Juno News - Chrystia Freeland was once a WEF critic

Chrystia Freeland was once a fierce critic of the World Economic Forum. Now, she is a member of its advisory board, and sits at the very top of the organization s advisory board in Davos, Switzerland.

00:00:00.000 Now, with Chrystia Freeland right there at the very top of the World Economic Forum's advisory board,

00:00:08.060 you literally have a member of Klaus Schwab's board sitting at the cabinet table here in Canada.

00:00:14.920 The irony is that Chrystia Freeland, who was once a prolific journalist,

00:00:19.780 was once a staunch critic of the World Economic Forum and wrote an excellent book about it

00:00:24.940 called The Plutocrats, The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else,

00:00:30.360 which was published in 2012.

00:00:32.720 I had the pleasure of rereading this book a couple of weeks ago.

00:00:37.040 And as I reread the book, I came to the conclusion that Chrystia Freeland really has done a 180

00:00:43.100 from being an outsider looking in and being critical of the organization and of the super elites

00:00:48.880 to as a cozy and insider as you can get.

00:00:52.520 And what's doubly ironic is that many of the critiques of what happens in Davos

00:00:58.400 and the power of the super rich and the super elites who gather there

00:01:02.060 that are now being dismissed as rants and raves of far-right conspiracy theorists

00:01:07.260 are actually things that Freeland herself pointed out in her book.

00:01:11.360 So if today's critics are right-wing conspiracy theorists,

00:01:15.500 today's critics of the World Economic Forum are right-wing conspiracy theorists,

00:01:19.040 then where exactly does that leave Freeland?

00:01:23.220 Now back to Mr. Monk, the managing director of the World Economic Forum.

00:01:27.300 His claim is that Davos is just an innocuous talking shop.

00:01:30.880 But here's a telling passage from The Plutocrats.

00:01:33.340 The vampire squid theory of the super elite is entertaining and emotionally satisfying.

00:01:38.900 It can be fun to imagine the super elites who went to Wall Street

00:01:42.400 and their Harvard classmates who became economics professors

00:01:45.460 and those who became U.S. senators participating in a grand conspiracy

00:01:50.280 hatched ideally at the Porcelian Club to rip off the middle class. 0.88

00:01:55.580 But the impact of these networks is much less cynical and much more subtle,

00:02:01.940 though not necessarily of less consequence.

00:02:04.500 So basically what Freeland is saying here is,

00:02:08.780 and something I describe in my column as well,

00:02:12.420 is that when people spend a lot of time together in an environment

00:02:17.400 where work and socializing intermingle,

00:02:20.840 whether it is in a university fraternity at Davos every year

00:02:25.820 or at other venues where power elites routinely come together,

00:02:30.660 a shared mindset develops of what needs to be done,

00:02:34.020 whether it's to combat inequality,

00:02:37.860 deal with climate change,

00:02:39.760 or how do you handle a pandemic like COVID-19.

00:02:43.980 And it's also well known that there's a revolving door

00:02:47.460 between the top echelons of government,

00:02:49.880 the private sector, and academia.

00:02:52.480 None of this is hard to understand.

00:02:55.000 Think about it.

00:02:55.720 When like-minded people get together,

00:02:57.580 they reinforce each other's beliefs,

00:02:59.680 and meeting frequently and often is key to that.

00:03:03.660 So whether it's a bunch of activists getting together

00:03:06.200 to talk about their cause or a bunch of sports fans getting together,

00:03:11.480 it's basically normal human psychology

00:03:14.360 that people in this kind of situation

00:03:16.660 will tend to share assumptions, beliefs, views, and even ideologies.

Juno News - September 20, 2022

Chrystia Freeland was once a WEF critic

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