I see my old sparring partner Louise Clegg has begun the new year where she left off in 2025 with another odd and misguided comment on the national conservatism movement…

In the commentary world, a wide range of individuals and organisations are criticised, in a rather loose and inexact way, for their supposed failure to stand up to antisemitism.

The national conservative movement is, in my view, smeared by holding it somehow responsible for all statements by anyone associated with the ‘new right’, which is also very broadly defined.

This is a debate has already been going on in the United States for some time.

Yes, there is a growing antisemitism on sections of the right, particularly among the young. Yes, it is a concern.

But what is also going on really is also an attempt by #NeverTrump Republicans to use this controversy to attempt to damage the reputation of national conservatives and take back positions and influence at key institutions like The Heritage Foundation and The White House.

In Australia, Clegg’s focus, I continue to believe, relates to the upcoming leadership contest for the leading centre-right party in Australia, where Andrew Hastie, the obvious challenger, seems open to upending some of the orthodoxies of the old Howard-era right.

It should not need to be said, but in case there is any doubt: there nothing about national conservatism – which properly understood is just traditional political Anglo-American conservatism – that is inherently antisemitic or tolerant of antisemitism.

One of the intellectual heroes of the movement is British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is an Anglicised Jew. The NatCon conference even bestows an annual award, the Beaconsfield Prize, in his honour.

And one of the undisputed leaders of the modern-day national conservatives, Yoram Hazony, is Jewish.

At the most recent NatCon conference late last year in Washington DC, Hazony in his opening remarks (available online) included an explicit warning about the risks that antisemitism and other forms of religious sectarianism could pose to the MAGA coalition. In further follow-up podcasts and statements, such as one with Ross Douthat from the New York Times, he has made similar points.

Clegg’s article bemoans a supposed lack of leadership by the NatCons in standing up to antisemitism. But it is hard to see what more could be done.

The irony is that national conservatives are more often criticised online for supposedly being a mouthpiece for Israel than by being in any way hostile to the Jewish community.

In fact, the way NatCons, at least at a formal organisational level, have conducted themselves should be considered a model of how sensible conversations can be had about Israel and other contentious issues.

The recent aforementioned conference permitted an open and forthright debate between Curt Mills of The American Conservative and Professor Max Abrahms, about the wisdom of the then recent US military strikes on Iran. Hazony has also, in the past, civilly debated harsh critics of Israel’s foreign policy and actions, like John Mearsheimer.

This is how it should be.

The proper relationship between the Israel and the United States (and other allies like Australia) is a legitimate matter for discussion. Equally, any new American-backed conflicts in the Middle East obviously should be rigorously scrutinised, especially given the very mixed track record over the last 25+ years.

Similarly, whether any foreign governments – friend or foe – are having undue influence in the United States, Australia, or elsewhere should addressed openly and without fear of being labelled prejudiced against a particular ethnic group.

Unsubstantiated allegations of antisemitism are unhelpful. Similarly, attempting to shut down such discussions through hate speech laws is likely to far cause more harm than good. Such laws have not proved successful in modern Europe. They were not successful in Weimar Germany where they just created political martyrs and resentment. This obviously did not end well.

While growing antisemitism is a problem, there is in a way too much of an obsession with podcasters, media personalities, or university academics. They are not the main drivers of this phenomenon in Western societies.

Nick Fuentes, for all his sins, did not cause the increasingly frequent attacks on Jews by the Muslim populations in Europe and elsewhere.

I doubt most members of the pro-Palestinian protests at the Opera House or on the Sydney Harbour Bridge listen to high-profile American podcasters. Those who attend lectures from any keffiyeh-wearing professor similarly only make up a small proportion of those in attendance.

The real problem lies elsewhere.

As JD Vance has argued, ‘The most significant single thing you could do to eliminate antisemitism, and any other kind of ethnic hatred, is to support our efforts to lower immigration and promote assimilation.’

For much of the 20th Century Australia was a relatively homogeneous society and we did not have ethnic conflicts play out in our streets and beaches like we do today.

While not perfect, minorities that lived here were protected arguably better than anywhere in the world. Our country was probably the safest place in the world to be Jewish.

Many families, like my own, have histories seamlessly interwoven with the Jewish communities who lived here.

One relation, Michael Durack, was directly involved in the ‘Kimberley Plan’ – a failed attempt to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe in northern Australia before and during the Holocaust.

A more distant ancestor of mine was Patrick Durack, a pioneering pastoralist who opened the Kimberley region. His business partner was a man called Solomon Emanuel.

I often think of these men in the late 19th Century – one Irish and one Jewish – in the middle of the Australian outback.

Both were members of peoples who had long dreamed of their own independent states. Both, no doubt, retained some sympathy for the national causes of their ancestors far away. But through joint effort both came in time to see themselves more as part of a new united people who in a new nation to which they would both belong.

That ethos surely must be what we must aim to recreate in Australia in future.

Dan Ryan is Executive Director of the National Conservative Institute of Australia