakened, it can be hard to restore them. The boot is a violent image. The barbed-wire world is more subtle. By subverting a one-world symbol of unity, it also gets at the paradox of a Global Anti-Globalists Alliance. This GAGA is not the national conservatives’ only contradiction. Italy’s prime minister supports Ukraine; Hungary’s has a soft spot for Russia; the Polish Law and Justice party is anti-gay; France’s far right is permissive. What binds them together is their hostility towards common enemies, including migrants (especially Muslims), globalists and all their supposed abettors. We were taken by this chain-linked flag. It says that national conservatism is all about barriers—against immigrants and globalists, obviously, but also against progress itself. National conservatives are against things more than they are for them, so it is fitting that our flag of galvanised iron is made mostly of air. This worked even better. We had to switch around the list of countries to keep up with the news—in Brazil Jair Bolsonaro is banned from politics. The MAGA hat signals precisely the sort of conservatism we are talking about. And stretching it captures the weirdness of a gang of international nationalists. One of the accusations national conservatives level at liberals and globalists is that they sneer at them. But a movement that cannot laugh at itself is asking to be made fun of. Cover image • View large image (“The right goes gaga”) Backing stories The growing peril of national conservatism (Leader) “National conservatives” are forging a global front against liberalism (Briefing) Also from The Economist