Kevin Williamson’s piece this morning, “A Marxist Homecoming,” explores some of the modern crossovers between the populist-nationalist Right and the socialist Left — from Marine Le Pen’s offer “to appoint socialists to high government offices if she is elected president” in France to the notable parallels between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders on trade and immigration here in the U.S.
These parallels, of course, are real. But that doesn’t make right-wing nationalism — or skepticism of internationalism writ large — the same thing as anti-capitalism, unless one holds that capitalism is necessarily in tension with the integrity of the nation-state. So I think Kevin errs when he argues that “the shared theme of these globe-trotting political adventurers is anti-capitalism, which is one prominent expression of a more general anti-liberalism.” Many conservatives have traditionally distinguished between a skepticism of globalism and a skepticism of a decentralized market economy. The late, great Roger Scruton put it well in a 2019 panel discussion with Douglas Murray:
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