It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate symbol of elitism than an exclusive resort in the Swiss Alps. And if the world's business and political elite gather in that resort every year, then everything looks too much like a more naive movie template. It must be that the literalness of the scenery and protocols are simply so strong that there were inevitable doubts about the real motives of that elite gathering. You must have guessed that it is about Davos and the World Economic Forum, which is taking place these days. It is about an event that reached its peak in terms of media attention and listening to conclusions in the mid-nineties of the last century at the time of the general triumph of capitalism and the sacralization of the free market.
Although it is still on the list of events that demand the attention of the global press, its influence has waned significantly. The meetings that take place there and the messages spoken are no longer read as hints of future policies or the direction in which the world is going. And it became clear that the world is not managed so that the authorities meet once a year and agree everything that needs to be agreed. However, as we mentioned, not everyone reconciled with that dry protocol. Almost four years ago, an influential conspiracy theory was formulated on the right, according to which Davos is actually an intellectual training ground for the "great reset". We wrote about it more extensively then, and now we will repeat it briefly so that the dimension of insanity remains preserved: capitalists and politicians, "globalists", under the tutelage of Forum founder Klaus Schwab, are working on a "great reset" of capitalism in order to actually gradually destroy it and introduce some kind of different economic system. And under "different" are all variants of socialism as the right imagines it.
It is noticeable that this conspiracy theory does not deviate significantly from other similar theories on the right which assume that the cosmopolitan capitalists are under the influence of the left which, well, failed to realize the world revolution with the help of the proletariat and has now turned to another suitable class subject for the job: global capitalists . Despite being based on highly untenable assumptions, the theory became influential, and Klaus Schwab, whose books are essentially airport non-fiction for business travelers, became a version of Karl Marx. The popularity of the theory probably lies in intuitions that are not wrong, and concern the lack of listening of the political and business elites to the problems of the so-called ordinary people, to put it simply. At the same time, the prevailing understanding of socialist and social-democratic history is so distorted, and labor movements so crippled, that the criteria of socio-political realism have been completely abandoned because for a long time only one side wins.
However, this year's, as sports journalists like to say it lately, iteration of the meeting in Davos pretty much debunked the aforementioned conspiracy theories. At the same time, we know that the criteria of socio-political realism were not raised by the awakened left. Namely, the new Argentine President Javier Milei, one of the heroes of the "great reset" theorists, appeared on stage. And he didn't just show up. During the presentation, Schwab himself praised him as someone who "introduced a new spirit in Argentina, made Argentina more connected to private enterprise and entrepreneurial activity and returned it to the rule of law." It is literally embarrassing to write anything extra. And Milei himself continued in his own way. He said that the Western world is in danger because its institutions have taken over those visions that necessarily lead to socialism. He called out the radical feminist agenda, as well as the "bloody abortion" one, and accused the neo-Marxists of having succeeded in co-opting the common sense of the Western world. He then turned to enumerating the collectivist ideas that had captured the spirit of the West. And there he was not at all discriminatory, in addition to communists and classic suspects, Christian Democrats and nationalists appeared. He received well-deserved applause, and reports say that the meeting with IMF representatives also went well.
Miley, then, buried the "big reset" theory with even crazier fantasies, and thank him for that. But he also inadvertently warned against the redundancy of conflicting with these theories in the form of fact-checking or proving unsustainability. They don't work because someone is manipulated and doesn't know the truth. They work because there is no plausible alternative theory. And by persuasiveness, we do not mean only the matching of words and things, but a political organization that binds words and things into a realistic and achievable vision of a better future. In politics, realism is built, not measured.
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