Maybe the most remarkable instance of conspiracy theory hype is The Great Reset and Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum. For years I heard about this Great Reset program to control the world -- the super-rich meeting in secret deciding on how to parcel out the future of surveillance and control.
It didn't seem to matter to this conspiracy theory that the Davos WEF meetings weren't actually secret, that they were often broadcast. I even received videos from the WEF in my email box every couple of weeks. Far from conducting closed meetings to concoct nefarious plots, the WEF and Davos crowd seem to be proud of what they are doing. They want everyone to know as much as possible about it. They seem to want people to engage with their debates and concerns.
What shocked me the most, though, was reading Schwab's own book COVID-19: The Great Reset. To my utter surprise I learned that the Great Reset was not a program or plot at all or even a set of proposals. There isn't a single proposal in it. And that's because The Great Reset refers to the current economy rebounding from the pandemic. That's it. That's all it refers to. Not a plan. Not a proposal. Not a program. It's the economy rebounding however it happens. That's The Great Reset.
Naming the post-Covid economy a great reset was Schwab's prediction or expectation that the post-Covid economy would rebound from the pandemic with novel technologies of unprecedented power growing and spreading with unprecedented speed. His view of this rebound is that society and gov'ts and ordinary people are not prepared. Given the history of economic growth, he expects that unless we all prepare, the rich will get much richer and more powerful, and the little guy is going to be left on the wayside. The Great Reset, far from a program or a set of proposals, it's the expectation that the economy will rebound out of control -- without any plan. And, without any prep, it'll be business as usual, with ordinary people left with the short end of the stick. He thinks we can do better to protect the little guy, prevent further environmental degradation, and rebalance inequalities in favor of the 99%.
His book doesn't contain a single proposal. It's all conditionals to consider: if people are afraid of future pandemics, they will very likely want to work remotely. More remote work will change the character of cities, of real estate and the fabric of social relations. A lot more zoom. But if people are tired of zoom and want to risk the dangers of socializing in person, they'll want to return to dense cities and offices. Is there a proposal here? No, it's just thinking about what the future may hold and how we might want to prepare for it so we don't find ourselves with our pants down while Elon Musk steals those pants and sell them back to us at a monopoly price from Mars.
Notice that the conspiracy theory has got the entire thing all upside down. There is no such program called "The Great Reset". The belief that there is such a program is a fiction invented entirely by the conspiracy theorist. The Great Reset itself is a very real, nonfictional thing: it's the economy that we're currently in, the rebound from the pandemic. But it's not a program. It's the absence of any program!
Were Schwab's expectations borne out? Well, Musk is wealthier than ever and LLMs have been widely embraced. But they haven't made all that much of a difference so far. Overall, no, The Great Reset wasn't very great. President Mump is probably more of a game-changer than the economic rebound from the pandemic, which meant inflation for a while and interest rate disruption and that's about it.
So, yes, Schwab hyped the dangers of the Great Reset. I imagine he was hoping the public would take a greater interest in thinking about how to create a better society for the future. Maybe he got some attention for that program of thinking about prep. His efforts to publicize the debate certainly did fuel a lot of conspiracy theories. Every good deed shall be punished.
It's worth asking who is deceiving whom, what is fake here and what is real. The conspiracy theory is a fiction. It takes a description of what's really happening in society and renames it as a plan, a nefarious plan devised by a cabal. The fakery, the deception and the nefarious conspiracy is the conspiracy theory. The Great Reset itself isn't even a plan and there aren't even any proposals in it.
It's very much a piece with the Gates-Musk paradox, which you may read about here.
In public affairs and in mainstream news media, the focus is on danger. Danger sells, and each news medium peddles its fears to its particular market share of political bias. The Republicans are dangerous to the NYTimes' readers, the Democrats are a national danger to the Fox watchers. Philanthropy, on the other hand, isn't a big seller although it purports to fix a danger. Conspiracy theory does a run around all of it.
Engagement with politics in the news assumes some kind of investment in political affairs -- that voting, for example, for one party or person and not another will actually matter. Suppose you are convinced that it doesn't matter, that the world is not only beyond your control but also in the control of a remote elite. On such a view, philanthropy can only be a deception, and solutions are impossible. You cannot have an investment in political affairs since you can make no difference. That's the conspiracy theory mindset. And there's a lot of truth to it. Does the NYTimes reader's vote actually make a difference? Who is the fool here?
Well, both. The conspiracy theorists are wise to their own political impotence, but have fabricated theories to confirm their own distrust and powerlessness.
The conspiracy theory is the perfect convergence of distrust and fictionalization, Tom Gilovich’s source of bias – must I believe the benign story I’ve been told, can I believe a fiction of fear? Can I make up a story that at once confirms my fear and distrust of information? A conspiracy theory will not only confirm my fear, but because it is contrary to the mainstream story, the fiction will also confirm my distrust of mainstream information. Foolproof. It’s the perfect story.
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