US, Israeli and European far-right figures to gather for conference in Israel

Trump’s counter-terrorism ‘czar’, Sebastian Gorka, was scheduled to speak at conference but White House says he will no longer attend

A National Conservatism (NatCon) conference beginning today in Jerusalem advertises a talk from the Trump administration’s anti-terrorism czar alongside speeches from far-right Israeli politicians, European figures who have faced disciplinary action over alleged antisemitism, and Christian nationalist and far-right figures from the United States.

Sebastian Gorka, a senior White House official whose May anti-terrorism strategy promised to target and neutralise groups “whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist”, was scheduled to speak at the Jerusalem event, and his presence is still advertised on the website.

From Israel, the program lists Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, self-declared “fascist homophobe” and internationally sanctioned extremist, and Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, who in 2023 called for an atom bomb to be dropped on Gaza and was earlier ordered to face disciplinary proceedings for racist incitement against Palestinians.

From Europe come Hans-Georg Maaßen, who once led Germany’s domestic intelligence agency but in 2023 faced an expulsion attempt by his then party, the CDU, for “statements in the language of the milieu of antisemites and conspiracy ideologues”, and Austria’s Harald Vilimsky, whose far-right Freedom party has been subject to a policy of non-engagement by Israel’s own government.

In a statement, Maaßen wrote: “I firmly reject the claim that I made ‘statements in the language of the milieu of antisemites and conspiracy ideologues’. This deliberately vague wording was never a concrete accusation but a politically motivated label, designed to damage my reputation and to discredit critics of the political mainstream of the time,” Vilimsky was also contacted for comment.

The American contingent includes William Wolfe, a self-described Christian nationalist who has called for “mass deportations, denaturalizations, and remigration” to preserve a white Christian majority, and Jonathan Keeperman, the publisher unmasked by the Guardian in 2024 as the man behind the far-right internet persona “L0m3z”.

Dr Brendan McGeever, co-director of Birkbeck University’s Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, said: “Many attendees at NatCon view Israel not just as an ally but as an embodiment of the exclusionary ethnostate they wish to establish. National Conservatism sees in Israel a blueprint for the realization of a white, Christian nation built on racialized exclusion, while far-right Israeli attenders at NatCon often argue that partnering with white Christian nationalists is the best way to protect Israel. It is racism that binds these forces together.”

The Guardian contacted Heritage with questions about their attendance at NatCon.

Roberts and Wolfe are among the NatCon Jerusalem attenders singled out last month by the evangelical conservative commentator Erick Erickson, in a broadside against “a group of white guys” who “have subtly inserted themselves into conservative institutions and church organizations” and who “to varying degrees … embrace white nationalism, antisemitism”.

He added: “[Hazony is] running up against the limits of that project because the reality is that you can’t simply stir up abstract Christian nationalism. One side of the Christian nationalist coalition is very aligned with Israel, is very Christian Zionist, the other side is leaning hard into this antisemitic impulse.”

The conferences are high-profile gatherings of the international national conservative movement, which scholars describe as the most influential strand of an anti-liberal “New Right”.