José Antonio Kast, president of the Political Network for Values (PNfV), presented at the New Direction Foundation’s Summer University the successful experience of the advancement of the values agenda in Chile and the role that the republican movement, founded by him, has played in it.
The New Direction Foundation is the think tank of the European Conservative and Reform Party and holds an annual Summer University that brings together selected groups of young leaders from different countries.
This year’s edition was co-organized with the Center for the Renewal of Culture (COK), from Croatia, in collaboration with the PNFV, from July 11-14 in Zagreb. It was attended by 50 students, 7 of whom, from Poland, Spain and Mexico (in the photo that opens this text), were invited and awarded scholarships by the PNfV through its Youth Program. The central theme of the Summer University was “The Conservative Challenge Today”.
Six panel discussions addressed the moral and philosophical bases of freedom; the free market and conservatism; the Chilean economic model; national identity and globalism; the criminal legacy of communism; the European demographic crisis, its causes and ways of solution.
In addition, there were two keynote lectures, one with Janez Janša, former Prime Minister of Slovenia, who spoke about the need for global strategies; and another with José Antonio Kast, with the title “The Chilean case – Why it matters to Europe”.
The exemplary Chilean case
Since 2018, a kind of “conservative revolution” has been taking place in Chile. At the very moment when a red tsunami was sweeping the country, imposing the dominance of the left in the Constituent that was installed in 2019, from the “underground”, almost silently, a current in a different sense was giving signs of life.
First hundreds, then thousands of people, especially young people, responded to the adverse environment by affirming the need to recover the Homeland from the values that are in the soul of the Chilean people. An intense process of regeneration and social articulation that had, later, a clear political impact, when they recovered in 2023, the leadership of the constituent process.
In this process, the civic movement Republican Action, and later, the Republican Party (PR), both founded by José Antonio Kast, played a relevant catalyzing role, providing the people with the means of action. Today, only 5 years later, the PR is the leading conservative political force in the country.
Other speakers
The event also featured presentations by Witold d’Humilly de Chevilly, Executive Director of New Direction; Stephen Bartulica, Founder and President of COK; Lola Velarde, Executive Director of PNfV; and Anna Lakó, International Coordinator of the Center for Fundamental Rights, from Hungary and Slovenian historian and philosopher Jože Dežman.
Also Alejandro Macarrón, President of the Foundation for Demographic Renewal, Spain; Raymond Fekete, Director of the Institute for the Research of Communism, Hungary; Roman Joch, Executive Director of the Civic Institute, Czech Republic; Mario Fantini, Editor-in-Chief of The European Conservative magazine; and Alejandro Chafuen, Managing Director of the Acton Institute; among others.
