A new breed of conservative has emerged, one that paradoxically seeks radical change by yearning for a mythologised past.
The very word “conservative” traces its roots to the Latin “conservare”—to preserve or to maintain. Arthur Möller van den Bruck, a central figure in the Conservative Revolution, understood it as the forging of values worthy of preservation. For Franz Josef Strauß, conservatism was about tending the flame, while Konrad Adenauer famously distilled it to the principle of “no experiments.” Michael Oakeshott emphasised the inclination to favour the familiar over the uncharted. Samuel Huntington offered a straightforward definition: the conservative as the guardian of the existing order of their time and place.
Historically, the concept and the forces that have adopted it have always possessed a certain ambiguity, shaped by cultural and historical contexts. Yet, a novel form of conservatism is now taking shape—a kind of reactive revolutionary. Figures like Donald Trump and others of his ilk appear to have little interest in preservation; they challenge the prevailing order, embrace experimentation, and seem to envision a fundamentally different state, a different Europe, a different society. The era in which conservatives were the upholders of the state and its symbols seems to be receding into history. The traditional virtues of prudence, decency, and bourgeois traditions now appear to be championed by centrists and, in part, by those on the left. This new conservatism exists in a curious tension between revolution and reaction. If revolution, as Marx posited, is the sudden culmination of previously obstructed progress, is this new conservatism then the abrupt regression of previously hard-won advancements?
The Natural Order of Things
The intellectual trajectory of conservatism is marked by considerable ambiguity and cultural relativism, so much so that some scholars reduce it to a mere strategy for acquiring power. For the historian of ideas Panajotis Kondylis, conservatism initially served as the ideological arsenal of the aristocracy against the centralising forces of absolutism, a response to the separation of state and society and the rise of rationalism. Karl Mannheim famously argued that conservatism was a reaction to the French Revolution, a point also made by the renowned conservative thinker Edmund Burke. He spoke of the state as being formed by forces concealed behind a “sacred veil” that we ought not to lift. This underscores the notion of a natural, stable, and necessary order, underpinned by pessimism and the class interests of the powerful.
A fusion with Romanticism and the staunchly order- and stability-focused conservatism of Thomas Hobbes yields an amalgamation of the triad: order, hierarchy, nature. Here, as Huntington suggests, conservatism becomes akin to the ideology of the established order—the consciousness arising from the condition of feudalism. In the 20th century, a radical right-wing, fascist-leaning conservatism emerged, intellectually best represented by the so-called Conservative Revolution. This movement saw contemporary themes, such as nationalism, intertwine with a rejection of democracy, modernity, and socialism. Thinkers like Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler, and Ernst Jünger spoke of the decline of the West, prioritised instinct over intellect, dismissed the interest-driven politics of democracy, and advocated for the creation of a state founded on the “German essence.”
Following the Second World War, conservatism largely transformed into a political ideology characterised by caution regarding political reforms and ambitions. This conservatism of “no experiments” diminished itself to a secondary virtue, lacking a distinct political objective. However, driven by economic instability and the successes of the left, a new interpretation surfaced in the nineteen-eighties, seeking to extend market principles to all spheres of life. Here, traditional conservative ideas of a just and natural order were to be realised through the market—a form of meritocratic aristocracy. This libertarian conservatism was already both revolutionary and reactive: it sought the rule of the supposedly capable and fought for dominance over order. Consequently, “everything fixed and stable” that conservatives once sought to preserve began to erode at the hands of conservatives themselves.
Yet, since at least 2016, the world has once again encountered a new iteration of conservatism, one that bears a closer resemblance to the conservatism of the early 20th century, particularly that of the Conservative Revolution. This is a conservatism that seeks to re-enchant the world through mystery, that espouses a belief in nature and champions a return to an extra-real Retrotopia. Once more, we hear pronouncements of the decline of the West, the collapse of liberalism, the allure of the “good old days,” the fall of Rome, and a crisis of masculinity.
Freightened Sailors
Central to conservatism in general, and this new conservatism in particular, is naturalisation. Existing conditions are portrayed as either necessary or the only possible reality. This is a curious assertion, given the significant transformations the world has undergone—the evolution of economic, political, and gender relations. To transform history into nature, the new conservative relies on a range of ideological metaphors. The aim remains to reshape the reality of the world into its ideal image, with the crucial difference that this ideal reality is now situated in the past. A traditional metaphor is the ship—a non-place devoid of history, a realm of natural facts rather than political possibilities. For thinkers like Michael Oakeshott, the ship serves as a metaphor for the realisation that nature and its laws are immutable—an argument against history and, therefore, against change itself. Oakeshott wrote:
“In political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting place nor appointed destination. The enterprise consists of keeping afloat on an even keel.”
For the conservative, we are trapped on the open sea, perpetually destined to maintain an imperfect but functioning order. A vessel for which one should be grateful simply for its buoyancy. In this view, the world as it exists is the only conceivable world. For the new conservative, today’s world is a ship that has strayed too far—too far in altering gender relations, too far in expanding public welfare, too far in acknowledging non-heteronormative ways of life. We are, in their eyes, living in an age of late-Roman decadence.
Retrotopia
While utopia, in the sense of “something is missing,” seeks to reimagine and improve the world, retrotopia desires to turn back—to “make someplace great again.” Back to a golden age that is typically left vaguely defined so as not to disrupt the comforting illusion of a supposedly intact past. This is a worldview steeped in nostalgia and a fear of the new. What is being naturalised today is not the present, but a truly-real-once-has-been reality. Instead of history as progress, nature becomes the imperative for regression.
Where utopia is driven by the aspiration to eliminate deficiency, retrotopia is fuelled by the conviction of loss—the loss of identity, of order, of uniqueness. Progress is viewed as a thief of authenticity. Interestingly, the past is treated as the sole possible stable world. The present world exists, but only as a form of late-Roman decadence, perpetually on the verge of collapse.
Kitsch
The prophets of the new conservatism intoxicate their audiences with hollow profundity and the allure of mystery. Rationality is countered with a nebulous sense of authenticity. Certain vaguely defined deep questions and immutable magic must be preserved or promoted. The world is to be imbued with an additional dimension, and the materialism of the left is opposed with empty mysticism. Burke’s sacred veil, behind which mystery unfolds its magic, returns as a blindfold.
A typical argument comes from the philosopher Roger Scruton. According to Scruton, the world as it exists today is the product of centuries of trial and error. We are dealing with answers that have been found to the enduring questions of existence. Social traditions, he argues, are forms of knowledge, containing the remnants of numerous trials and errors, as well as inherited solutions to problems.
This argument manages to reinterpret history as a kind of naturally evolved process. Despite its intoxicating pathos, it is a readily criticised thesis. Why is the trial and error process supposedly complete? Why are we allegedly at the end of history? What precisely are these “enduring questions,” and why should there be only one universal answer? Where does the political element enter the equation? How do we determine what is worth preserving? Are, for instance, centuries-old Hindu widow burnings or slavery part of the answer to humanity’s enduring questions?
Conclusion
Many themes that were once conservative also feature in contemporary conservatism: tradition, order, cohesion, and nature. However, restraint and caution have yielded to the fervour of a conservatism of revolutionary reaction. Mystery and pathos have been reintegrated into the conservative amalgam. Newly added is the naturalisation of the past. Instead of “no experiments” and humility, the new conservative promotes the pathos-driven experiment of journeying into the past.
One could generally argue that this new conservatism is not particularly invested in conserving things. If political ideologies, as Kondylis believed, are merely ideological weapons of interest groups, then the weapons of this new conservatism are essentially blinding political opponents with pessimism, kitsch, and retrotopian notions of authenticity. If all roads of socialism lead to Moscow and all roads of liberalism lead to the supermarket, then all roads of this new conservatism lead to Disneyland. It seeks a return to the point before change, before democracy—back to the absence of alternatives, back to the never-ending, truly real, and ever-present present. It is the revolution of reset.
Justus Seuferle is a political scientist who works for the European Institutions. He writes in a personal capacity.