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Conspiracy theorists, do I have your attention?
– “Just because we’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get us!”
It’s all very well believing we’ve seen through the plans of The Elite, but what are we going to do about it?
– The idea of stakeholder capitalism and multi-stakeholder partnerships might sound warm and fuzzy, until we dig deeper and realise that this actually means giving corporations more power over society, and democratic institutions less.
– Instead of corporations serving many stakeholders, in the multi-stakeholder model of global governance, corporations are promoted to being official stakeholders in global decision-making, while governments are relegated to being one of many stakeholders. In practice, corporations become the main stakeholders, while governments take a backseat role, and civil society is mainly window dressing.
OK. We pick up our ideas from publicly available sources. We discuss them in public forums. We know that all communications are potentially monitored – Edward Snowden not only told us, he detailed exactly how one such organisation goes about it. You know what? “They” don’t give a damn what we’re all chattering about so long as we don’t actually do anything, so long as we keep cooperating with, participating in, and thus supporting the great capitalist, neoliberal system. “Waking up” is not remotely enough.
So what do you suggest we do?
That’s a good link, Clark. I read it, on your recommendation, after noticing ‘the great reset’ was trending on twitter last night (40,000 tweets in the UK at around 10pm).
So what is this latest twitter-storm about? It seems proponents of the conspiracy theorists’ version of ‘The Great Reset’ have a new hero in the form of an attention-seeking right-wing nationalist Dutch politician who has found a smoking gun, as it were. It is (or purports to be) a letter from the WEF to the Dutch finance minister, inviting him to the now-cancelled annual summit at Davos in January.
To quote the sentences highlighted by this valiant whistle-blower and champion of liberty (who regards measures against covid as akin to ‘totalitarianism’ and compares the treatment of those who ‘resist’ to the treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany):
“The discussion will focus on shaping policies for the post-COVID 19 era under the theme of The Great Reset… Your contribution to the work of the Great Reset will be especially critical at the Annual Meeting….” And: “The forum will work with your staff to ensure that your participation will become a major force in shaping the Great Reset.”
There’s also some blether about shaping “fiscal policy and public finances” post-Covid, and a reference to a Regional Action Group for Europe and Eurasia.
I have no idea about the veracity of this letter, but the right-wing, nationalist Unity News Network was in no doubt, tweeting: “This is HUGE! We can confirm that the letters we have been republishing in relation to the Great Reset and the Dutch Government are REAL and as a result of an FOI from Pepijn van Houwelingen, a member of the Dutch House of Representatives.”
Cue lots of conspiracy-theorist memes about Agenda 30, the Covid ‘plandemic’ and ‘in the future you will own nothing and be happy’, alongside images of the WEF’s Klaus Schwab as cyborg or sinister Bond villain…
Yes, the WEF agenda is real, sinister and anti-democratic. As the open democracy article states, it’s about a “corporate take-over of global governance that affects our food, our data and our vaccines”. But this doesn’t require a conspiracy: it’s just the latest version of neo-liberal capitalism that seeks to exploit crises to the advantage of big corporations while making it harder for governments, or people, to resist their hegemony.
It’s certainly not inevitable, but simply crowing “we told you so” or telling people to “wake up” while dragging them down rabbit-holes of conspiracy isn’t going to change anything. If anything, it disempowers people and movements by depriving them of agency and ensuring they’re divided in endless squabbles.
It is always worth investigating who is seeding them and whose interests they ultimately serve.
– “…memes about Agenda 30, the Covid ‘plandemic’ and ‘in the future you will own nothing and be happy’, alongside images of the WEF’s Klaus Schwab as cyborg or sinister Bond villain…”
Conspiracy theory seems like chaff, the bales of aluminium strips dispersed from aircraft during wartime to confuse radar.
– “Your contribution to the work of the Great Reset will be especially critical at the Annual Meeting… The forum will work with your staff to ensure that your participation will become a major force in shaping the Great Reset.”
Hmm. A Davos tongue right up the anus of the Dutch Finance Minister by the sound of it. I expect there are a lot of these letters.
Pepijn van Hooligan looks a bit of a mixed bag, but at least he submitted an FOI request.
That is a good article Clark and it’s conclusions very worrying.
“So what do you suggest we do?”
I simply don’t know. I have been banging on to my siblings (and anyone else who cares to listen), for literally years, about surveillance capitalism but nobody really cares or is willing enough to even entertain extrapolating the potential implications of such surveillance. People groan when I mention it. That maybe a failing on my part to be sufficiently convincing and likely is but also I think people mostly just don’t care. As long as something doesn’t appear to directly interfere, in an obvious and overt way, with their lives or those of their kids it isn’t considered a threat.
People are so trusting of the democratic process and of the news media they consume. I don’t know how to get people to engage more with such an article as you cited. To me it takes me back to early industrial revolution times where workers had to spend their wages in provision stores run by the company they worked for. I don’t have a strategy for the “I don’t really care” attitude.
– “This is HUGE!”
The trouble is, this isn’t huge; supposed public servants being wined, dined, bribed and seduced by the mega-rich and the mega-corps is entirely routine – it’s the standard method by which the private sector influence supposedly public policy and get their hands on taxpayers’ money. And the important phrase is “shaping fiscal policy and public finances” rather than all the corporate catch-phrases and conspiracist dark allusions to “agendas” etc.
How are citizens to be represented in this Regional Action Group for Europe and Eurasia? “Only through the government ministers we’ve been softening up” would be Davos’ preferred answer, I expect. Citizens’ Assemblies would be my suggestion, but I expect someone will have to obstruct commerce and get arrested to stand any chance of that.
ET, I think we should build citizens’ democracy. When your local covid conditions permit, go and do a Pink Table with XR; get local people talking. Doing Pink Tables isn’t remotely arrestable; fun for all the family.
Conspiracy theorists, I deliberately used the term “The Great Reset” as click-bait. Plenty of you comment frequently enough at this site, so I do not believe that none of you have viewed this page. Come on: I’m asking for support here! I have agreed with you that the Great Reset is a sinister ploy and opposed to the interests of the majority. Now, what do we do about it? Nothing? Pretend that the Arctic isn’t melting? Refuse vaccines, catch covid and scramble our own brains? How’s that going to help?
Birds aren’t real!
The Earth is flat!
…the resounding silence continues.
“ET, I think we should build citizens’ democracy.”
Ireland has such a project. They state their funding comes from “Atlantic Philanthropies.” I am trying to work out whether that funding is “friendly” or otherwise.
ET, from various sources I’ve read, citizens’ assemblies have been very successful in Ireland.
I’m no expert, but citizen’s assemblies seem to be national-level implementations of people’s assemblies. Forming and holding people’s assemblies is one of the main things that Extinction Rebellion teach and practice. It’s how ideas are developed and how decisions are made – how consensus is sought – at all levels within XR, and I find it very effective.
Again, I’m no expert, but the main difference seems to be that people’s assemblies consist of all members of a group, whereas citizens’ assemblies represent a much larger group, for instance an entire national population, with the assembly members chosen from that population by a random process, like jury service. This system of representation is called sortition. Random selection ensures that the population’s various demographics are represented in proportion.
Citizens’ assemblies practice deliberative democracy. At any point, any member can raise a question or request clarification. Facts are sought from experts in fields relevant to the questions and subject matter.
Of course elitist groups like Davos and the WEF will be entirely unwilling to involve anything like a citizens’ assembly in the decision-making process for their Great Reset, and governments are likely to support them on that. But XR also teaches NVDA, Non Violent Direct Action 🙂
The media presents XR as an environmental pressure group, but XR does not promote any specific environmental policies except rapid decarbonisation. XR’s Three Demands are Tell the Truth, Act Now, and that Citizen’s Assemblies must decide those actions. XR presses to face facts and improve democracy.
The longer this utter silence from the conspiracy theorists continues, the more I suspect that their objective is actually to encourage confusion and political naivety among the public, and consequent inaction. Please, prove me wrong…
