EZRA LEVANT ｜ Klaus Schwab's WEF sets the stage for a battle between sovereignty and 'One World' socialism
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Summary
Shame on you, you're listening to a release podcast from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, where people come from around the world to meet and greet with the elite. They're here to do deals, many of them secret, some of them public by deals, and ideological deals.
Transcript
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as you can tell i am far away from home i'm in the swiss alps a ski town called davos it is the
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annual conclave of the world economic forum where people come from around the world to meet and greet
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with the elite they're here to do deals many of them secret some of them public by deals i don't
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just mean economic financial deals i mean political deals ideological deals because the world economic
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forum is very much an ideological organization i think if i had to define that ideology globalism
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would be the first one i think the second unfortunately would be socialism and i don't
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say that as an insult but rather a description of what klaus schwab the founder and owner of the
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world economic forum believes and i say owner because he owns it it's not an international
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ngo it's not a non-profit it's not a public entity he owns it he started it's his private
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organization but i want to tell you about his ideology besides globalism he talks about
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stakeholder capitalism and he talks about stakeholder decision making for public policy what does he mean
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by that because don't we already have shareholder decision making for a company and don't we already
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have elections a democratic sovereign elections in countries to run a country so when he talks about
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stakeholder capitalism or stakeholder democracy he's talking about other groups making the decisions
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besides shareholders and wouldn't you know it those other groups are the people that he happens
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to know and like and sell access to and hobnob with and rub shoulders with every year here in davos
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he seeks to replace private property and local sovereignty with globalist socialism and i think he's
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generally careful about how he talks but actually he reveals his thinking all the time not just his own
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comments but those of those around him one of the most uh shocking is uval noah harari sort of his
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futurist and muse i just can't get over some of the things he said including that the future will
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turn many people useless he calls us useless eaters who have nothing to do other than play video games
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and do drugs remember these comments and then the big political and economic question of the 21st century
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will be what do we need humans for or at least what do we need so many humans for do you have an answer
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um at present the best guess we have is keep them happy with drugs and computer games if you're not
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part of the revolution fast enough then you probably become become extinct once you know how to produce
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bodies and brains and minds so cheap labor in africa or south asia or wherever it simply counts for
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nothing again i think that the biggest question in maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades
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will be what to do with all these useless people i don't think we have an economic model to for that
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my best guess which is just a guess is that uh food will not be a problem uh with that kind of
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technology you will be able to produce food for to feed everybody the problem is more uh boredom
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and how what to do with them and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are
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basically meaningless worthless my best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer
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games anyways back to davos i want to show you something that i think is just so symbolic over
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there is a fairly large and impressive church and it's actually a real church that's really used in fact
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you can see um it has some quotes on the wall one of them's ripped right now so it's actually a church
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that is in use but according to a report i read and i haven't been able to chase it down because my
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german is very weak that church let itself be rented out for the week by file coin and cnbc for 1.4
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million dollars now i want to have a drop of skepticism here because i haven't been able to
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chase that uh report down all the way but it seems to ring true that church has been turned into
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well look at the audacity they call it the file coin sanctuary well excuse me i had to break away
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min monologue to run and chase a vvip for one of our interviews at wefreports.com i say that
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to explain the darker sky and you know it's very exciting on this promenade you never know who's
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going to walk by some people walk by many times john carrey for example we scrummed him i think
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three times um but i want to get back to talking about that church over there now i haven't had it
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i haven't been able to do my due diligence on that story because of the language barrier and i
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could that be true i think it could be but how astonishing that a church would rent itself out for a
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i mean i suppose i'm 1.4 million dollars could be enough for to pay the church's bills for the
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entire year and maybe for um and maybe actually it's uh it only skipped one sunday and the church
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met somewhere else and they thought this is a great idea financially could be uh as i told you the
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other day the airport the private jet airport that serves davos the one week of davos 150 private jets
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per day they told me that's the day that's the week rather that pays for their whole year so it's
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really incredible amount of wealth and power around here is quite something in fact sometimes when you
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walk around on the streets you hear snippets of conversation as you pass by a pedestrian on the
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street and you uh you just hear a few words here and a few words there i want to tell you hand to god
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a couple of words that i heard on the street one was 400 million dollar profit and another was 300
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million dollar loan or something like that that's the scale and of of things the deals that are being
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done here and who knows maybe it's just puffery maybe it's just braggadocio maybe it's not true but
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it is true that blackrock has 10 trillion dollars of assets under management and they're major sponsors
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here and so if that's true for one major sponsor imagine the money and the power that is concentrated
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in this town and so it's a very interesting thing to camp out here and to do citizen journalism for a
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week because you're like a skunk at a garden party everyone else is fancy or wants to be fancy and by
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being an unaccredited journalist scrumming people on the streets you are most definitely not fancy now
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some people were very friendly let me show you um an excerpt of a very friendly interview i had
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with a former secretary general of the united nations can you imagine little old me bumping
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into a secretary general the united nations former on the street and i just asked some questions that
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came to mind like which is more powerful the un or the world economic forum which is
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more democratic here here's a taste of that hi it's nice to see you here are you enjoying the world
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economic forum of course always which is more powerful the united nations or the world economic
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forum well these are two different baskets i can't say the united nations is less powerful than the world
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economic forum who is richer the world economic forum or the united nations well un is here also i mean
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un is contributing to the world it's a partnership isn't it of course it is it is here's a question for
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could i ask you a tough question which is more democratic the un or the world economic forum
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well un i was the president of the general assembly i know it's the uh i think the largest uh democratic
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platform in the world where every country is represented well the economic forum is of course in its
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capacity for many years is also showing this democratic and uh giving uh space to every
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country in the world uh standards and i think we shouldn't compare the two they are helping each
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other and this combination is helping the world peace and stability can i challenge you on that because
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in the last few years we've seen more war and more death and more terrorism and there's terrible
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instability yeah has the united nations been helpful or harmful or useless well unfortunately the
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structure of the united nations because of the veto powers in the security council is not allowing the
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united nations to be a problem solving mechanism it has uh uh in education humanitarian aid a lot of uh very good
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health health health uh all these institutions adjacent to the un is doing wonderful work 200 000
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people there but when it comes to politics uh the security council is blocking all the uh possible
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peace solutions so the danger here is if we can solve the security council problem then countries
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individually are trying to find solutions to their regional or political problems and this is the danger
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we couldn't have been friendlier we had a very friendly walk and talk and afterwards he said
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we're friends yeah it could be but um you know he didn't have anything to hide he uh is no longer
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the secretary general of the un he's just a businessman and i you know i just had questions for him to
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compare the wef and the un neither of which is a particularly democratic institution uh so i would say
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that was the friendliest interview i had many of them were not friendly at all because they
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well in some cases they made it not friendly i think a lot of the questions we had
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were legitimate people just didn't want to hear them we had an interesting rapport with other
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media who were here here's ben smith of a new left of center uh publication called semaphore
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here's a clip of them on cnbc talking about rebel news right here on the street take a look at that
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join us now semaphore co-founder and editor in chief uh ben smith that's a big title and if you
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are in chief you need to decide what is happening here that you need to lead with at semaphore do you
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not i do and i mean i think one of the things is that the people who love this place most are the
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populists like malay who can use it as a backdrop to denounce they're the ones having the most fun
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there are some right-wing journalists sort of right-wing populist journalists hanging out outside
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button-holing people i think no one is having more fun the rebel guys like no one is having more
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like the rebel guys they're like kids in a candy at this place they there was they had this scene
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where a um like a very polite very diminutive woman asked them to move a bit out of a parking
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spot and they're like we will not be cowed by the globalist elite like they're just having a good
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i saw that yeah he said we're having fun which is true and that we're feasting on the excesses of
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the globalist left i guess that's true um i want to show you a scrum we had with a cnn reporter who
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i sort of like because he's got a bigger than life personality uh we scrummed him uh and asked him how
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can you be an independent journalist if you are paying to play in davos if you are paying klaus schwab
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hundreds of thousands of dollars for cnn to have pride a place in the inner sanctum here's how that
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went i tell me what you think of this this was probably the most fun interaction we had so far
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this week um even though there was some antagonism behind it take a look i'd recognize that voice
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anywhere how you doing i'm sorry not this morning what are you sorry about well i'm sorry that i can't
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stop to talk to you let's not stop let's talk and walk we got 60 seconds i got one question for you
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i've been thinking about cnn and yourself especially a lot of credibility a lot of reputation but how can you
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ask critical questions here if if you're paying to be here like cnn pays to be here so how can you
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critically ask questions about the wef i always find it's best to be very careful when walking talking
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and doing interviews particularly in snowy conditions because i think you're avoiding the
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question i think it's because you're embarrassed i think it's always very important to understand
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now now we have two against one well i'm not against you mate we're all on the side of the truth
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at least i am i know you are too let me ask you do you ski i have a better question that's more in
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the public interest how can cnn report neutrally or objectively on the world economic forum if you're
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paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to be here you're part of the insiders when you say
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we are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to be here that's right precisely what do you mean
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well um to get access to the inside cnn and the other regime media pay hundreds of thousands
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of dollars sorry regime media excuse me regime r-e-g-i-m-e excuse me yes my god you know you are
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this is fascinating you're not doing very well as an answer you're good as an asker but not as an
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answer more cameras to try and get me i'm not trying to get your mates i'm trying to get an answer from
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you it's different lovely weather tell me you've been here every single year we bumped into you last
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year um this year the theme is regaining trust why do you think your lords here at wef have lost so
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much trust stop it rephrase the question in a neutral fashion and you might stand a chance of getting
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it like cnn does you don't like it when it's uh listen i think you're a great question asker i watch
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you i love your voice answer my questions what's your purpose my purpose is to find out how you can
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be an objective journalist but also pay to be part of the team but you're assuming we pay to be part
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of the team i know you do what all of these organizations along here pay an enormous amount
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of money to klaus schwab and do you see us along here no you're in the inner sanctum for which we
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pay for the facilities of studios sure if that lets you sleep at night mate we pay for that in all sorts
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of venues yeah you know what the facilities and i assure you sir i assure you the numbers you have
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for what we might pay for facilities i.e electricity tables and access no hundreds of thousands of
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dollars for tables are they golden tables yes yes there is no payment for access let me just say this
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again to be absolutely clear the access is a bonus the access is part of my job and you would never
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jeopardize that by asking questions that are too prickly oh you are clearly erroneous sir show me a
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prickly question you've asked here at this place you get booted out i should tell you uh he saw that
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video and i bumped into him on the street today and to my surprise he was quite sad i mean i think he
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was genuinely sad i don't think he's ever been criticized in his life or or embarrassed he's always
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the embarrasser and the critic uh i don't know i maybe he was faking it but it sort of touched my heart that
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such a big shot could be i don't know hurt uh we just wanted to ask him some questions and and i
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think he was trying to give us uh the high hat but uh anyhow you saw the whole video for yourself
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um sometimes our interviews didn't score some i mean i have to tell you it's hard to come up with
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thoughtful questions in a matter of moments there's a lot of people here from facebook and i don't think
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my questions were particularly strong but here's how some of those went when we saw some facebook guys on the
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street hey can i ask you a question about uh facebook no why not you're here with facebook
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and uh you know your collegial left to put your hand on my shoulder so give me a couple of interviewing
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right now okay well we're interviewing and you can keep stony silence if you think that looks good
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i want to add walking to my booth and i need to do that uh the number one issue that klaus schwab says
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is the goal for the wef is to combat misinformation and disinformation is that important to meta
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i'm heading to my booth this is not an interview facebook has been one of the largest political
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censors in the world do you think it's appropriate for facebook to make decisions on what's true or not
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instead of letting facebook users make that decision again i'm not doing an interview right now so thank
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you for saying hi but no do you think facebook should be held accountable for the um misinformation that
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they're out their partners they're fact-checking partners uh through covert and consistently are
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getting wrong do you think meta should personally be held responsible for partnering up with such uh
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misinformation uh companies guys i'm not engaging like you know i'm not engaging come on well i think
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that's part of the problem because facebook i mean klaus schwab says the goal of this conference
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is to rebuild trust and part of trust is transparency i don't think our questions are a surprise to
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surprise to you we're asking by what moral rights facebook makes itself the arbiter of what's true
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or not we have a larger transparency center that you can go and look at that explains exactly what our
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community standards are we have the community standards enforcement report but it's um that tells
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you exactly how we follow them so i feel we're very transparent but as i say like we can always you
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can always talk to our press team and organize time but that is do you think no you've got mark
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zuckerberg's what we're doing but not his money thank you he's a lot more efficient than your
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how come facebook is censoring the internet is it your plan to interfere with the 2024 election
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sorry i'm not here to the press well i know that but you're not very transparent you claim
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to be transparent i'm asking you about your plans to censor the 2024 election
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that's the key value in this year's wef conference isn't it fighting misinformation
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do you intend to deploy facebook as a campaign auxiliary to joe biden sometimes interviews were
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literally 10 seconds long i bumped into someone from mckinsey and i asked about his 100 million or
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more dollar contract with christia freeland and he just ran away right away i think it was 10 seconds
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total take a look hi let's wait together i want to ask about mckinsey and those huge contracts you
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guys got from the canadian government after meeting with christia freeland oh don't run away
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don't run away why don't you want to talk about your contract with canadian taxpayers
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i mean surely you believe in transparency anyways we're still editing videos because we're out on
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the street really all day we take a short break for lunch just to sit down and get off our feet and
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have a bite and get out of the cold but really from the moment we get here to the moment we leave
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we're on and we're on the streets and we have to be ready to run because some of these guys do not want to
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talk to us we ran the entire length of the promenade with someone who takes money from
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bill gates in the vaccine industry it's an interesting conversation we'll have that for you
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in a day or two so there's i don't know there's probably 10 videos that are stacked up that we have
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yet to edit and i think the important thing to do is to be on the street to get as many as we can while
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the vvips are still here because when they're gone they're gone and we can use that time to edit them
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but let me leave you with what i think for sure has got to be the brightest spot of davos
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for a lot of people like me and you i think and that is the new president of argentina javier mille
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who is being compared to donald trump and i think he is comparable to trump in his audacity
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and his unusual hair and his love for twitter but i think he is very deeply philosophical very well
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read in economics and freedom and in that way he's more like vivek ramaswamy i would say
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or even like milton friedman or stephen harper but he has such a charismatic personality he gave
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a 20-minute speech yesterday introduced by klaus schwab and i saw some conservative critics saying oh
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i'm disappointed that javier mille is going to the world economic forum i didn't know he was a globalist
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no understand this he went to bury not to praise let me leave you with an excerpt from javier mille's
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brilliant speech to the world economic forum i would like to leave a message for all business people
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here and for those who are not here in person but are following from around the world do not be
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intimidated intimidated intimidated either by the political cars or by parasites who live off the
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state do not surrender to a political class that only wants to stay in power and retain its privileges
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you are social benefactors you're heroes you're the creators of the most extraordinary period of
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prosperity we've ever seen let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral if you make money it's
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because you offer a better product at a better price thereby contributing to general well-being
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do not surrender to the advance of the state the state is not the solution the state is the problem
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itself you are the true protagonists of this story and rest assured that as from today argentina
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is your staunch unconditional ally thank you very much and long live freedom damn it
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there are hundreds of journalists here at the world economic forum we scrummed one of them yesterday
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richard quest hey did you see that you got to watch it again even if you have it was great take a look
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yes a lot of what happens here is a waste of time a lot of it is far too expensive but there is real value
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in people coming together at the beginning of the year to see where they stand on controversial or
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political with no democratic oversight no opposition party and no independent journalists it is a
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crypto government it's a lobbyist festival it's unregistered lobbyists you get away with things
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right you have now transgressed you have followed me for the last however many minutes i've made it
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clear i didn't particularly want to be interviewed i've given you some answers now will you let me
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proceed go ahead in your safe space you're about to go past the gate but what what you know sir why is
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why do you think why do you think we don't get excess but you do i really love the fact really love
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it that you will take whatever i say in however i say it and manage to turn it either we've learned
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from the master we've learned from the master you're doing it now and either turn it against me
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or against cnn or against anybody else that you deem to be unworthy of your approval well done sir go with
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the masters of the universe go with your people go to go to your people those are your people
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i'm looking forward to seeing how you edit this it'll be raw my friend uncut excellent in which case
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you will fully understand it's not particularly pleasant at half past nine in the morning to be
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ambushed by one two three four five people five i don't even deploy that many people when i'm going
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to interview a president you've got that many people in the makeup room alone that was the funnest
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interview we've done so far but of these hundreds of journalists 99 of them are what i call regime
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journalist richard quest asked me to repeat that three times he'd never heard it before i don't
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think he liked it what i mean by that though is that they have to pay to play they have to buy their
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way in it's one of the ways that klaus schwab has gotten so rich but there are a handful of citizen
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journalists on the outside literally on the outside as well as metaphorically and one of my favorites
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is my friend andrew lawton of true north and i think this is your third time here at davos is that right
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yes it is my third uh the second without accreditation i had no papers the first time
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i snuck in apparently on the second time but they didn't like my coverage so no accreditation this
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time back out on the streets wasn't that interesting was there anything in particular that you did that
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you think got them to nix your vip status to be honest no and and i probably could have been and
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should have been a lot more aggressive knowing it was going to be my one and only time i i did go up to
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world leaders and ask polite and firm questions but no one ever complained and uh one of the wef
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staffers who i had uh corresponded with i he and i chatted in quite a friendly way when i bumped into
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him so uh nothing happened uh from a behavioral perspective but i i think the wef actually likes
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the conspiracy theories they don't like the reasoned critiques they don't like the policy-oriented
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critiques because those ones they can't just dismiss as conspiracy theories it's not interesting
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um now were there certain things um the tell me some of the things you could do from the inside
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that maybe you couldn't do from the outside but i also understand that there may have been some limits
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for example there were some rooms or hallways where there was no interviews allowed what were the ground
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rules on the inside so you actually couldn't do all that much which is why i still thought it was
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worth coming back because the main hub of everything that's on the other side of those security gates
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is called the davos congress center and that's the room where when you see the videos of the speeches
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most of them are in that building you can't go in there with a press badge unless you're on an
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approved list and even to get on that list you have to ask for permission in advance they time it and
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if you scan your badge outside of that 30 minutes uh which is what they gave me at one point when i i
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said i wanted to attend a particular speech it will just be deactivated and you're sent back so really
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all it got you was access to the media filing room which was you know a nice warm place where you could sit and do
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some work and access to a few press conferences but those things were not really with the heavy
00:26:43.040
hitters that you find out on the streets here so really i think you have better access with no
00:26:47.280
strings on the street to do real journalism than you do on the inside well you have a bit of a different
00:26:52.720
style than we do and i admire it and and it's successful uh in a way that we're not and we're
00:26:58.000
successful in other ways too um can you tell me your favorite interview that you've done so far
00:27:04.880
maybe it was for the substance of it maybe you enjoyed the personality of the person maybe what
00:27:11.200
was your favorite moment so far this week so i my interview style some people say i i am too soft
00:27:17.760
with it but my approach is that i want answers i'm not trying to persuade the person i'm not trying to
00:27:22.480
argue or debate with them i i want answers you want to actually pull something out of their mouth
00:27:26.080
yeah and and sometimes i i think that and pardon using a violent metaphor which may get me strung up on
00:27:31.840
some you know online charge or whatever but i i think that a lot of these people if you let them
00:27:36.320
speak they tie the rope around their own necks metaphorically speaking and by that i mean that
00:27:40.880
these people are very transparent when they get talking about what it is that they want to do and
00:27:44.560
i let their hair down a bit yeah and i actually want the public to see what that agenda is so i mean
00:27:49.920
one example i i spoke to australia's e-safety commissioner julie inman grant now you may remember
00:27:55.440
a couple of years ago she talked about the need to recalibrate free speech and i just asked her what she
00:28:00.080
meant by that and she gave a remarkably candid answer about all the things that she thinks need
00:28:05.120
to be done to stop free speech online i know i'm not going to persuade her but i think that's an
00:28:09.840
incredibly revealing interview that people ought to be aware of julie andrew lawton with true north
00:28:14.000
in canada i'm just one wondering when you talked about recalibrating free speech a couple of years
00:28:18.480
ago what were you referring to i am talking about balancing a range of rights that everyone has a
00:28:25.520
right to online where do you think freedom of expression online should be limited
00:28:31.280
when it undermines other people's freedom of expression and causes significant harm but that's
00:28:37.520
all i have to say but that's a subjective term who's to adjudicate what harm is is it governments
00:28:41.840
well actually it is the government drew the line on what the threshold was and an investigation
00:28:47.200
is taken when somebody reports to a platform when it doesn't conform to their terms of service
00:28:54.880
they come to us to adjudicate do you believe that the first amendment has too high a bar for the
00:28:59.920
online era the first amendment does not apply in australia i know but you're an american so i thought
00:29:05.760
in general as a standard for freedom of expression do you think that's too high of one no i don't i
00:29:10.800
don't apply that i apply my the laws of the australian government that the parliamentarians provided
00:29:15.920
and the thresholds they provided and it's measured against those thresholds you're right and of course if
00:29:20.800
you pull things out of their mouths you can comment about it later on your own time because you have
00:29:25.760
precious few seconds or minutes with them i have an approach when they stonewall which is i sometimes
00:29:33.600
i keep asking questions just to put them on the record and just to sort of demonstrate that they're
00:29:37.600
avoiding answering what do you think of that approach no absolutely you know this year i'll say
00:29:42.400
i mean the julian grant one stands out in part because so few people have been willing to talk to me
00:29:46.320
this year i've had far more instances where i'm putting questions to people that go unanswered
00:29:50.800
but you know i used to when i was starting out in media get a little dejected about that but now i
00:29:54.960
think you know what a non-answer is an answer of its own kind uh one notable example of this i i spoke
00:30:00.080
twice to a queen maxima of the netherlands oh your highness well i try yeah i'm at three monarchs
00:30:05.680
and two princesses holy moly and uh two prime ministers this week i know that we're keeping score
00:30:10.800
or anything on the davos bingo card but but i said listen and it wasn't a she's not the head of
00:30:15.120
government she's the head of state i said listen farmers in your country are suffering because of
00:30:19.600
the netherlands government's policy and you had a chance to put that to her i did i did and twice
00:30:24.720
and i just said what's your message to farmers who are struggling yeah and it doesn't she didn't have
00:30:28.960
to give a political answer she could have given a heartfelt answer what did she say nothing she
00:30:33.520
kept walking did she hear you she did she didn't look at me the one time uh the second time she did
00:30:38.880
look at me and then looked away and security very very uh firmly pushed me away not in an aggressive
00:30:44.320
menzies way but uh that was something where again i i think that's revealing that the unifying
00:30:49.280
figurehead of the netherlands government doesn't really care or care to answer a question about the
00:30:54.080
plight of dutch farmers you know and i this is where i would normally say well maybe she doesn't
00:30:59.840
want to wade into politics but she was actually here giving what i i think could be called a political
00:31:05.200
speech yeah she was on her way into and then out of a presentation on inclusive financing so when uh when
00:31:12.640
a figurehead of any kind chooses to go into politics i feel they subject themselves to
00:31:16.480
questions that straddle the political realm and i just have to apologize your viewers my eyes keep
00:31:20.720
darting because the nature of the game in davos you never know who's coming by here uh so far it's uh
00:31:26.000
well my producer is saying someone but i don't know if he's just trolling me no he's just trolling
00:31:29.520
you know and and we'll both run in an instant if someone um presents well listen it's great to see
00:31:34.560
again we're very far away from home it's a very long journey to get here there's no there's obviously no
00:31:40.000
direct flight to davos um i mean you come a long way you come from london ontario to toronto to zurich
00:31:46.800
and then up by train or car like it's such a such a we'd make the journey too i think that the onerous
00:31:53.840
journey is part of what keeps us reclusive and exclusive because it takes a real commitment to
00:31:59.280
be here i i'm i'm happy to see a familiar face from home and you and you've got two teammates here
00:32:05.040
uh where can we see your work on the subject just tnc.news is that the best place where would we see
00:32:12.720
all your work yes tnc.news we have it updated and i've also been doing live editions of my show from
00:32:17.760
here kind of weaving in some of the content we collect during the day with that bigger picture
00:32:21.360
analysis but all of it's at true north right now well listen i i love to hang out with you just as
00:32:25.920
buddies it's great to hang out with you professionally i love that you've got a young team with you even though
00:32:31.840
we are i suppose formally competitors i have a deep admiration for true north and i'm really
00:32:37.360
glad you guys are here thank you so much always a pleasure right on there you have it and you know
00:32:41.200
andrew lawton the big boss over at truenorth tnc.news
00:32:48.880
well that's our show for today until tomorrow on behalf of all of us here at davos in the meeting of
00:32:54.960
the world economic forum and in our canadian office and around the world to you at home