Victor Glover had a very important message for everyone in the room. “Most of existence is nothing,” he said. To my left, a woman in a crisp black suit shifted uncomfortably in her chair as a celestial vacuum seemed to creep into the vast, low-lit chamber of the Olympia auditorium in London. But fear not, the astronaut, garbed in his royal-blue NASA flight jacket, continued, “You are special in all of this emptiness.”

We were at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference, an annual three-day coming-together for the intelligentsia of the global right—and this year, they needed the reassurance. Sure, Trump is still in the White House. Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland continues to chip away at the cordon sanitaire. And the UK’s right-populist Reform Party polls within striking distance of Labour. But the mood on the right has grown grim. Ten on-and-off years of MAGA haven’t made America much greater, and the midterms threaten to end the Republican Party’s control of Congress.…