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0 votes
The project is explained in a disturbing book entitled Covid 19 - The Great Reset by WEF founder Klaus Schwab
by (530 points)
never heard of it. brief research makes it sound like either conspiracy theory or government policy, neither of which particularly interest me.  perhaps you could explain further?
Hello, thanks for answering, it’s not conspiracy theory, it’s a book by the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, the institution that organizes the Davos conferences. He gives instructions on how to use the “opportunity” provided by the covid pandemics to reshape our global future. I’m still reading it and would like to know if anyone here has an opinion on the issue. I can give mine when I finish the book.
user:whatever, since you haven't checked back in on the covid thread that was active before, i take it that your opinion hasn't changed? you still think that covid is not a big deal and it's a result of china action and media conspiracy? (iirc)
edit: i have now read more about "reset", so never mind. that answers my question. thanks
SYes, i still think covid is mostly a lie. The deaths that are being counted as covid were not necessarily due to covid and pcr tests cannot be used to detect infections because they detect (sometimes very tiny amounts, depending on the number of cycles) of viral rna which does not necessarily correspond to viable viruses. Mainstream media are used as propaganda instruments to keep people frightened, I don’t remember mentioning China, though. This is not a chinese conspiracy, as your conservative party defends, although China is at the root of things due to the success of its state capitalism (as you know China holds for example a huge amount of the huge us debt). In terms of what different  countries have been doing to deal with this pandemic, Sweden has in my opinion  the best approach; they respect their citizens, do not lie as much as most others and have managed to safeguard peoples mental health and their jobs, all the while minimizing covid “collateral” deaths which are the real problem in therms of public health. I apologize for any mistakes here, this is not my language and I’m using my phone so it’s all very small.
i have seen that reset theory being pushed by folks on both the left and the right. more fodder for the masses as far as i'm concerned.

newsflash: authoritarian power mongers are coercive opportunists. shocking, i know.
thanks user:whatever, i appreciate the clarification.

FA: agreed.

2 Answers

+1 vote
i have not read the actual WEF proposal, which is ostensibly about resetting the global economy to a more "sustainable" model, with the environment being a major factor. if i read it i may come back and edit.

since i know there is precious little those in power are going to do to stem the tide of destruction wreaked by modern humans, i see that as a big PR play, opportunistically timed.

however, i have seen quite a bit of the conspiracy stuff that surrounds it. and yes there appears to be overlap with the whole q-anon phenomenon. the virus was created to cause this pandemic so the world could be reconfigured by the global elite into a global totalitarian marxist regime.

that's when we all sing kumbaya.
by (13.4k points)
the  point you quote him saying is that a) you say it's not a big deal, b) you think it is a big deal (that is, there's a conspiracy involving it which de facto means that it is important). that is a question of logic, not mockery or dismissal.

but i have no interest in talking about a third party's motivation. i think you could stand to assume good faith (which obviously does NOT mean agreement) in the people who post here, whether or not you like their tone. and you could stand to do that because it helps you: it helps you to question your assumptions, to expand your capacity, to clarify your thinking. because talking with people who disagree with us can help us in those ways.

but of course it's your choice. i'm done with this now.
I cannot agree that because I don't think @ovid, an illness, is a big deal I automatically think there's a conspiracy beneath it. It depends on how you define conspiracy, of course, but I'm assuming we are talking about a secret plan by an organized group. In fact, my hypothesis is that what we are living is what behavioural psychologists call an availability cascade, which is "a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception of increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse". And it is known that in such processes, there is a class of intervenients called the availability entrepreneurs, "activists who manipulate the content of public discourse (...) to advance their agendas". These availability entrepreneus are not exactly conspirators and are not necessarily organized in a single uniform group. The book I asked opinions about is also probably not part of what we would normally call a conspiracy, it's a widely known book about the mess we are in written by people who are powerful and are clearly stating their intention to work as availability entrepreneurs in the process...

I do agree that it is often useful to discuss with people who don't fully agree with us. But for me, that is useful as long as they don't engage in ad hominem attacks. They are free to doing it, of course, but I'm also free to answer them back.
@whatever, my comments to you seem no more disrespectful or ad hominem than any number of things you have commented here. you have consistently said that basically, folks here who disagree with you are ignorant followers of mass media and believers in false narratives while doing no real research ourselves; yet you are in possession of "the truth" because you do "real" research and the "official" numbers in europe are far more accurate than in the u.s.

that is condescending as hell, though i don't give a fuck.

i understand that you do not know me, and so you have no idea what i am like or how i communicate. so you can interpret however you like.

but your response comes off as weak to me. if you find that disrespectful, then consider it disrespect to what you are saying, not to you as an individual (since i don't know you). i distinguish between the message and the messenger, unless context demonstrates otherwise.

bottom line: grow some thicker skin if you are going to engage online.
user:whatever, you have changed the subject. the issue is not (at this point) whether your argument makes sense or not, but how you handle people disagreeing with you.

you deciding to talk about how valid your argument is rather than, AGAIN, addressing my point, which is that you seem to be acting in bad faith, is apparently par for your course.

i get it. people don't learn how to argue very well in this society. i wouldn't be irritated except that i really don't like  tone-policing, especially after you start the name-calling.

i am irritated that i am getting sucked back into this conversation. i will do my best to refrain from now on. sigh.
@whatever: "activists who manipulate the content of public discourse (...) to advance their agendas"

can you point to a single activist/politician/entertainer or anyone else with a wide audience that does NOT do that?

everyone wants to advance their own agenda, that should not even have to be said. some have more broad reach and/or more followers than others. and some have agendas that don't actually involve society, economy, politics, etc. those folks (the latter) are always going to be more interesting and relevant to me, at least as a baseline of affinity.

i assume that you (whatever) are aware that "the great reset" predates covid by many years, though the term may have been coined in 2016 or so. the book was titled - and strategies and tactics adjusted - for max opportunism thanks to the pandemic. was the pandemic "created" for that purpose? maybe. i don't doubt the possibility. as i've said elsewhere, just because something fits into a conspiracy theory doesn't mean it isn't possible or even likely. so what does that really change? to me it is just another potential attempt at a more efficient power grab by those so inclined and in position to do so. nothing is going to stop that kind of thing from happening as long as the bulk of humanity believes it needs mass society and governance.

@dot: last paragraph, my thoughts exactly. dammit.
+3 votes
I downloaded the book and have since deleted it. I didn't read the whole book either. Just a few sections. You should just pirate these books. Anyways, afaict it is just an updated and repackaged corporatism to modernize it. Klaus Schwab refers to it as "stakeholder capitalism" in the book instead of corporatism. Likely due to what corporatism is associated with. I can understand why left-wing folk would find this book appealing since it panders to leftish tendencies. It has socialist-like aspects built into it.

I'm not surprised that the "great reset" was packaged into a book related to the rona-19. People are more a bit susceptible to conspiracy theories and/or ideas they normally wouldn't accept until some large crisis event like the rona-19, me thinks. Ironically enough, Schwab points out that people are more susceptible to other ideas they'd otherwise dismiss it. He's using the rona-19 to try to convert people into corporatism.  A more extreme version of this would be someone that fell for an elaborate conspiracy like the onr that f@ mentioned.

Is this guy well known or popular in leftist circles for one reason or the other? I'm out of the loop.
by (4.7k points)
edited by
Hi, no this guy does not belong to any leftist circle. In fact, he represents the so-called 1%. He organizes the Davos meeting, a sort of conference that takes place in Switzerland every year with a few thousands of the world richest people. They call themselves world leaders and discuss our common future with our politicians, who are also invited. There are also a lot of journalists there but not to report back on the meeting. This crowd apparently decided to give up of neoliberalism and embrace social causes and environmentalism...

I am finishing the book and then I will comment more, thanks for your reaction.
yeah I read a bit about Klaus Schwab and the co-author and the wef. It seems him and his buddies at the wef are just a bunch of plutocrats that hold a plutocrat party once a year. Since he's not popular with leftists, nor associated with leftists, why ask a question on here about his conceited pet project book he wrote? It seems like an odd place to ask such a question about a book some guy wrote in less than a week about his corporatist wet dream.  Anywats, I'm not too interested in discussing the book any further. Corporatism and plutocrat virtue signaling is uninteresting to me.

I'm sorry the book disturbed you.
your take on the book and klaus aside, zubaz, what does leftism and someone's association with it, have to do with asking a question on this site?
Oh anarchism is generally associated with leftism. so if this Klaus Schwab guy and the wef had some sort of association with leftism or leftists like him then the question asked would make a more sense in my mind as why it was asked here due to that association.
didn't you participate in the thread on "is anarchism right or left?"

i thought i remembered your name in that discussion...
How long ago was that question asked? If it's more than a few weeks, then I have no idea. I have a rather poor memory and sometimes difficulties retaining information or  memories over a certain period of time. I will just assume I probably did participate in that thread since you asked. From my observation of people that say they're anarchists also say they're leftists. I was making a generalization.

Why do you ask? I'm sensing you're going to insinuate I'm being hypocritical about something and that very well may be the case. whomp whomp.
not making any accusations - am trying to be clear that while many people assume/associate anarchists with leftists (etc), that is short sighted and incorrect, both because it ignores a significant group of anarchists (leading to confusion at best), and because it perpetuates a bad understanding of anarchy's relationship to existing, inadequate political models. and i'm pointing out that this question is addressed on this site already in case you or someone else want to look into it more.
Thanks for elaborating what you were getting at. Perhaps you could have done that instead of asking me about some thread I took part in from 4-5 years ago. It may have made perfect sense to you what you were asking, but to me it was incredibly vague. I'll try to limit my myopic generalizations, and maybe you could work on being more direct with people.
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