Great Reset or grating global conspiracy theory? Either way, don’t dismiss genuine anxiety

What a difference a couple of decades makes. Once the World Economic Forum represented everything the Greens opposed. The WEF is a global think tank, best known for hosting an annual meeting of political and business leaders at the Swiss alpine town of Davos. The main stage hosts keynote speeches by presidents, blue-chip CEOs and company presidents and, latterly, Hollywood celebrities, but the real value lies in smaller sideline meetings, as well as in the opportunity to network informally with the people whose money and influence power the global economy.

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In 2000, former Greens leader Bob Brown blockaded a WEF meeting in Melbourne. In 2001, activist Naomi Klein delighted in the outrage of the WEF “high priests of competition” as their civic society participants were poached by the World Social Forum (colloquially “anti-Davos”) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on precisely the same days as the Davos summit. The slogan of anti-Davos 2001 was “another world is possible”.

Since then Davos has performed a classic capitalist manoeuvre: faced with serious competition, it absorbed the competitor to create an oligopoly which has little to fear from smaller market alternatives. Davos now positions itself as a forum in which the powerful and famous create a better world.

In May this year, shortly after the coronavirus pandemic had shut down many economies, Prince Charles and Professor Klaus Schwab, the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, announced plans to hold a meeting of world leaders to discuss how the global economy could be “reset” in order to “build back better”.

Since that meeting, many world leaders have alluded to “a great reset” in public addresses. They may be echoing the WEF; it’s equally possible they just like the sound of the phrase. In any other year, these anodyne words might have been dismissed as the usual rhetoric of political and business leaders who speak much and do little. In the upheaval of the pandemic, in which our lives have been quickly and meaningfully changed by decisions from above, they have fuelled the conspiracy theory that Pauline Hanson brought to Parliament.

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According to the theory, the great and powerful are planning to use the upheaval caused by the pandemic to impose a new world order, trampling the concerns of the powerless.

Now, even the kookiest conspiracy theory is based on an anxiety that may be founded in truth. The Great Reset conspiracy theory is undeniably founded in truth. The plan to reform the way we do things is real, it’s true that leaders around the world are enthusiastically repeating the notion, and it’s true that such reforms would constitute a significant intervention in the lives of citizens to realise the vision of a group that can, without hyperbole, best be termed as the global elite.

The Great Reset imagines a radically different economic system. In the words, and word order, of the global management consultants McKinsey, the agenda will be climate change, sustainability, social justice and the pandemic. A frequently cited phrase from a WEF 2030 prediction is that “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy”. To some this means communalism; others hear communism. Whether you see this as a shining vision or a dystopian dispossession depends largely on your social and ideological vantage point.

Author David Goodhart has described two vantage points which are key to thinking about how differently a great reset might affect different groups. One is the ‘‘anywheres’’ – people whose livelihoods are portable. Another is the ‘‘somewheres’’ – people who depend on local economies and the strength and protection of the nation-state. You might remember them from such recent phenomena as Brexit, and Donald Trump’s inward-looking determination to Make America Great Again. The somewheres feel they have had a bad time at the hands of centralised super-governments which pursue the priorities of the anywheres without considering the impact on those left behind.

There is no doubt that a reset is needed. The last decade has seen societies polarise and accentuated conflict. There are environmental as well as social problems to confront. But the sudden rash of conspiracy theories, including that concerning The Great Reset, is an expression of anxiety by those who feel they will be left out. Building back better requires that they, too, be taken along.

I resist, you oppose, they are recalcitrant is not a declension we should be comfortable with.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director of strategy and policy at the strategic communications firm Agenda C.