Dreading De-Globalization in Davos

Corporate executives, top bankers, global speculators, and power brokers at the annual Alpine retreat in Davos, Switzerland are complaining openly that the rise of populism and nationalism across the United State and Europe is a serious threat to globalism and the New World Order. Ending globalization is apparently hitting them in the pocketbook.

By Mark Anderson

Many of the gilded glitterati gathering in Davos, Switzerland amid the towering Alps for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) see the populism sweeping much of the world as a fascinating trend. They certainly enjoy talking about it. But their academic chitter-chatter is starting to take on a panicked tone over the implications of the common man demanding a better life—a life without poverty in the face of plenty and without nonstop unwinnable wars, among other vexing problems.

Even before this year’s WEF started on Jan. 17, American public television personality Charlie Rose—a frequent attendee of the much more exclusive Bilderberg meetings that AFP has doggedly covered since 1975—was interviewing several guests about this topic on his well-known talk show, as this AFP reporter flipped on the TV during recent travels. Rose’s esteemed guests fretted over several trends that suggest there’s a devolution from globalism in the works—call it “de-globalization.”

Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas and Chicago Council on Global Affairs President Ivo Daalder in early December 2016 confided to Rose that they’ve got the jitters over the current populist surge, most visibly represented by brash businessman Donald J. Trump’s ascent to the presidency—and above all by what his election says about the worldview of a sizable cross section of the American people. Simply put: Globalization is losing its grip on the human psyche.

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Daalder feebly tried to say that largely unregulated “integration” is the Western “tradition,” without mentioning that the kind of forcible integration that’s taking place—largely due to wars waged by Western powers that force people out of their homelands and into places they wouldn’t otherwise live, in most cases—creates cultural clashes, crime, and upheaval. This could all be avoided if world government promoters would chill out on trying to mold the world according to their portfolios and to their impractical, sometimes demented visions of world governance.

Rock band U2’s vocalist, Bono, and Ian Brenner of the Eurasia Group were among other guests on Rose’s show in early January. They, too, greeted the populist revival with a mix of fascination and barely muted alarm.

So, silver-spoon WEF attendees—and the likeminded corporate media that usually does their bidding—are acknowledging more than ever before that populism is undermining what’s typically called globalism. This is the credo practiced by those who want to knit the world into a singular economic-political-cultural construct lacking the rich and varied landscape that can only be produced by a world of distinct nation-states with unique cultures.

In other words, if money can’t buy you true love, perhaps it also cannot ultimately buy total world-rule, either, because there’s something in human nature that naturally rejects a mechanistic existence that lacks heart and soul and a real sense of heritage.

This doesn’t mean, though, that those bent on world-rule are about to flatline. The private, usurious central banking system that stole the people’s credit and put everyone’s land and labor in hock is their chief weapon. Without it, their press control would shrivel and the rest of their influence would wane to, or almost to, the breaking point. But at least real freedom-seekers know that key monetary and financial reforms of the proper sort are the core pathway to ending the “new world order.”

TOUGH ADMISSIONS IN THE TIMES

“Davos Glitter in the Gloom of Populism” topped the front page of the Jan. 17 New York Times on the first day of the WEF, which runs through Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration as the 45th U.S. president—the first one ever so clearly defined as a “populist.” The Times sub-headline added: “Elites grapple with working-class rage.”

The article itself noted that the 2017 WEF attendees included Bilderbergers like International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde and Microsoft co-founder-turned-“philanthropist” Bill Gates, along with smug mattoids like JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon and film stars like Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. Also attending this year’s Davos event is Chinese president Xi Jinping, who reportedly stated that populism, defined as “support for the concerns of ordinary people,” is seen as a threat to globalism.

Populism is basically a system wherein people of all classes and creeds, from the bottom up and not the top down, secure their share in the economic pie and are therefore ensured upward mobility in alliance with secure voting rights and the ability to effect change, while having the freedom to preserve their property—and their family, community, and ethnic-national heritage—without undue “political correctness” fouling up the works. In its purest form, populism opposes business monopolies and vaguely defined free-market ideologies, especially predatory banking, and therefore seeks an economic democracy. It’s not precisely right-wing, nor is it left-wing.

The above-noted Times article succumbed to the realization that the elites’ long-sought notion of world government may be fundamentally doomed.

Each year, the WEF crowd talks (mainly on the basis of global investment-class perspectives) about their typical topics of climate change, inequality, and the economic challenges facing developing and emerging nations. But, as the Times continued, “Missing from these high-minded conversations have been meaningful challengers or critics of the underlying theme that was seemingly stipulated from the birth of this (WEF) 46 years ago: Globalization has the potential to benefit everyone.”

Of particular note, the Times piece quoted economist John Mauldin as saying: “Trump’s election victory is a clear indication that the majority of people are not interested in a world government, but want to return to a classical local democracy. Strange as it may seem to the Davos men, most people tend to love their ‘patria,’ the land of their fathers.”

This is not to say that all WEF attendees are deluded power-mongers or vain pseudo-intellectuals. Many have considerable expertise in various fields and clearly have some worthwhile perspectives and ideas to share, especially in the technological realm. Their problem, however, is philosophical, not intellectual.

Several other recent headlines from big media outlets similarly represent the same basic admission by the plutocratic oligarchy (rule by the rich few who constitute “the establishment”) that they are on particularly shaky ground due to the populist tremors emanating from recent events including the pending Trump presidency, the June 23, 2016 affirmative “Brexit” vote that, if fully consummated, would allow the UK to officially exit the European Union, from the prospect of noted populist candidate Marie Le Pen gaining even more political ground in France, and so on.

Mark Anderson is AFP’s roving editor and has covered the last few Bilderberg gatherings since the death of James P. Tucker Jr.