The World Economic Forum (WEF) has promoted many initiatives with grandiose titles. What was it about the ‘Great Reset’ of 2020 that made it one of the most fertile breeding grounds for paranoid theories about things that haven’t happened and which probably never will?
What is the WEF?
Founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, the WEF is an international non-governmental organisation. Its declared mission is one of public-private cooperation providing a “global, impartial and not-for-profit meaningful connection between stakeholders to establish trust and build initiatives for cooperation and progress”. It sees itself as a collaboration of platforms and it hosts an annual meeting at the Swiss resort of Davos.
What the WEF isn’t
It is not an altruistic, ideologically pure, corruption-free organisation working solely for the good of humankind. Neither is it an evil body hell-bent on world domination run by a Bond-style villain with an eye patch and a white cat, as many appear to believe.
Old-style criticism of the WEF
Opponents of bodies like the WEF, as well as the G7 and the World Trade Organization have, until recently, been firmly anti-capitalist, and are typified by the S11 Alliance blockade of the WEF in 2000, in which a series of protests over three days targeted a WEF meeting in Melbourne, Australia.
Previous protests brought together environmentalists, anarchists, anti-capitalists and left-wing alliances to campaign against the global capture of governments and society by what they viewed as a fundamentally neo-liberal institution, which enables greenwashing under the guise of its various climate initiatives.
So how is it that, since 2020, the WEF has become the number one bogeyman of the radical libertarian right?
Covid, climate change denial, and right-wing libertarian thinktanks
As a response to the biggest global crisis for decades, the Covid pandemic, the WEF produced its Great Reset initiative. Outside of any WEF suggestions, the world’s governments were, in any event obliged to work together to produce a vaccine rapidly and to support economies that had closed down to prevent the global spread of an as yet unknown virus.
The WEF’s plan focused on wage inequality and environmental issues, which the pandemic had shot into sharp focus. It proposed that the world address the consequences of human-induced climate change, and adopt a post-pandemic policy of environmental and social governance (ESG) in the workplace. This notion was anathema to the right-wing libertarian billionaire class represented in old industries such as tobacco and fossil fuels by, among others, the Koch brothers, and new industries developing in Silicon Valley headed up by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
The birth of libertarian thinktank induced global paranoia
Everything the Great Reset was trying to address was ridiculed, cast into doubt and made to appear sinister. The Covid crisis was portrayed as the inspiration for a power grab and the notion of human-induced climate change derided as a fabricated ploy to force socialism onto the world.
One of the earliest examples of how the Great Reset was targeted by the radical right is in an article in The Hill written in June 2020 by Justin Haskins. He described a radical plan in which capitalism was to be replaced by socialism and increased government control. Haskins is director of the Socialism Research Centre at the Heartland Institute, a right-wing, libertarian and anonymously funded climate-change-denying thinktank. Being ideologically opposed to many of the recommendations made by the Great Reset and the population protections put in place during Covid, they saw an opportunity to sow the seeds of distrust.
The 2021 the National Conservatism Convention screened a video message from Thiel in which he referenced the WEF. His anti-government message appears to advocate smashing up the Federal Reserve, relying on cryptocurrencies instead, and promoting nationalism.
The number of articles, podcasts and YouTube videos multiplied and – despite the endorsement of the world’s largest commercial enterprises, who are not generally known for their socialist leanings – the WEF 2020 initiative was somehow transformed into a vast conspiracy theory imagining a left-wing/Marxist plot to establish a New World Order (NWO), with an enslaving, expiring currency, the central bank digital currency (CBDC) (rather than their preferred cryptocurrencies, which they see as privatised money outside of government and central bank control), and total control over our lives ranging from the food we eat, the clothes we wear to the items we buy.
Like too many other conspiracy theories a lot of WEF conspiracy terminology has its roots in antisemitic tropes dating back to Nazi Germany. The radical right now regularly use language which would happily have been employed by the Third Reich. Terms such as cultural Marxism, which is just an updated version of the Nazis’ cultural Bolshevism, and ‘global elites’ or globalists, a 21st-century rehash Hitler’s ‘international elements’, who put their ‘elite’ tribe above country and pose a threat to natives ‘bound to their soil’, have become a regular feature of right wing parlance from pundits to politicians.
WEF, NWO? WTAF?
The Great Reset was unveiled at a virtual meeting of the WEF in early 2020 by the then Prince Charles. King Charles has since that time been written off as a WEF manipulator.
It sounds unlikely but millions of usually reasonable people are convinced they will soon be forced to eat insects over meat and only wash their clothes once a month. Below are some widely circulated examples of the paranoia:
Control of movement
15-minute cities, 20mph zones and ULEZ. These ideas were jumped on in the UK by characters on the radicalised right, and attributed to the WEF’s NWO.
In fact, 15-minute cities exist in Paris, Ottawa, Melbourne, Barcelona. All work for the benefit of locals who now have everything they need provided locally rather than having to make extended journeys. But apparently in the USA and the UK, they would mean you could not leave the 15-minute zone; that ULEZ and 20 mph zones are not proven policies to tackle pollution-linked health issues and road accidents, but are instead WEF anti-motorist plots to control society.
‘You will own nothing. You’ll be happy’
This misinterpreted quote is often cited as proof that the WEF are Marxists who refute the notion of private ownership. The notion was a prediction made by a Danish politician Ida Auken in a 2016 essay. It was summarised in a WEF video, along with eight other predictions for the future. She was referring to the fact that by 2030 we might live in a world in which technology could eradicate costs for millions of people. She never used the words ‘you’ll be happy’ and the WEF has no such policy.
Environmental and social governance
This is the notion that corporations that take environmental and social responsibilities seriously perform better financially has existed for several years. The WEF created a framework to assist corporations to address ESG challenges such as climate change, social equity and corporate governance. According to the radical right it’s ’woke capitalism’ dreamed up by Wall Street financiers promoting left-wing environmental and employment policies.
Cynical dog whistles
The type of paranoia circling around the notion of an evil empire trying to impose a tyrannical world order was once restricted to identifiable corners of the internet, where characters like Alex Jones with his Infowars would reside. But now, populist public figures, who should know better, are playing along to signal to voters that they are speaking the same language.
In Britain, Mark Harper in his then capacity of transport secretary, gave a speech to last year’s Conservative Party conference ludicrously describing 15-minute cities as ‘sinister’ because local councils could control who uses the roads and when, and could ration when we can go to the shops.
Claire Coutinho also gave a speech to the conference, warning of Labour’s supposed plans for a ‘meat tax’. This was a dog whistle to conspiracy theorists’ claims that the WEF wants to control what we eat. It was also untrue.
Musk tweeted that the ‘S’ in ESG stands for satanic. He timed it to coincide with the WEF meeting to discuss ESG. Rather than anything to do with whatever the WEF has proposed, it’s probably more closely linked with his views on unions and protections of workers’ rights.
And last week Donald Trump made a bizarre promise to never allow CBDC, which is apparently evidence of why ‘they’ will do anything to stop him.
Turkeys voting for Christmas
Such conspiracy theories are conduits for libertarian billionaire paranoia – for them, a dystopian future in which nations work together, to close offshore tax loops, restrict mining the planet, mitigate climate change, and acknowledge workers’ rights, severely reduces their grip on the power they think should be theirs.
Whether public figures supporting these bizarre theories are acting cynically or have themselves been duped, it is causing genuine fear among certain elements of society. In the USA, it can to an extent explain MAGA’s cultish devotion to Trump.
Demonising the WEF as an all-powerful organ that will control all aspects of our lives has proved an effective recruitment tool for what can only be described as turkeys voting for Christmas. Trump’s reference to CBDC is telling them that he hears them. They are literally counting on him to save the world. It goes without saying they risk being sorely disappointed.
Oh, and by the way, that global IT outage last weekend? You guessed it – WEF.
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