{"id":174695,"date":"2020-12-14T12:01:53","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T12:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=174695"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:08:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:08:51","slug":"the-great-reset-conspiracy-smoothie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/12\/the-great-reset-conspiracy-smoothie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Reset Conspiracy Smoothie"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A viral conspiracy theory blends together legitimate critiques with truly dangerous anti-vaccination fantasies and outright coronavirus denialism.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

8 Dec 2020 – <\/em>Writing about \u201cThe Great Reset\u201d is not easy. It has turned into a viral conspiracy theory purporting to expose something no one ever attempted to hide, most of which is not really happening anyway, some of which actually should.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s extra confusing for me to unpick this particular knot because at the center of it all is a bastardization of a concept I know a little something about: the shock doctrine.<\/p>\n

But here goes nothing.<\/p>\n

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Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chair of the World Economic Forum, delivers a welcome message on the eve of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 20, 2020. Photo: Markus Schreiber\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Back in June, the World Economic Forum, best known for its annual Davos summit, kicked off<\/a> a lunge for organizational relevance at a time when it was already clear that, for the foreseeable future, packing thousands of people, injected-cheek by lifted-jowl, into a Swiss ski resort to talk about harnessing the power of markets to end rural poverty was a nonstarter.<\/p>\n

The effort was called the Great Website \u2014 I mean the Great Reset. And through articles, videos, webinars, podcasts, and a book by WEF founder Klaus Schwab, it provided a coronavirus-themed rebranding of all the things Davos does anyway, now hastily repackaged as a blueprint for reviving the global economy post-pandemic by \u201cseeking a better form of capitalism.\u201d The Great Reset was a place to hawk for-profit technofixes to complex social problems; to hear heads of transnational oil giants opine about the urgent need to tackle climate change; to listen to politicians say the things they say during crises: that this is a tragedy but also an opportunity, that they are committed to building back better, and ushering in a \u201cfairer, greener, healthier planet.\u201d Prince Charles, David Attenborough, and the head of the International Monetary Fund all figured prominently. That kind of thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In short, the Great Reset encompasses some good stuff that won\u2019t happen and some bad stuff that certainly will and, frankly, nothing out of the ordinary in our era of \u201cgreen\u201d billionaires readying rockets for Mars. Indeed, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Davos speak, and the number of times it has attempted to rebrand capitalism as a slightly buggy poverty alleviation and ecological restoration program, will recognize the vintage champagne in this online carafe. (This history is explored in an excellent new book and film<\/a> by the law professor Joel Bakan, \u201cThe New Corporation: How \u2018Good\u2019 Corporations Are Bad for Democracy.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Through its highly influential Global Competitiveness Report, the WEF has played a leading role<\/a> in the transnational campaign to liberate capital from all encumbrances (like robust regulation, protections for local industries, progressive taxation, and \u2014 heaven forbid \u2014 nationalizations). Long ago, however, Schwab realized that if Davos didn\u2019t add some do-gooding to its well-doing, the pitchforks that had started amassing at the foot of the mountain would eventually storm the gates (as they came close<\/a> to doing during the 2001 summit).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Riot police officers attack students during a rally to protest a meeting of the World Economic Forum near the Shilla Hotel where the Geneva-based WEF opened a two-day summit in Seoul, on June 13, 2004.\u00a0 Ahn Young-Joon\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And so the giddy sessions on new markets in Malaysia and new startups in California were complemented with somber ones on melting ice caps, United Nations development goals, \u201cimpact investing,\u201d \u201cstakeholder capitalism,\u201d and \u201ccorporate global citizenship<\/a>.\u201d In 2003, Schwab introduced the tradition of each January summit having a big theme, starting with the appropriately chastened \u201cBuilding Trust.\u201d The new Davos tone, though, was truly set in 2005, when actor Sharon Stone, upon hearing Tanzania\u2019s president speak of his nation\u2019s need for mosquito nets to battle malaria, leapt<\/a> to her feet and turned the session into an impromptu charity auction to purchase the nets. She raised $1 million in five minutes, and a new Davos era was on its way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If Davos wasn\u2019t \u201cseeking a better form of capitalism\u201d to solve the spiraling crises Davos itself systematically deepened, it wouldn\u2019t be Davos.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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The Great Reset is merely the latest edition of this gilded tradition, barely distinguishable from earlier Davos Big Ideas, from \u201cShaping the Post-Crisis World\u201d (2009) to \u201cRethink, Redesign, Rebuild\u201d (2010) to \u201cThe Great Transformation\u201d (2012) and, who can forget, \u201cCreating a Shared Future in a Fractured World\u201d (2018). If Davos wasn\u2019t \u201cseeking a better form of capitalism\u201d to solve the spiraling crises Davos itself systematically deepened, it wouldn\u2019t be Davos.<\/p>\n

And yet search for the term \u201cglobal reset\u201d and you will be bombarded with breathless \u201cexpos\u00e9s\u201d of a secret globalist cabal, headed by Schwab and Bill Gates, that is using the state of shock created by the coronavirus (which is probably itself a \u201choax\u201d) to turn the world into a high-tech dictatorship that will take away your freedom forever: a green\/socialist\/Venezuela\/Soros\/forced vaccine dictatorship if the Reset expos\u00e9 is coming from the far right, and a Big Pharma\/GMO\/biometric implants\/5G\/robot dog\/forced vaccine dictatorship if the expos\u00e9 hails from the far left.<\/p>\n

Confused? That\u2019s not on you. Less a conspiracy theory than a conspiracy smoothie, the Great Reset has managed to mash up every freakout happening on the internet \u2014 left and right, true-ish, and off-the-wall \u2014 into one inchoate meta-scream about the unbearable nature of pandemic life under voracious capitalism. I\u2019ve been doing my best to ignore it for months, even when various Reset \u201cresearchers\u201d have insisted that all of this is an example of the shock doctrine, a term I coined a decade and a half ago to describe the many ways that elites try to harness deep disasters to push through policies that further enrich the already wealthy and restrict democratic liberties.<\/p>\n

There has been a tsunami of examples of the real shock doctrine since the pandemic began: Trump\u2019s attacks on Washington\u2019s regulatory architecture; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos\u2019s amped-up campaign for \u201cschool choice,\u201d rather than, say, giving public schools the resources they need to keep children safe; Silicon Valley\u2019s multiheaded power grab, which I wrote about as the Screen New Deal<\/a>; the Modi government\u2019s cruel attacks on price protections for India\u2019s farmers (setting off a wave of heroic protests) \u2014 and so many more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"US<\/p>\n

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos speaks at a school choice event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on May 3, 2017, in Washington, D.C.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Photo: Mandel Ngan\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What Schwab and the WEF are doing with the Great Reset is both more subtle and more insidious. Schwab is, of course, absolutely right when he says that the pandemic has revealed many deadly structural failures of capitalism as usual, as does the accelerating climate crisis and the hoovering of the planet\u2019s wealth up toward the Davos class, even in the midst of a global pandemic. But like the WEF\u2019s earlier big themes, the Great Reset is not a serious effort to actually solve the crises it describes. On the contrary, it is an attempt to create a plausible impression that the huge winners in this system are on the verge of voluntarily setting greed aside to get serious about solving the raging crises that are radically destabilizing our world.<\/p>\n

Why? For the same reason I keep hearing Facebook ads on NPR podcasts telling me how much Facebook wants to be regulated. Because if our corporate overlords can create this impression, it is less likely that governments will listen to the rising chorus of voices calling on them to do what is required to actually combat spiraling poverty, joblessness, climate breakdown, and informational degeneration: regulate the companies that have created these crises, and tax them, break them up, and, in some cases, put them under public control.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Great Reset is an attempt to create a plausible impression that the huge winners in this system are on the verge of voluntarily setting greed aside to get serious about solving the raging crises that are radically destabilizing our world.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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So no, the Great Reset is not just another name for the Green New Deal, as many a right-winger with a digital chalkboard and an unhealthy AOC obsession is absurdly claiming. It is, first and foremost, about blocking a real Green New Deal, which most assuredly would not have the support of BP<\/a>, Mastercard, the Prince of Wales, and all of the other Great Reset partners.<\/p>\n

And yet, in recent weeks, a slew of right-wing commentators on Fox News, as well as Brazil\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0minister of foreign affairs and prominent opposition politicians in Australia<\/a> and Canada<\/a>, have claimed to be confused about this and are suddenly giving oxygen to what was, until recently, a marginal conspiracy. Laura Ingraham,<\/a> Tucker Carlson,<\/a> and Ben Shapiro<\/a> have all been terrifying their huge audiences with claims that green socialism is about to be forced down their throats via Schwab\u2019s Great Reset, which, they explain, is the very same thing as President-elect Joe Biden\u2019s \u201cBuild Back Better\u201d plan, which is itself a thin cover for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s Green New Deal. (Like an early fan of an indie punk band, Glenn Beck has been using his perch at The Blaze to point out<\/a> that he was ranting about the Great Reset when it was just a gleam in Schwab\u2019s eye.)<\/p>\n

Do these people honestly think that Schwab is in cahoots with AOC and using the pandemic to put BP out of business \u2014 with the full cooperation of BP? Of course not. But President Donald Trump is on his way out, and the Green New Deal is popular \u2014 precisely because it is as far away from Davos as it could be, grounded in a polluter-pays ethos and in programs like a jobs guarantee and universal health care that enjoy broad working-class support. For right-wing politicians and the oil companies that back them, the more climate action can be conflated with an organization known for its traffic jams of private jets and its Bond villain<\/a> founder, the easier it will be to resist any climate plan at all. That\u2019s why the earliest<\/a> alarmism about the Great Reset came from the Heartland Institute, ground zero of the climate change denial machine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Jason<\/p>\n

Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party, speaks during a news conference in Calgary, Canada, on April 5, 2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Photo: Todd Korol\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This messaging is gaining traction not because people are suckers but because they are mad \u2014 and they have every right to be. Lockdown policies have demanded months of individual sacrifice for the collective good without providing<\/a> the most basic collective protections to keep families from slipping into starvation and homelessness, or to keep small businesses afloat. Meanwhile, trillions have been spent to backstop markets and bail out multinationals, and pandemic profiteering<\/a> is rampant<\/a>. Is it any wonder that so many find it entirely plausible that the same elites who expect them to swallow all the coronavirus-related sacrifices while they party in the Hamptons and on private islands would also be willing to exaggerate the risks of the disease to get them to the accept more bitter \u201cgreen\u201d medicine, for the common good? As that first Davos theme made clear, trust between the people and the mountaintop has been broken \u2014 and it most certainly has not been rebuilt.<\/p>\n

For a glimpse of how all of this fits together, take a look at what is going on in Alberta, Canada, under its truly reprehensible premier, one Jason Kenney. Kenney came to power pledging to serve as a shameless valet for the Alberta oil patch, specifically its extra-fast-planet-cooking tar sands. He promised to ram through all pipelines, no matter the opposition, and create a \u201cwar room\u201d to surveil all opponents.<\/p>\n

Back in March, in the early days of the pandemic, I observed<\/a> that Kenney deserved the award for the most craven Covid-19 disaster capitalist because he had just laid off<\/a> 20,000 education workers, supposedly to cover pandemic costs, even as he lavished $7 billion in public subsidies on the Keystone XL pipeline, despite the lockdowns having created a massive glut in crude oil. He followed up in the fall by laying off 11,000 health care workers<\/a>, a clear effort to use the Covid-19 crisis to open the door to partial U.S.-style health care privatization.<\/p>\n

It has surprised no one that Kenney has also presided over a U.S.-style coronavirus explosion<\/a>,\u00a0with the province\u2019s positivity rate recently topping 10 percent (higher than the average south of the border). Now Kenney, a self-proclaimed big-government-bashing libertarian, has been reduced to begging<\/a> Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for funds to build field hospitals.<\/p>\n

Is it any wonder he has been looking to change the subject? Last week, Kenney did exactly that, selecting<\/a> a question about the Great Reset during a Facebook livestream. The premier feigned horror at the idea that Klaus Schwab could possibly see Covid-19 as an opportunity to advance policy goals, describing the plan as a \u201cgrab bag of left-wing ideas for less freedom and more government\u201d and \u201cfailed socialist policy ideas.\u201d Warming up to his subject, he declared: \u201cI\u2019m not going to be taking any policy direction from Klaus Schwab and his ilk. \u2026 Heck no! We are not going to exploit or take advantage of a crisis to advance a political agenda. \u2026 It\u2019s very distasteful and regrettable that influential people would explicitly seek to take advantage of a crisis like this to advance their own political vision and values.\u201d<\/p>\n

The online right rejoiced: \u201cJason Kenny Shows Real Leadership Rejecting Klaus Schwab\u2019s New World Order!\u201d declared<\/a> one outlet, and I can\u2019t bear to link to the many, many others.<\/p>\n

Sadly, Kenney\u2019s aversion to crisis opportunism comes late for the thousands of newly unemployed education and hospital workers in his province, or for the hundreds of patients who will soon be getting treatment in its field hospitals. And though Kenney was quick to say that the Great Reset was not a conspiracy theory and that the coronavirus is real, his statements were immediately seized upon by the growing numbers of people who are seriously convinced that Covid-19 is a hoax cooked up by Davos globalists to eliminate their private property, poison their brains with 5G, and take away their right to go to the gym.<\/p>\n

In Alberta, thousands of those people participated in maskless \u201cWalk for Freedom\u201d marches last week. I have no doubt that Kenney meant it when he told them to cut it out<\/a>, just as he no doubt wants Covid-19 to stop ravaging his province, along with his reputation. But what he wants far more is to stop the momentum toward climate action in coronavirus recovery plans so the oil companies that underwrite his party and government can wring out a few more profitable quarters. And he, along with growing numbers of similarly craven politicians the world over, sees fueling the Great Reset conspiracy as the most effective means of achieving that goal.<\/p>\n

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Very disappointed by this large event in Calgary.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s irresponsible to gather in large numbers, especially at this point in the pandemic. It shows a disregard for health care workers & the vulnerable. There are lots of ways to protest govt policies without risking viral spread. https:\/\/t.co\/uC4dddj6hJ<\/a><\/p>\n

— Jason Kenney \ud83c\udde8\ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddee\ud83c\uddf1 (@jkenney) December 5, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n