By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog
When the skies over the Swiss resort of
Davos next fill with over 1,000 private jets bearing the elites of the
world to discuss its fate, the Teutonic man behind it all may no longer
be there.
Klaus Martin Schwab, born during WWII to a Nazi factory
manager using forced labor to make flamethrowers, is Mr. Globalism.
Even those who don’t know his name have seen that face with its cold
fish stare through the rimmed eyeglasses looking back at them from under
the towering futura font, slim and minimalist, of a solemn address at a
World Economic Forum event.
“As I enter my 88th year, I have
decided to step down from the position of Chair and as a member of the
Board of Trustees, with immediate effect,” Klaus announced with dryly
punctilious precision, declaring his departure while telling us nothing
about why he’s leaving.
One reason may be that the WEF is
investigating Schwab’s alleged withdrawal of cash from ATMs and use of
the WEF to pay for hotel room massages, but the WEF founder has been
accused of worse in the past.
But the real reason may be all the empty seats at the last World Economic Forum’s Davos event.
Not
only Trump, who delivered virtual remarks, but most world leaders
stayed home from 2025’s AI-themed Davos. Apart from Ukraine’s Zelenskyy,
who can be counted on to show up at garage sales, dinner theaters and
children’s puppet shows as long as there’s a chance photos will be
taken, the WEF had to make do with personal addresses from the likes of
South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, the UN Secretary General, and the
European Commission president.
The globalists, failed state leaders, and CEOs looking to mingle still come, but Davos is dying.
Klaus
and Davos both outlived their moment and the movement. Globalism
remains a compelling force as a political reality, but its ideological
momentum has run out. Conservatives hate the WEF and entire political
movements have been based on running against globalism. Leftists want
their internationalism in the form of riots and terrorism, not glorified
TED talks with Bill Gates and elderly German academic bureaucrats
selling them watered-down Marxism.
The general public never had
much faith in the Eurocratic vision that the world would be run by an
unaccountable world government of elite bureaucrats, academic experts
and billionaire philanthropists holding conferences in various resorts
to discuss how much light rail to build and how many patients with
incurable diseases on national health insurance to euthanize.
But
if Klaus were to blame anyone for destroying globalism’s credibility,
it would be his former messiah, Barack Obama, who seemed like he had
been cloned at Davos to accomplish the WEF’s goals. Instead, Americans
got a taste of Davos and ran as far as they could the other way. Obama’s
Arab Spring flooded Europe with Muslim mass migration and woke the
continent from the slumbering haze of childless elderly government
workers sleepwalking into the sunset.
By the time Schwab was
using the pandemic to call for a “global reset”, the slick blend of
corporate buzzwords and NGO marketing looked like an evil tyranny to
millions of people. The Davosites had gotten their way and left behind
ruin and misery on a global scale, and as the 1,000 private jets
continued to fly to Davos, it was all too clear that they were still not
done.
The one thing much of America and Europe now agree on is a
burning hatred for the establishment. And globalism in its full flower
at the WEF is the ultimate establishment. The WEF and its allied
billionaire philanthropists helped platform and fund a militant activist
class, but from Obama to the street rioters, that class doesn’t want to
be seen in public with the WEF.
Schwab’s 2025 WEF pitch for “constructive optimism” and collaboration through AI fell flat.
Ironically,
with AI, Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution seems more plausible
than ever, but no one is cheering the dystopia of digital automation
even as everyone seems to be diving in. It’s a world that seems to echo
the WEF’s old pitch of “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy”, many
believe the first part, but few believe the second part. And no one
outside Davos is happy.
The illusion of a global world order, a
project with troubling roots in Europe’s post-fascist systems, came
apart even before Trump took office. Nationalist governments run for
office promising that unhitching from globalism will make their
countries and societies better. Brexit was not a one-off but a major
moment in a grand global uncoupling that continues today.
President
Trump’s dismantling of America’s participation in globalist
institutions is a serious blow to the order that Schwab had tried to
impose, but it wouldn’t be possible if there hadn’t been a systemic loss
of faith in the system embodied by Davos conferences, McKinsey
contracts, expert opinions, multilateral talks, think tank papers and
whatever Bill Gates, Bloomberg, Soros, the Amazon founder’s ex-wife and
the Apple co-founder’s widow are funding this year.
At last
year’s Davos event, Schwab complained that, “geopolitically, our world
is more interconnected, yet paradoxically, more divided than ever” and
urged that “to break this cycle, we need a paradigm shift, we must
rebuild trust” touting “100 initiatives” bringing together “the best
experts throughout the year at our headquarters in Geneva, and
throughout the world, to make tangible progress in finding solutions for
the key challenges on the global agenda.”
But Klaus was selling
something that no one was buying anymore. Davos is a club for men and
women whose institutional power is great, but whose hold on events and
the public has faded. That’s why world leaders have been staying away,
leaving it to CEOs to abuse shareholder funds to subsidize Schwab’s
Swiss globalist gab getaway. And not even Klaus could keep it up.
After
Klaus, the WEF falls to Børge Brende, a former Norwegian minister who
already serves as its CEO to be its public face. Unfortunately, like
Schwab, it’s the face of a James Bond villain. But that’s already how
most people see globalism. What used to be sold to the public as a more
efficient process of fixing problems in the third world has turned the
first world into the third.
Globalism, like Davos, is a scam, its
promise of fixing problems through convergence only converges the
problems on those parts of the world foolish enough to try to fix them.
The Arab Spring didn’t just make the Middle East and North Africa worse,
it also made Europe worse. Promising to save the planet has made life
worse for Dutch farmers and American workers.
“The inherent vice
of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings,” Winston Churchill,
who had been at war with the system represented by the Schwabs,
asserted. “The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of
miseries.” The WEF has played a role in sharing miseries, but those
miseries are more likely to be found in rust belt cities in America and
England than in the resort playgrounds of Davos. Every WEF idea somehow
makes life worse for ordinary people and better for Davos attendees. And
few still believe that’s some sort of coincidence.
Davos urged
corporations to act like NGOs and NGOs to act like corporations.
Billionaires were told to think like politicians and bring about
positive change. National leaders were encouraged to think like world
leaders. Out of this goulash of globalism has come a much worse world in
which people no longer feel represented by those they elect and believe
that they are being governed by an unelected tyranny of self-proclaimed
billionaire world leaders like Bill Gates.
And they’re sick and tired of it.
Klaus
Schwab’s belated retirement is incomplete. A proper Auf Wiedersehen
from him would have been to take down the signs, pull down the curtain
and put an end to the WEF.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.
One commenter at American thinker said:
Quick! Someone post at least five things he said in those 25 hours’ worth repeating or that will go into a “Great quotes of politicians” book. His 25 hours was like camping out in the pasture with the jackass’s and cattle, a lot of noise that amounts to nothing.
Yes, Booker is Democrat presidential timber for sure, right along with the rest of the Democrat bench. Gavin Newsom, AOC, Buttigieg, Tampon Timmy Walz, Rahm Emanuel, Kamala Harris, and now it appears Jasmine Crockett is being thrown into the mix. Senator John Kennedy says he thinks AOC is the leader of the Democrat party now, and he also thinks she's the reason why they put directions on shampoo bottles. It gets better. In spite of the influence AOC now has in the party, it's felt it will be Kamala in 2028. Ya just gotta see the humor in that. But nonetheless, it's being reported the machinery is already in the works, "but the moment she’s challenged she’ll fall apart again and primary voters will be reminded of what a lousy candidate she is and not want to take the risk."
This Rust Belt Revival piece was a good article, wisely outlining what society really wants: