Thread by @docrussjackson

"The Great Reset" was the name of the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in 2020, involving high-profile business & political leaders, with the theme of rebuilding society & the economy in what proponents believe is a sustainable way following the #COVID19 pandemic.

Prince Charles’s outlined 5 key areas in a speech as part of a launch event for The Great Reset - a project involving the World Economic Forum & Prince Charles’s 'Sustainable Markets Initiative', aimed at rebuilding the economic & social system to be more sustainable:

The World Economic Forum generally suggests that a globalised world is best managed by a self-selected coalition of multinational corporations, governments & civil society organizations, seeing periods of global instability as opportunities to intensify its programmatic efforts.

Critics see the Great Reset as a continuation by the World Economic Forum's strategy to focus on connotated activist topics such as environmental protection & social entrepreneurship to disguise the organisation's true plutocratic goals.

People are right to be suspicious.

However, baseless conspiracy theories spread by American far-right groups linked to QAnon surged at the onset of the Great Reset forum, which increased in fervor as world leaders incorporated ideas based on a "reset" in their speeches.

#COVID19 offers an opportunity to "reset & reshape" the world in a way that is more aligned with the excellent United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), such as climate change, inequality & poverty, which gained even greater urgency during the pandemic.

There are of course serious concerns.

How could there not be, given the unprecedented concentration of wealth & power in the hands of a global elite who invest vast resources in think tanks & propaganda designed to downplay the dangers the elite represent & keep voters divided?

Critics include Naomi Klein, who described the WEF idea as a "Great Reset Conspiracy Smoothie." She said that it was simply a "coronavirus-themed rebranding" of things that the WEF was already doing & that it was an attempt by the rich to make themselves look good.

But criticism comes from the Right too: in his review of the 2020 book the Great Reset agenda in general, Spectator contributor Ben Sixsmith said that the Great Reset was a set of "bad ideas... adopted internationally by some of the richest & most powerful people in the world".

So it's actually not at all clear whether there is a genuine appetite to tackle poverty, inequality & climate change, or whether this is just noise that won't fundamentally change the existing structural inequalities or seriously address the environmental crisis.

Our divided & paranoid times provide fertile ground for a potentially even more harmful pandemic - of fevered conspiracy theories.

The Great Reset conspiracy theory suggests world leaders planned & executed the #COVID19 pandemic in order to take control of the world economy.

The spread of the latest Great Reset conspiracy theory, integrating anti-lockdown conspiracies, is connected to Candace Owens, Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson & Paul Joseph Watson, the UK-based editor of Alex Jones' Infowars, where he advanced the 'New World Order' conspiracy theory.

An October 2020 article by Snopes traced the origins of a chain email posted on conspiracy forums from a member of a non-existent committee within the Liberal Party of Canada that leaked Canada's secret "COVID Global Reset Plan" to the QAnon-dedicated "Q Research" board on 8kun.

In December 2020, Australian advertising executive Rowan Dean promoted the conspiracy theory on hard-right Sky News Australia, claiming that "This Great Reset is as serious & dangerous a threat to our prosperity – to your prosperity & your freedom – as we have faced in decades".

The conspiracy theory has also been disseminated by Russian propaganda outlets: "The propaganda apparatus of the Putin regime has for many months published wild allegations from obscure bloggers that the Great Reset is code for oligarchs to amass wealth & control populations."

So given all of this, finding out 'the truth' & (imho more importantly) creating a much fairer & greener world, is a daunting task.

Here's some contextualising background reading on corporate power & neoliberalism.

Good luck!

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1458119003721945094?t=d43-44PeQom0UZqSD-nQsw&s=19

And just because there are unhinged conspiracy theories in circulation, pushed by divisive grifting opportunistic idiots, it doesn't mean there isn't a cabal of self-interested grotesquely wealthy elites reluctant to let go of their power & wealth...

opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/…