#34 World Economic Forum: Elites & conspiracies

This week, hundreds of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world assembled in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) conference. 

World leaders gave speeches that were broadcast around the world, while the wealthy and well-connected rubbed shoulders with fellow globe-trotters at corporate-sponsored networking events in fancy restaurants and Swiss chalets.

Conference attendees are regularly criticized as out-of-touch elites who just want to hear themselves talk about far-fetched solutions to problems they created.

Regardless of how you feel about Davos, the WEF raises interesting questions about global power, elite networks, and how we talk and think about these topics politically.

What is the World Economic Forum?

The World Economic Forum is an international non-governmental organization that connects elites from around the world and promotes a shared dialogue around world issues.

Every year, the WEF hosts a major conference in Davos, Switzerland, that is attended by world leaders, corporate executives, and other powerful people.

The group was founded in 1972 by Klaus Schwab, a Swiss-German business professor, as a network for connecting corporate executives from around Europe and teaching them American management techniques. It has since evolved into a key forum for corporations and the global economic and political elite (all of whom must pay for their memberships).

These elites discuss the problems that are facing the world — and their proposed solutions — on public panels that are closely covered by leading media outlets. The WEF also functions as a think tank that publishes papers and conducts surveys of economists and other experts, but otherwise has little influence on public policy.

The WEF: New Enemy for Conservatives

A decade ago, few people knew what the WEF was. Now, the WEF plays a key role in the worldview of many American conservatives, who see the international group as the beating heart of a globalist ideology and movement that is undermining America.

This anti-globalist worldview has grown in popularity in recent years, with populist attacks on globalist elites at Davos uniting conservative politicians and voters from around the world.

The WEF’s leader, Klaus Schwab, is vilified and portrayed as a super-villain behind the globalist plot to destroy America piece-by-piece. You just need to look up ‘Klaus Schwab’ on Twitter to see the sort of memes people are making about him. Even Elon Musk is posting memes about him.

See below for an example of a (crazy) book arguing that Schwab and the WEF want to create a New World Order that would bring about the Antichrist.

Davos Man and the Global Elite

There is a global elite who run the world, but they do so in ways that are fairly transparent. In 2004, Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington coined the term 'Davos Man' to describe a particular type of international elite who is more loyal to the multinational corporation that employs them than the country they're from.

Even though people can certainly argue that America’s elites and politicians have done a poor job of leading the country in recent decades, the emphasis on the World Economic Forum can be misguided. 

Figures like Klaus Schwab have no actual power, but him and his ilk are embedded in the heart of networks of global elites — world leaders, executives who lead major financial institutions and corporations, leading intellectuals and experts from the world’s top universities — that do essentially run the world.

The way they do so isn’t conspiratorial; they just lead the corporations and governments that they’ve been chosen to lead and try to pursue the interests of their shareholders, owners, or voters.

You might believe that the system incentivizes corruption and leadership in the interests of special interests or a corporate elite. You might also believe that power is corrupting, or that capitalism or socialism are at the heart of the problems facing the world. But focusing on the WEF as the heart of a ‘globalist conspiracy’ leads people to lose focus on the actual people and groups that exercise power in the world:

• powerful corporations and financial institutions

• governments with powerful militaries and economies

• ultra-wealthy individuals who can use their money to shape politics in un-democratic ways

• mass media organizations that shape and sway public opinion

Anti-Globalism: From the Trilaterals to the WEF

This anti-globalist perspective has grown in influence in American politics since 2016, but it’s not new. My Ph.D. is on the history of anti-globalism in America, and these kind of anti-globalist arguments were being made about the Trilateral Commission nearly 50 years ago. (Check out the Twitter thread below to see a summary of my research that includes a lot of cool historical documents.)

Few people today have heard of the Trilateralists, but from the late 1970s through the 1990s many American conservatives believed that it was at the heart of a globalist conspiracy to create a one-world government to control America.

Here’s an example from The Spotlight, the most popular right-wing conspiracist newspaper from the 1980s:

Looks familiar, right? It turns out that the Liberty Lobby, the right-wing group that published the Spotlight newsletter, was led by a Neo-Nazi named Willis Carto.

Half a century ago, Carto and the Liberty Lobby popularized anti-globalist populist language that has only grown in popularity in recent years. Now, the former and would-be president is campaigning on an anti-globalist platform as the GOP presidential candidate for third consecutive election.

ART OF THE DAY

Thank you for reading. Please reply to this email if you have any thoughts or feedback.

Yours,
Dan