I recently attended the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London, which was dubbed an  “alt-right heaven” by John Crace in The Guardian. Why? Well, speakers emphasized the need for Christian values, raised concerns about immigration, criticized “net-zero” policies, encouraged more marriages, expressed worries about the fertility rate, and defended nationalism. The writer, dizzied by devastating realization that not everyone shares his worldview, concluded haughtily, “I think I need to lie down in a darkened room for a while.”

But here’s something that will surely worsen his headache: Attendees thought that the speakers weren’t right-wing enough. (I guess we can excuse Crace’s surface-level analysis because he admits that he joined the online video stream rather than attending in person.) A friend joked to me that the conference was a “time portal back to 2004” because the talks largely lacked a sense of “urgency,” and he questioned whether the panelists were aware of Donald Trump’s recent victory. Indeed, to the American attendees, the conference felt lackluster compared with the energetic MAGA movement; it seems unproductive, perhaps even depressing, to watch panelists contemplate the supposed personhood embodied by ChatGPT as DOGE is excavating the federal government. Perhaps the absence of zeal could be attributed to the fact that speakers self-censored on topics that are not at all controversial in right-wing spheres. Most of the commentary on immigration offered no depth to the bland claim that “there are too many foreigners coming,” while Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch conveniently avoided mentioning the racial demographics of the grooming gangs and their victims. It is a bit underwhelming, I think, to watch the aristocracy of culture critics speak so delicately and inoffensively as they insist that the West is gravely threatened.

But maybe the real audience wasn’t the people seated in the rows. Nearly every attendee I spoke with described themselves as either “right wing” or “conservative,” but it seems that ARC hoped to influence the media and broader public that hadn’t bought tickets. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey talked about why socialism is bad, but there probably weren’t many socialists seated in the theater. Badenoch pandered to the British electorate by claiming that the current sociocultural problem is “weakness” and not “liberal values,” as if such “weakness” isn’t a natural consequence of “liberal values.” (It was further unclear what she even meant by “liberal values,” since she praised “banking systems” in her speech before “religion.”) Writer David Brooks complained that the members of the new Trump administration are “destroying” the “Judeo-Christian faith” that is “based on service to the poor, service to the immigrant, service to the stranger,” citing funding cuts for AIDS and HIV relief programs abroad. Yet the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was promoting abortions, so it difficult to see how such a program reflects Christian values. Ultimately, the speakers onstage were not presenting a five-point plan for right-wingers to reclaim the character of their country; instead, they sought to make a mild version of conservatism palatable to the masses.