A left-wing media outlet is being mocked after publishing a piece warning about the “growing peril” of national conservatism that has been spreading to many countries around the world.

This week’s cover story of The Economist warned that national conservatism is “dangerous and it’s spreading,” claiming that “Liberals need to find a way to stop it.”

The magazine’s bizarre cover featured former president and current GOP primary frontrunner Donald Trump’s signature MAGA hat, which the outlet stretched vertically in order to fit the names of several countries that have followed the lead of American populism, with the hat reading: “Make America, Hungary, Italy, France, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland great again.”

Trump, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and “a motley crew of Western politicians” have constructed “a statist, ‘anti-woke’ conservatism that puts national sovereignty before the individual,” the outlet falsely claimed, later adding: “Rather than being sceptical [sic] of big government, national conservatives think ordinary people are beset by impersonal global forces and that the state is their saviour.”

It is clear that The Economist does not understand national conservatism, or even plain conservatism, considering its reference to the philosophy as “statist” and thinking that “the state is their savior” when the movement is the exact opposite — with MAGA conservatives and their foreign counterparts vocally opposing increasing the power of the government and even taking actions to decrease the power that the state has over its citizens.

“These national conservatives are increasingly part of a global movement with its own networks of thinkers and leaders bound by a common ideology,” the article declared. “They sense that they own conservatism now — and they may be right.”

This comment is clearly true, as conservative populists have experienced victory after victory across the globe, including in Italy, Germany and France, as well as one country that the outlet mysteriously avoided mentioning — Argentina, which recently elected libertarian economist Javier Milei.

President Javier Milei's first act in office was an order cutting the Argentine gov from 21 departments down to 9.

The Chainsaw Plan is now a reality. pic.twitter.com/SUCEJrvMUj

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 11, 2023

Meanwhile, as Breitbart News noted, The Economist’s article “reads like a call to arms against a movement that seems to grow stronger by the day as people around the world grow fed up with being governed by ideologically driven, progressive globalist elites blithely uninterested in the real problems faced by ordinary people.”

This is evident in the piece, which included at least one true statement — the fact that the national populists of today “do not see the West as the shining city on the hill, but as Rome before the fall — decadent, depraved and about to collapse amid a barbarian invasion.”

The Economist then went on to falsely frame national conservatism as the “politics of grievance” — which was a laughable statement considering the fact that the leftist ideology that the outlet supports is entirely focused on grievances, something that populists despise.

The Economist's laughable take here is a perfect example of the emptiness and corruption of our "intellectual" elitehttps://t.co/VqT65A1VyIhttps://t.co/VqT65A1VyI

— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) February 19, 2024

The outlet also issued a warning to its allies on the left, arguing that conservatives will try to take over areas that leftists have dominated — “state institutions, including courts, universities and the independent press.” Of course, conservatives already control the independent media, as they have created alternative media outlets to oppose the mainstream orthodoxy — though it is clear that The Economist is trying to claim that the obviously biased mainstream outlets are the “independent press.”

However, the outlet did acknowledge the legitimacy of many issues that have strengthened the conservative cause — such as the serious ramifications of illegal immigration, concerns that the next generation will be poorer than the current one and the fact that institutions such as universities and the press “have been captured by hostile, illiberal, left-leaning elites.”

The article concluded by claiming that “Liberalism’s great strength is that it is adaptable,” arguing that liberalism “can adapt to national conservatism” but for the moment, “it is falling behind.”