Josh Hawley
Republican Senator from Missouri; was youngest member of the Senate as of 2019; NatCon 1 culminating speaker; “cosmopolitan class” as bogeyman; raised fist to January 6 rioters; key political figure of the MAGA New Right’s Senate wing
Who He Is
Josh Hawley (b. 1979) is a Republican US Senator from Missouri who has positioned himself as one of the most intellectually serious politicians of the MAGA New Right. Yale Law graduate, former law professor, former Missouri attorney general. He became the youngest member of the US Senate when he was elected in 2018.
NatCon 1 (July 2019)
Hawley gave the culminating speech at the first National Conservatism conference in Washington DC in July 2019. Field describes it as “chock-full of New Right catchphrases” delivered with genuine conviction and rhetorical polish. His main target: the “cosmopolitan class.” He invoked the concept of the American “middle” repeatedly, as well as “Republic.”
He concluded with the story of Horatius defending Rome during the early Republic, and quoted Thomas Babington Macaulay’s poem “Horatius at the Bridge”: “For in yon straight path a thousand men may well be stopped by three. Now who will stand on either hand, and keep this bridge with me?” The audience gave him a standing ovation.
Yoram Hazony, while delighted, mildly corrected Hawley’s historical referent: better to reach back to Abraham and Israel than to Horatius and Rome.
January 6
Hawley was photographed raising his fist in solidarity with the crowd that would storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He was one of the Senators who objected to the certification of the electoral vote that day, even after the riot. He has since maintained his position as one of Trump’s most reliable Senate allies.
Intellectual Themes
Hawley has written about the “cosmopolitan class” as the enemy of ordinary Americans — a framing that puts him in the tradition of the MAGA critique of elites, but with more intellectual scaffolding than most politicians bring. His 2021 book The Tyranny of Big Tech attacked Silicon Valley monopolies from a populist-nationalist perspective. He has also written about masculinity and the crisis of American men.
Cross-References
- National Conservatism — spoke at NatCon 1 (2019), gave culminating speech
- Yoram Hazony — conference organizer who praised (and mildly corrected) his speech
- MAGA New Right — one of the movement’s key political figures
- January 6 2021 — raised fist to rioters; voted to reject electoral certification
- Postliberalism — his “cosmopolitan class” framing aligns with postliberal anti-elitism