The closing day of NatCon 2024 (day 3) opened with a benediction by Reverend Uriesou Brito: a Christian nationalist, staunch defender of Doug Wilson, and Senior Pastor of Providence Church in Pensacola, Florida.
Humanity versus unhuman and the Hot Gulag Summer
Afterwards, Jack Posobiec, whose ties to White nationalists have long been documented, announced what NatCon’s enemies should expect come January 2025:
President Donald J. Trump is waiting in the wings. And when he assumes office again, let me tell you, the globalists and their entire regime will be smashed to pieces and scattered to the winds.
Keep in mind that he derided “globalists” at a conference with a distinctly global focus. It’s a bit more legible, of course, when you recall that the term “globalists” has a distinctly antisemitic history. The election, he claimed, was the only chance to “evict the regime…from power and save Western civilization.” He warned his fellow travelers that they couldn’t take a Trump victory for granted, urging attendees to mobilize whatever efforts they could to ensure it:
Are you getting involved? Are you registering voters in swing states? Are you banking, chasing the election turning point and the Trump presidency? You may not have the ability to start a social media platform. But you’ve got a backyard. You got the barbecue. You got the room, Jack. You got friends and family in those states. Let me tell you something, you walk into the Gulag courageously as a symbol to us all.
One can only guess that people like Posobiec—online trolls with White nationalist sympathies—were the target audience for the “Gulag”-themed merchandise at the Claremont Institute’s booth in the hallway (“Hot Gulag Summer,” “I want YOU for the Gulag”—see main image for Day 1 report). Using what scholars call genocide rhetoric, rooted firmly in fascism, Posobiec proclaimed:
We don’t negotiate with unhumans because that’s the stakes of this—humanity versus unhuman; populist nationalist versus atheistic Marxist; globalist strength, beauty, and genius versus weakness, ugliness, and stupidity; civilization versus barbarism; crime and chaos versus law.
This name is not legion, but loser
Like a number of his fellow speakers, Posobiec fixated on what he perceives as male virility, framing Joe Biden as the physical embodiment of the decay and decadence of failing liberalism:
Liberalism itself is Joe Biden, a senile, selfish remnant of a failed world order which destroyed Western economies through invaders, sacrificed Western blood to its most freakish contents, and which tries to supplement Aristotle with the anti-racist baby. And just like Joe Biden, neoliberalism has no juice left in the tank. Like Biden, it is dying… And at the Last Judgment, this name is not legion, but loser.
He closed with a schmaltzy version of völkisch, fascist kitsch, which draped itself in the robes of the Ancient world:
Let me tell you what I see on the horizon at the dawn of a new chapter, as we embark on a rebounding, what I like to call the New West, a vision of a sprawling global empire, but of a collection of nation states working in concert, borne together by shared culture and common values. Philosophy, Roman law, and the values of the Holy Bible. This is what we mean when we say ‘Western civilization’.
“Pro-life” theater
Catholic University theologian Chad Pecknold started the breakout session on the “Post-Dobbs” landscape in the fight against abortion rights in solemn tones:
Now that God has returned it to the States, we face more challenges to human dignity than we have ever faced. The challenge, and indeed the war on human dignity is now being fought in every one of our 50 states, is being fought at the federal administrative level, it’s being fought on multiple fronts.
Their movement, he said, had not been ready for the overturning of Roe—and now, he and others were feeling abandoned by Republicans, in light of the recent attempt by Republicans to appear, at least publicly until the election, less draconian in their anti-abortion stance, given the public backlash against their policies.
Amid recent chatter that Republicans might soften the language on abortion, the RNC released its 2024 platform two days ago which gives zero indication that the GOP has “softened” its position in any meaningful way. “[T]he RNC is committing to ensure embryos have rights equal to a full human person,” writes law professor Liz Sepper on Twitter.
Members of the “Post-Dobbs” panel were still upset, with Pecknold lamenting:
Republicans appear to be skittish, or at least more skittish than they ever have been, about our historic commitment to ending abortion through equal protection under the 14th amendment.
Again, this is simply not accurate, as legal scholars have pointed out. It may also be a useful strategy to act outraged, since it gives Trump the opportunity to distance himself from the most ardent anti-abortion voices in the GOP coalition and figures like Tom McClusky, former senior vice president for the Family Research Council and FRC Action, who voiced his worries to the Federalist a week ago. Today, McClusky sounded angry:
I have been very concerned about coming up here and talking today, because it’s not really been a great week for the pro-life movement right now. First, the RNC platform. I’m sorry. It is the worst platform.
McClusky derided Republicans for not openly stating their desire to ban IVF, with a rather revealing analogy:
They get asked tough questions about IVF and quite honestly, you might as well ask them the question, why did you stop beating your wife? Don’t answer the question you’re asked. The reporter’s not on your side. He’s never going to be on your side.
He and his fellow panelists bashed Republicans for ever claiming the “states’ rights” strategy in the first place, because it would—had it ever actually been sincere—mean that some states could opt out of banning abortion, and he portrayed the Biden administration’s reproductive freedom stance as genocide:
His is an administration that is not just pro-abortion. It lives and breathes abortion. It is their religion—they want to take us out. They want to take out our children. The abortion drug states could fight against the abortion drug, but the abortion drug is promoted by the United States Postal Service that is under federal jurisdiction. That is why the federal government needs to get involved.
It wouldn’t be the last mention of the Postal Service, a hint towards the desire to ban abortion via an obscure 19th century law (see the next section).
It’s doubtful whether this presentation of anger and disappointment was genuine—or merely part of a public strategy which enables Donald Trump to claim that his position is more moderate, pointing to what, in this framing at least, appears to be a maximalist faction within the Right, to falsely reassure voters put off by the draconian policies the GOP calls “pro-life.”
A 19th century law and 1950s century gender roles
Later on, Katy Talento, a health advisor in the Trump White House who says abortion is “disgusting, it’s against every woman’s desire,” echoed a Project 2025 plan to use the Comstock Act, an obscure 19th century law which bans the sending of “obscene materials” via the post office to ban abortion nationwide. “It’s not hard to shut down,” she says, “this is on the agenda for a pro-life administration.”
Lauding young women who stand up against “woke hook-up culture,” which she blamed for the decline in marriage rates, Talento declares that women control access to sex. If they “value it cheaply”—meaning, sex outside of marriage—no man would ever want to marry them, because he wouldn’t have to. In this view, men marry for sex, while women marry for economic security—a deeply depressing glimpse into the gender and marriage politics this movement seeks to impose on the rest of the nation.
Have more children, but have them my way—A rift in the pronatalist-coalition
Emma Waters, Research Associate at the DeVos Center for Life, Religion and Family at the Heritage Foundation, who calls for “restoring heroic femininity” in her Twitter bio, insisted that, for children to “thrive,” it’s imperative that they grow up in a (religious) household of their parents, a man and a woman, joined together in marriage, because “if no one’s having babies, what does this say about the state of our nation?”
It seemed incomprehensible to all panelists that some women might not actually want to have 2.1 children—or any children at all.
Waters points out that while national conservatives should be indeed happy that pro-natalism had, as she put it, become a “fashionable buzzword” on the Right in recent years, being picked up from Heritage to Silicon Valley tech bros, she’s not a fan of the latter model, because it lacks the religious and societal framework she deems appropriate:
Take Elon Musk. Musk has twelve children by multiple women, none of whom he is currently married to […]. And while he’s an excellent ally in celebrating more babies, his own approach fails to ensure the healthy formation of families.
Waters criticized those in the pronatalist movement who, she says:
[D]etach natalism from its natural context and the family and those who recognize the essential importance of married mothers and fathers; family formation as the solution to our fertility crisis.
Maybe this scolding was the reason why the infamous pro-natalist couple, Simone and Malcolm Collins (in the audience with their youngest child)—who are staunch atheists—left early. Watters suggests that apart from financial support from the government to incentivize procreation, an all-out propaganda effort is necessary to convince women that having a bunch of kids is actually a great idea. Listen up, TV executives:
This includes encouraging marriage and teaching others how to dance; matchmaking and arranging marriage options for your children; [and] delighting in children—openly talking about it. There are things like propaganda TV shows. You can raise money. You should start encouraging people to just straight up make TV shows, talking about how great marriage and your children are.
Pro-marriage & children propaganda—maybe a TV show? (But don’t follow Khloe Kardashian!)
Waters’ other suggestions remained vague and superficial, like “making maternity-wear attractive again” to entice more women to want to have children, and “making marriage and children a status symbol…particularly among the elites who have the role and responsibility of shaping our culture.”
According to the panel, women seem to only have two paths in life: stay at home and produce child after child after child to “delight” in, or, like the women on stage, promote path #1 to other women.
It’s inconceivable that some women might not want that life because to them, the central feature of womanhood is the desire to have children. Recalling the “pre industrial era where lots of children were necessary to be running the farm,” Waters encourages us to see children as “your team members, playing a necessary role.”
Endorsing “trad-wife influencers” and the “values” they promote, Waters counsels: “I’d much rather you follow a trad wife influencer than Khloe Kardashian!”
Transforming and dismantling higher education
In “The Universities: What to Do,” panelists proposed strategies for attacking higher education, a longstanding goal of the Right. Inez Stepman, Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, proposed relieving student debt by taxing university endowments—a plan she speculated would win favor among liberally-inclined young people—as a first step toward more aggressive proposals like “expropriation of university property.”
Scott Yenor, an Idaho-based professor who helped organize the Claremont Institute and others to oppose DEI initiatives beginning in 2021. Whereas Stepman called for the dismantling of higher education altogether, to “salt the earth,” Yenor says “my motto on this is destroy and restore at the same time.” Calling on conservatives to take over small liberal arts colleges and turn them into “bastions of civilizational and cultural heritage,” he argues that “our kids are going to go to college [so] we have to build better ones.”
Mark Bauerlein, former professor and editor of the conservative journal First Things, proudly recounted his role as part of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s far-right takeover of the New College of Florida, where he served on the board of trustees. He called for red-state governors to appoint conservatives as trustees of state universities, where they can use the board as a “power center” to gut DEI, revise curricula, review tenured professors, and enlist donor pressure.
“Do it behind closed doors if you can. People don’t want to get in headlines…now is the time to do this.”
Leading “post-liberal” intellectual Gladden Pappin extolled the far-right educational reforms undertaken in recent years by Hungary’s Orban administration where Pappin has worked for several years. (Orban, whom Politico calls a “dictator,” and the US Right have worked closely together for some time now.)
Among the many Orbanist policies Pappin urged US conservatives to replicate—using universities to train public service administrators to serve as a patriotic bureaucratic elite. National conservatives “only have ourselves to blame,” Pappin explains, if they find themselves ill-equipped to actually staff state institutions to achieve their goals (as was the case in the first Trump presidency). If, in the future, the US “were able to exercise power for a sustained period of time,” national conservatives would need to educate new generations of bureaucrats to align with their ideology.
John Oliver has a thing or two to add to this conversation:
Going all in on open White nationalism—The masks come off (or on, depending on how you look at it)
David Azerrad, a Research Fellow at Hillsdale College, delivered an unabashedly White nationalist and male supremacist speech, for which he received one of the only standing ovations at the conference. Declaring that “the regime today is anti-White anti-male and anti-Christian,” Azerrad condemned the “browning of America,” the “intentional demographic transformation of America into a majority-minority country through large scale immigration.”
Taking more talking points directly from White nationalist organizations like VDARE—a group he cited—he mused: “who knows when Whites will be reduced into a minority in America…they will not be satisfied when Whites are just 49% of the population. If there is an outer limit it has not been stated.” He added (emphasis mine):
[The] same applies to all western nations. Whites who are already a global minority must be reduced to a minority in their own countries…what diversity ultimately means is fewer Whites. It very well may mean no Whites.
These White nationalist talking points drew widespread controversy when they were uttered during a panel at the first NatCon in 2019. At the time, statements like Azerrad’s were mostly confined to relatively fringe alt-right podcasts. Today, they’ve been so mainstreamed they’re comfortable announcing them on the plenary stage.
“America is a gynocracy”—male supremacy
Declaring that “America today is a gynocracy,” Azerrad claims that it’s ruled, along with the rest of the West, by a “feminine spirit which is at war with almost all traditional expressions of masculinity.” Furthermore, “what the regime hates is masculine men, who refuse to bend the knee; men who are courageous enough to say out loud what the rest of us are whispering.”
Azerrad believes that in a “feminized” America “the Left” is threatened by Trump’s virility:
Trump is undeniably manly and for that he must be destroyed like all other manly men.
He laments that the “defense of manliness” is too often the preserve of online influencers like Andrew Tate, when “it should be a bread and butter issue for the Right.”
Finally, he claims that Christians “are the last large segment of society to still offer some opposition to the Left’s sexual agenda [since] there is nothing the Left is more passionate about than the vulgar, private sexual pleasures of the last men.” He then jumped from channeling Nietszche to quoting William F. Buckley: “while the old Christian moral order has been almost completely steamrolled, Christians still stand athwart history, yelling stop,” by opposing reproductive and LGBTQ rights.
Azerrad charges conservatives to defend Whites, men, and Christians, the three supposed “enemies of the state.”
Defending—and owning—Project 2025
Paul Dans, Director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, laughed that the project has drawn alarm across public discourse. In his telling, Project 2025, was developed to deconstruct “a government of experts…an elite [fundamentally undemocratic] cadre here in Washington.” He bemoaned:
How are we as conservatives going to change the system?…the real animating purpose of [Project 2025] is the recognition that personnel is policy.
At the VIP dinner, Senator JD Vance confirmed earlier proclamations that NatCon is the conservative movement:
The American conservative movement is so influenced by what’s happened here…this is the place of the intellectual leadership of the American conservative movement…thank you for everything that you do—it actually matters.
Vance said that when he came to speak at the first NatCon in 2019, he was a “convert to Trump’s America First-agenda.” Even in 2019, he explains, there were members of the party pushing back against Trump’s agenda:
I think that’s over. That is a huge huge win for you guys, but most importantly it is a huge huge win for the American people.
Vance didn’t produce a headline-worthy moment like Hawley did two days ago, in all likelihood to keep himself in the running for VP and to avoid stealing Trump’s spotlight. But Vance gave the base some crass Biden jokes (“the media loves a death watch!”) to distract from the fact that there wasn’t anything new in his speech. And it worked—he got the second standing ovation of the day, after Azzerad.
‘Blood and Bones’
Vance ended not with blood and soil, but a version of it—“blood and bones”—claiming that he wants to ensure that his children will be buried in the cemetery in Kentucky, near the land owned by his ancestors. It was a deeply strange sentiment for a political speech—let alone for a closing—but it was a fitting end to this conference of uneasy, unstable coalitions between factions of the Right.
