Yoram Hazony, the author of "The Virtue of Nationalism" and one of the most influential thinkers behind the national conservative movement, has effectively abandoned a cause that sits at the heart of his own philosophy - Ukraine's fight for sovereignty against imperial aggression.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing a Foreign Policy analysis by Atlantic Council senior fellow Adrian Karatnycky, Hazony's trajectory on Ukraine traces a striking arc from passion to silence.
In March 2022, shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion, Hazony addressed a national conservative conference in Brussels with a forceful defense of Ukraine. He denounced Russia as a power that "acts as an empire" and "has never in its history been a nation-state." He praised Ukrainians for "bonds of loyalty that move them to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their own people," adding: "Where it exists, I feel that I want to help them." The speech, however, received only tepid, polite applause.
Months later, in June 2022, Hazony co-drafted "National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles" alongside a conservative who's who - including Peter Thiel, Victor Davis Hanson, Rod Dreher, and Russ Vought. The document explicitly condemned "the imperialism of China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers" and called for "defensive alliances whose purpose is to deter imperialist aggression."
Yet in the years that followed, Hazony and many of the signatories grew strangely quiet on Ukraine, with some turning against U.S. military support altogether. The silence is all the more perplexing, Karatnycky argues, because Ukraine's fight represents the very values that stir nationalist hearts: love of freedom, insistence on sovereignty, martial spirit, and a wide-ranging national revival after centuries of Russian and Soviet assimilationist policies.
The overriding factor behind this retreat, according to the analysis, has been the desire to preserve unity within the conservative tent. With powerful MAGA voices - Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk, David Sacks, Steve Bannon, and Tucker Carlson - expressing intense hostility toward Ukraine, most national conservatives have chosen expediently to ignore the issue. The mantra of "no enemies to the right" has long meant downplaying differences between national security hawks and MAGA's isolationist wing.
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