Juno News - January 26, 2023


What’s really going on at the WEF？ ｜ Thomas Fazi ｜ Part 2.


Episode Stats

Length

53 minutes

Words per Minute

180.47586

Word Count

9,603

Sentence Count

1

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 we can't do away with democracy for the reasons we said you know we said earlier you know even
00:00:10.080 though in some countries of course chile and other countries even in europe you know we
00:00:13.840 you know greece and other countries they did opt for kind of all-out uh military juntas um but that
00:00:19.040 they realized that that wasn't something that could be done across the board and so the point
00:00:22.400 is how do we maintain the formal elements of democracy but you know while at the same time
00:00:26.960 ensuring that citizens won't have any actual uh way to influence economic policy and so one
00:00:32.400 one of the solutions they come up with is we need to make citizens more apathetic and this is
00:00:36.720 extraordinary you know the fact that they actually theorized this you know we need now it's something
00:00:40.720 that everyone complains about you know at least pretends to be worried about you know the fact
00:00:44.640 that you know uh less and less people go to vote there's less and less uh political participation
00:00:49.280 but this isn't something that happened by accident this was happened by design i mean they they
00:00:54.160 explicitly you know uh worked in order to make people more apathetic and uh and and of course you
00:01:00.400 know due to kind of you know moving towards more majoritarian systems was one solution in some
00:01:05.200 countries and of course um you know how do you how do you make uh how do you make your citizenry
00:01:11.040 apathetic like what would be one example of that well one way is to um well one way is to uh
00:01:21.280 uh and that's another thing that began in in that period uh is to sort of kind of take away power
00:01:29.280 from from from national governments you know when and uh by doing that you know people the idea was
00:01:35.360 that people will slowly realize that you know voting doesn't really matter that much anymore and so
00:01:42.240 you know they won't there won't be that kind of uh you know hyperactive uh democracy which you know
00:01:49.120 often you know of course uh you know even overflowed into kind of you know uh almost quasi-revolutionary
00:01:54.880 activity in some countries
00:02:12.880 yeah i that was going to be my next question actually because you know how did the political left
00:02:17.520 um um get you know today you know they seem to be at least here in canada in the us they seem to be
00:02:24.560 totally disconnected from traditional issues that used to animate them um i you know they become very
00:02:30.800 pro-establishment right um um uh you know the the unions here for example in canada uh completely uh went
00:02:38.960 along with the uh with the government's uh draconian uh measures uh in response to the pandemic including
00:02:46.160 the vaccine mandates um and uh lockdowns and so on and so forth um and so you know i mean this is a
00:02:53.280 question that i've been trying trying to understand i've been trying to answer this as well like how
00:02:58.640 did the left become total you know get co-opted into this how did they become so pro-establishment they
00:03:04.480 actually are defending the world economic forum when at a time an organization like the world economic
00:03:11.440 forum would would be treated with a great deal of skepticism right sure and it was i mean to the
00:03:18.560 extent that there were um i wouldn't say massive but you know fairly uh frequented um demonstrations
00:03:26.480 against the wef uh especially in the early 2000s they were predominantly um you know comprised of
00:03:33.680 left-wing activists you know that that was kind of that uh the the the you know it was already at the
00:03:39.280 kind of dying stages but that was you know part of what was left of the anti-globalization movement
00:03:46.320 of the late 90s and early 2000s which i um which which i was a part of that was kind of my political
00:03:52.480 baptism of fire and um and and you know that there were a lot of problems with that with that movement
00:03:59.360 and uh you know i've analyzed them uh elsewhere uh quite in depth you know and i think that but but
00:04:05.280 but it was certainly you know the closest thing to uh kind of an anti-globalist uh you know pro um
00:04:14.240 movement that um that we'd ever seen i mean you know in to the extent that it was protesting against
00:04:21.520 uh uh kind of uh neoliberal globalization and the increased power of institutions like the world trade
00:04:26.560 organization and the world bank and the imf and the wef itself because it was the focus also of
00:04:32.240 protests i mean there were a number of protests in darvis and those were mostly left-wing protests
00:04:36.960 um and and of course you know that seems like another era now when you look at you know the left
00:04:43.440 stance on a number of these issues and especially throughout the pandemic i mean i'm just understanding
00:04:48.400 that uh as people you know both me but also my co-author um toby green you know both people come
00:04:54.720 from the left and uh um and so one of the reasons why we wrote this book um in in the first place was
00:05:02.560 really trying to understand how you know how people that until not too long ago i mean a while because
00:05:10.800 as i mentioned i mean this kind of you know involution of the left has been going on for quite some
00:05:14.640 time and so you know i think we both were in quite disillusioned with the left even before the pandemic
00:05:18.880 but with the pandemic it was particularly shocking to see people that you know we had that with whom
00:05:25.520 we had shared you know struggles against uh you know against corporate power against uh against the
00:05:31.920 neoliberal globalization against uh uh the kind of erosion of democracy even the erosion of civil and
00:05:38.000 the individual liberties i mean for i'm i'm thinking for example of the you know the left-wing
00:05:42.240 opposition to the kind of you know post 9 11 security state uh so you know and and all of that
00:05:49.120 kind of just disappeared it had been kind of eroding for a while but with the pandemic uh you know again
00:05:56.320 the veil was lifted and it became clear that you know there was nothing left of what what the left used
00:06:01.280 to be and so i think there's a number of reasons why you know why the left reacted the way it did
00:06:06.800 um to the pandemic and we try to kind of work them out in in the book and certainly one of the reasons
00:06:12.640 is you know the the the polarized times that we live in i mean as soon as the the issue you know
00:06:19.840 the kind of the approach to uh uh to lock down became a left-right issue with uh you know trump
00:06:25.120 and bolsonaro kind of embracing a lockdown skeptic approach and even uh initially uh boris johnson in
00:06:31.920 the uk that immediately became framed okay that approach is a right-wing approach so clearly the
00:06:38.160 left-wing approach has to be the opposite approach to this so i mean by then but in the kind of
00:06:43.520 earliest weeks of the pandemic uh most people on the left uh had already kind of switched their brains
00:06:48.880 off and had you know switched to automatic pilot uh so you know we'll simply support uh you know the
00:06:56.880 opposite of whatever the right supports you know we won't actually you know analyze critically you
00:07:01.760 know what is going on and try to make you know come up with our own uh opinion about them and so i
00:07:06.000 think that was fundamental and kind of cementing almost immediately the idea oh okay lockdowns and
00:07:11.520 then vaccines left-wing because who is protesting these things mostly people on the right um even
00:07:17.920 though that was mostly a western approach because in book we also showed that uh a number of left-wing
00:07:23.600 governments in uh you know middle income and developing countries uh like in latin america uh took a
00:07:30.320 different approach for example with you know quite good results and so this idea that the entire global
00:07:36.720 left supported these policies is also kind of false but it also shows that you know even western leftists
00:07:42.400 today have a completely western-centric um approach and um a second reason i think is that um elites
00:07:49.280 were very uh were very um i would say clever in couching these policies in progressive terms and so the
00:07:55.440 idea is that okay we're doing this uh for the uh collective good we're doing this for public health
00:08:02.000 um and you know this these are things that you know universally considered uh good uh while going
00:08:08.880 against this policies the going against these policies is a is a pro-economy uh you know pro-corporate
00:08:15.520 approach uh you know wanting to keep the economy open rather than saving lives was this very simplistic uh
00:08:21.200 uh kind of dichotomy that you know developed very soon uh but again i think it it also points to the
00:08:26.720 fact that elites have understood the power of um of kind of progressive narratives in fact you know
00:08:32.720 we have very progressive elites nowadays you know yeah i mean and i think that extends to you know why
00:08:38.800 you know from you know we have what we have today is effectively you know a very woke capitalism but
00:08:44.240 so we don't have the kind of conservative patriarchal capitalism that we uh that a lot of people
00:08:49.360 on the left you know weirdly kind of still think of you know as if that's what capitalism is nowadays
00:08:54.480 capitalism is uh as as woke as you can be nowadays and that also explains why they went along with
00:09:00.000 these policies and why they basically supported pretty much all the covid um all the covid measures
00:09:05.520 and i think even and what's absurd is that again clearly they switched their brains off at some point
00:09:10.320 because if that position might have made some sense in the you know kind of early weeks you know it
00:09:14.960 was a lot of confusion again confusion was deliberate because of this kind of you know
00:09:19.280 propaganda onslaught this kind of you know psychological warfare that was waged on the
00:09:23.120 people but it's understandable that at the beginning people were like okay you know maybe we need
00:09:27.520 lockdowns um uh maybe they make sense you know maybe they will save lives uh even though you know
00:09:32.640 nothing in the history of humanity and of epidemiological responses you know pointed to that
00:09:37.680 yeah um but but for people to still hold that position now you know with all that we know about the
00:09:44.640 the damage that these policies have uh have done the uh to uh and mostly to the lower classes the
00:09:51.840 working classes yeah the poor and the marginalized yeah the way these policies have both the corporate
00:09:57.120 power the way they've completely demolished the uh democracy in a number of countries the way
00:10:01.600 they've been used to you know implement authoritarian measures across the board i mean it's that that that
00:10:06.560 is even more absurd and i think it's maybe to some degree a question of sunken costs i mean when you
00:10:11.440 defended a policy for so long it's very hard to admit you know uh you were wrong uh so you've made
00:10:17.200 the wrong investment but pulling that pulling out of that investment seems to be too costly and so you
00:10:21.440 just keep going down that road because it's too painful to admit just how wrong you were and i think
00:10:26.400 in a way the more the damage of these policies emerges and it is it continues to emerge and we've got
00:10:33.040 new studies that come out every day about you know excess you know excess deaths that are ballooning you
00:10:38.160 know all you know all across countries especially countries that have have implemented the harshest
00:10:42.800 measures that clearly points to a colossal failure of these policies you know even simply in terms of
00:10:48.000 like saving lives even saving covert lives there's really no correlation about the stringency of the
00:10:52.400 measures and uh and and and results in terms of deaths and hospitalizations and so you know that
00:10:57.840 the the disaster of these measures is is absolutely clear yeah um yeah and just one final point
00:11:03.760 which i think is important is that this idea that um that basically uh this kind of simplistic
00:11:11.360 understanding of what neoliberalism was i mean always this idea that liberalism was just about
00:11:16.880 uh taking power away from the state and giving it to markets and so suddenly they saw wow the state is
00:11:21.440 becoming uh an actor once again you know it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's accruing all this
00:11:27.600 power it's implementing all these measures it's very decisive very strong state and they saw that as
00:11:33.040 something that was intrinsically good from a left-wing perspective you know it's kind of giving power
00:11:37.120 back to to the state and again this was based on a completely flawed understanding i think of what
00:11:41.520 neoliberalism is it's not you know uh it's not about free markets it's about you know the kind of fusion
00:11:47.200 of state and corporate power and so states have a very active role within you know the neoliberal uh
00:11:53.760 system you know neoliberal system wouldn't be able to work without uh without states you know kind of
00:11:59.520 making the conditions right for neoliberalism to operate for corporations to thrive uh and and again
00:12:05.600 you know i think the pandemic showed that you know very clearly i mean the the way the state was used
00:12:11.680 to again bolster corporate power to bolster the wealth of the wealthiest um so again you know also
00:12:17.920 i think there were a lot of theoretical failings as well and just in terms of understanding what the
00:12:23.520 what neoliberalism was and and and still is you know there's truth to do it about state intervention
00:12:28.640 i mean i'm i'm i'm a socialist so i believe in the state intervening in the economy but to favor you
00:12:34.400 know the interests and the rights of the uh of the working classes of the majority state intervention is
00:12:41.680 aimed at uh at enriching and empowering uh the elites which is what we've um which is yeah which is
00:12:49.280 what we're what what's currently happening and when you call that out you're called a conspiracy theorist
00:12:54.080 i want to get to your book uh thomas and spend a few minutes talking about your book um but uh just
00:12:59.600 two final questions on the world economic forum and we'll speak about your book um you know how is
00:13:04.320 klaus schwab and the world economic forum viewed in europe you're european and from your perch how how are
00:13:10.640 how how is you know what do people think of klaus schwab is this the is this uh a meeting in davos
00:13:16.880 seen as a minor sideshow and this the the other question i have is you know in a sense you know
00:13:23.360 you know with all of its faults the world economic forum is it is it trying to fill in um a basically
00:13:30.960 fill in a gap here a gap where there's a non-existent system of global governance
00:13:36.240 um and your article in unheard makes that point about how you know these connections were made at
00:13:41.920 the world economic forum and the world economic forum was well placed to deal with the pandemic in a
00:13:46.480 sense because they'd been preparing for this for a while um so is is that what's happening here that
00:13:52.000 we're basically trying to there's no credible system of global governance really and so the
00:13:56.480 world economic forum is kind of trying to fill in that gap well um yes i mean i think another point
00:14:03.040 that i try to make in the article is that um you know it's important to focus on organizations like
00:14:10.320 wild economic forum and even on characters like schwab um but but we should never uh we should
00:14:17.360 always have you know keep have a kind of a more structuralist approach i think in mind um i think
00:14:22.320 humans are ingrained to uh to search for for stories for narratives i mean we we're storytellers and so
00:14:30.720 within narratives you know we we we identify characters who you know draw who we think are driving the
00:14:38.160 narrative and so we it's it's it's understandable why people that have grievances about the existing
00:14:45.040 state of things that they don't they look for they look for culprits they look for for enemies
00:14:50.400 and clearly the world economic forum makes you know a a perfect enemy um for the right reasons
00:14:57.920 even someone like schwab especially i mean even just from an aesthetic standpoint i mean he does look
00:15:02.800 like an evil villain from a james bond movie exactly so he he you know he kicks all the boxes when
00:15:09.040 it comes to kind of evil global villain in charge of uh you know uh yeah um kind of world domination
00:15:16.400 you know um and clearly you know the west does you know i mean we that's we've been talking about
00:15:22.400 this uh beginning the west does hold a lot of power clearly schwab does hold um a lot of power but
00:15:29.120 i think what what i what i sort of what i wanted to make clear in the article is that these institutions
00:15:35.200 are only as powerful as the material interests they represent are uh the wef only exists uh uh because
00:15:45.120 we've allowed so much power to be concentrated into these plutocratic you know uh global oligarchies
00:15:52.560 uh massive corporations i mean in that sense it is filling a gap i mean these people have grown so
00:16:00.800 powerful that effectively they have been able to completely unshackle themselves from the constraints
00:16:07.200 of national politics of national democracies and now are moving to uh you know to build kind of
00:16:13.840 something that is akin to um a system of world uh governance simply they can and you know they've
00:16:21.760 grown powerful enough to have that need and they've grown powerful enough to have the means to do
00:16:26.960 that um and but but it's important to understand that the wef is is an epiphenomenon you know it's
00:16:32.720 it's a symptom of this of these you know absurd you know uneven relations of power that we have within
00:16:39.600 countries and at the global level uh you know the fact that we've allowed these corporations to become
00:16:45.600 so powerful uh and to you know slowly you know fuse with uh state uh state powers um which is the
00:16:54.400 kind of situation that we are in now and so you know we could take out the wef and schwab is going to
00:16:59.600 pass away at some point but you know if as long as we as we don't address the kind of the material
00:17:06.240 conditions that lead to the emergence of these organizations of these institutions of these uh
00:17:11.600 architectures of power um you know these organizations the wef and schwab are simply
00:17:17.760 going to get replaced by another organization and by another uh evil looking villain uh the the you know
00:17:23.680 they're easily replaced because the problem at the end of the day is um is systemic um that you know
00:17:31.040 i think that's really important to uh to keep in mind and and of course it's it's more boring to focus on
00:17:37.360 uh you know on numbers and and and on data and on uh you know uh statistics about you know levels of
00:17:46.400 wealth concentration and so on but this is really what it's about i mean the the web is simply uh an
00:17:52.080 expression of of just how powerful these um these corporate elites have have become and so in a way yes
00:17:59.840 it is just filling a uh it is just filling a gap and when it comes to the representation of the of the of
00:18:06.480 the wef well of course it's uh you know highly positive in the mainstream media as it is uh as it
00:18:12.720 is everywhere um and uh yeah because of you know due to the reasons that we've uh kind of tried to
00:18:20.320 analyze uh together it's uh it's mostly people today um on the on the right that have you know uh that
00:18:30.800 are worried about uh these institutions and um um so so so it depends who you talk to i think most
00:18:39.280 people would uh would consider the weft to be uh you know but you know i mean if not benign i would
00:18:45.200 say it's inevitable i mean there is a sense of resignation where you know the you know these
00:18:51.120 powers have become so big uh that you know well what can we do about it you know and so you know
00:18:56.400 better to just get on with our lives uh you do have of course uh you know minorities within european
00:19:03.280 societies as you do everywhere that um are very critical of these uh of these organizations but
00:19:09.920 they're completely um sort of you know marginalized purged from the public debate yeah um so there's
00:19:17.440 no debate whatsoever about the wef but that's because of the problems we've been talking about you
00:19:22.880 know the the the the information flow is completely controlled and totally managed and so no criticism
00:19:32.000 of these uh institutions is uh is possible on the on the mainstream media um and because you'll
00:19:38.400 immediately get you know boxed in as a you know a conspiracy theorist uh right when not uh uh just as
00:19:47.040 as you were boxed you know boxed in as a uh or you get an anti-vaxxer you know if you criticize
00:19:53.040 lockdowns or the vaccines and yeah same story yeah uh but uh so thomas yeah i completely agree
00:20:00.160 with you and uh um and this was a fascinating um analysis i know we uh we're talking about the world
00:20:06.560 economic forum but of course uh you know you it also relates very uh strongly correlates with the
00:20:14.160 pandemic the pandemic response and i want to ship uh shift the focus to your book to your excellent
00:20:19.520 book uh coveted consensus and uh you know i was reading through it and uh there was you know i
00:20:25.280 want to quote something here which really um kind of um you know struck a chord with me um and you say
00:20:32.480 um we'll explore the way in which the pandemic in fact provided a radical continuity of many trends
00:20:38.720 which had been latent in global society slumbering away for decades until being catapulted
00:20:44.000 into the foreground by the emergence of um of covet 19 inequality the power of computing
00:20:50.400 information wars and the shift towards increasingly authoritarian forms of capitalism across the world
00:20:55.840 had all been growing for many years and the response to the covet 19 pandemic saw a radical
00:21:00.080 acceleration in each one of these processes um so and then you say you know one of the questions that
00:21:06.320 we ask in this book is uh were these outcomes were they produced only by the wire virus as some have
00:21:11.920 claimed or were or rather by the aggregated influence of these existing trends uh this is a fascinating
00:21:18.640 uh hypothesis could you elaborate on this um you know that covet 19 is not some radical break that
00:21:24.960 represents more extreme forms of tendencies that were already present before uh present before the
00:21:30.080 pandemic um and this seems to be your central thesis in the book so i wonder if you could just briefly
00:21:35.680 elaborate on that yes i mean did if we think about it i mean well first of all yes we absolutely believe
00:21:45.440 that yeah you know when we we should even avoid of talking of the pandemic you know because it tends to
00:21:51.600 naturalize what's happened you know as this you know an inevitable trajectory you know that we were
00:21:57.440 uh destined to follow because this virus has emerged in the world stage and again this is uh you know
00:22:03.680 you can see there and and almost uh sort of an application of the tina there is no alternative
00:22:09.120 logic uh you know suddenly you have um the you know i've spoken about kind of how external constraints
00:22:16.720 and external threats have been used to um kind of uh um make societies more regimented more authoritarian
00:22:23.760 to kind of hollow out democracy and uh and and they can they came up with kind of the perfect um
00:22:31.040 the perfect external threat you know this virus claimed represented a threat a global threat
00:22:38.000 that you know had equal bearing on pretty much every human being on the planet uh that was known to be
00:22:43.280 completely forced right from the start we knew that you know the virus was very age specific right from
00:22:49.040 the start right from the data came coming out in the first weeks and so um i think it's um it's uh you know
00:22:56.160 one can one there's no need to to deny that covet uh you know did represent a threat for us you know
00:23:03.840 for for a minority of people in society especially the elderly the people with uh um pre-existing
00:23:10.960 symptoms uh but you know this this i mean in pre-covered this would have been dealt in a completely
00:23:17.440 different way i dealt with all previous pandemics you know by implementing very localized um measures by
00:23:24.400 implementing very kind of uh specific targeted uh measures without disrupting societies without
00:23:31.920 disrupting economies and in fact this was the recommended approach in every pre-2020 pandemic
00:23:38.080 plan any pandemic plan you look at uh including the um the the the latest uh influenza pandemic
00:23:46.000 preparedness plan drawn up by the who but it was health health organization that came out in at the
00:23:53.920 the end of 2019 so a few weeks before the virus um uh officially appeared in in in vuan and even that
00:24:01.840 report says you know uh extreme measures have to be avoided society disrupt disrupting measures have to
00:24:09.280 be avoided so you know the the closure of travel the quarantine they talk about the quarantine of exposed
00:24:16.880 people even that is considered a um uh a measure you know of of of uncertain outcome let alone the
00:24:23.840 quarantine of healthy people of the entire population you know um so this was kind of the standard
00:24:28.800 approach and that's you know so what what what what soon became a kind of crazy approach uh promoted by
00:24:36.960 people that wanted to see their grannies die and that wanted to cause mass deaths on a global scale
00:24:43.120 was actually the the pre-2020 consensus across the board that was just completely overturned um
00:24:50.240 overnight uh and this new consensus um arose uh and so i think it's pretty clear that you know
00:24:57.680 everything that followed and all the disastrous consequences that we've seen uh including kind of
00:25:04.080 the high number of covert deaths i mean aren't uh attributable to the virus itself but to a large
00:25:10.960 degree are attributable to the pandemic response uh and in fact you know what was presented as a
00:25:16.720 life-saving uh approach uh ultimately uh very likely ended up causing uh a a a a large number of
00:25:25.040 deaths and arguably the the the overwhelming number of deaths i mean and suffice to think of the way in
00:25:31.520 which uh you know pre-emptive early therapies were uh completely censored uh and completely marginalized
00:25:38.240 and and made taboo uh early on therapies that you know many people claim to be effective in reducing
00:25:43.760 hospitalizations and we now know thanks to a number of studies that have been done um uh that that that
00:25:50.240 is true and the way in which these therapies which could have saved countless lives were completely um
00:25:55.120 set aside in order to promote a kind of vaccine-centric uh solution uh well lockdown and vaccine-centric
00:26:01.680 solution to the to the to the pandemic which i think ultimately is the reason we experienced so many deaths
00:26:08.240 um and this reason we're still experiencing uh such a high number of non-covid deaths now which is
00:26:14.240 the opposite of what you would expect to see as the pandemic uh you know uh recedes and instead we're
00:26:20.160 seeing the opposite and i think what we're living through is the aftermath of the the devastating uh
00:26:25.040 consequences of these policies so there's no doubt that you know uh whichever angle you look at the
00:26:30.240 political the economic the health aspect i mean uh the the devastating consequences that we're looking at
00:26:35.680 are the result of the political decisions that were made um and again i don't think this was entirely
00:26:41.120 and you know some people are coming out now and saying um and you know timidly admitting that yes
00:26:47.280 these you know some of these measures have had bad consequences but it was simply taken in the haste
00:26:52.000 of the moment you know because there was a lot of confusion and um you know even elites themselves
00:26:56.640 they don't know what to do and so they kind of went for the easiest solution or or they've just
00:27:00.080 disappeared they've just disappeared i i think some of the most uh vociferous advocates of these
00:27:06.000 measures have just disappeared you can't even track them down anymore they're not on social media
00:27:11.440 well because it turns out that a lot of them were actually um fake accounts and that's another
00:27:16.960 of the elements emerging yeah um it's uh there's been a very recently a very interesting research
00:27:23.840 done recently which shows that some of the most uh vocal advocates on social media especially on
00:27:28.960 twitter of lockdown and the mass vaccination measures um were in fact completely fake accounts
00:27:34.720 you know they were presenting themselves as doctors as epidemiologists but in fact it turns out
00:27:39.600 that um that they um don't they didn't really exist and most of these accounts now disappeared as
00:27:45.280 you were saying and i think that also points to the fact that this was a much more you know elaborate
00:27:50.960 response this was not something that was done in the haste of the moment um you don't see a single
00:27:56.800 narrative of the pandemic emerge across mo across pretty much you know the entire world just by you
00:28:04.640 you know just because leaders are confused that don't know what to do i mean i think this was uh you
00:28:09.040 know everything points to the fact that um there was a very um uh you know it was very well thought
00:28:16.560 out approach you know a multi-pronged approach which involved a number of measures and which points
00:28:22.640 to the fact that you know these were um you know i mean that to to some extent they was a um um um
00:28:31.360 you know there was a i mean you could you could say there was a plan in the sense that there were
00:28:36.480 certain outcomes that wanted to be uh that wanted to be achieved and again you know i mean then the
00:28:43.760 question becomes why did they do it you know and i think well one could come up with a number of
00:28:48.800 explanations exactly so i actually wanted to talk about italy because one one of the first western
00:28:54.640 countries uh and you you live in italy you're italian one of the first western countries to sort of uh
00:29:01.440 go along go down this path of draconian lockdowns and uh you know chinese style um um authoritarian uh
00:29:10.800 style um lockdowns and responses to the pandemic was italy in fact when italy did this a lot of other
00:29:18.000 countries were like well if italy is doing this why can't we should we should also be doing this we
00:29:22.320 should uh try to emulate then and then it quickly spread uh what happened in italy like what what
00:29:28.480 what prompted them to um completely shut down uh the country i see the i saw these images from rome
00:29:37.760 just completely desolate like what caused the panic there do we have a convincing explanation
00:29:44.080 well i mean we don't have um clearly we don't have the smoking gun you know we don't have um
00:29:50.960 we don't have the the the emails we don't have the transcripts of the phone conversations but i think
00:29:56.080 yeah just like a kind of you know a systemic analysis of the role italy um you know plays now
00:30:02.640 and kind of global architectural power for a long time italy has um you know is has become a very
00:30:09.920 institutionally weak state it's a state that has effectively uh whose elites uh despite italy having
00:30:16.880 been you know a very uh powerful and a very also uh independent country up till the 1980s and quite
00:30:24.880 quite you know with quite an autonomous minded elite this all changed the 1990s for a number of reasons
00:30:30.320 that i won't go into now but you know suddenly what you see is that italy gets hijacked by these you
00:30:34.720 know you're kind of external looking elites you know which decide that italy's role in um in the
00:30:40.240 european and global relations of power will be one of you know of complete subordination so and that
00:30:46.720 that has made italy a very um a country whose elites are a very sensitive and sensible to external influence
00:30:55.760 to uh to the influence of uh you know foreign powers primarily of course the the united states
00:31:02.720 uh of course the institutions of the european union you know italy is the most kind of uh obedient uh
00:31:09.600 nation within the the the european union when it comes to implementing their policies uh and so i
00:31:15.200 think if you um if you wanted to uh identify a country that would you know whose elites would be
00:31:22.240 willing to take these completely unprecedented um extreme measures i think italy you know would have
00:31:30.480 proven to be a perfect candidate i mean i i would have gone for italy i mean i think italy's elites
00:31:36.160 um are are so well are so weak are so um dependent on kind of you know external uh external support
00:31:44.960 that they um that that that they were a perfect target i think for this kind of uh of operation and
00:31:51.440 so i think i have very few doubts about the fact that italy was identified by you know um you know
00:31:58.560 say the world health organization as the country that would have you know uh that that would have
00:32:03.840 been most most likely to be able to convince to take these uh to take these measures that is yeah
00:32:08.400 it's not a coincidence that italy essentially goes into lockdown um the day that the um who declares a
00:32:15.120 pandemic again you know it's uh there's a number of coincidences you know and that's not that's not a
00:32:19.920 decision that was taken i think on you know like just like that on a whim clearly i think they've been
00:32:24.720 preparing it for for some time um and uh so i think this is um this is really what uh what happened and
00:32:33.040 then as they kind of snowballed from there you know and uh again maybe elites that were um that were um
00:32:40.480 that were that were that wanted to maybe implement these measures but were afraid that they would have
00:32:45.760 encountered uh popular resistance suddenly could point to italy as uh as as as as a precedent uh suddenly
00:32:53.600 became much more accepted you know the notion of national lockdowns which again had never existed
00:32:57.920 up to that point not even in china this is a crucial point uh yes china kind of you know inaugurated the
00:33:03.920 lockdown approach but that was a very it still was a very targeted approach i mean yeah you know
00:33:10.720 the city of wuan and the wider region of hubei of course you know china being a massive country you
00:33:15.920 know we're talking of 50 60 million people but in relative terms that's like three percent of the
00:33:21.360 chinese population it's as if uh you know another country has locked down had locked down it's as if
00:33:25.840 italy had locked down a single city like rome or milan um so this idea of locking down an entire
00:33:30.400 country that was completely um um unprecedented and then but again you know that served to uh
00:33:36.560 to normalize um this um this policy and italy i think was at the forefront of a number of pandemic
00:33:44.160 measures which kind of fits into um this analysis of italy kind of being a kind of experimental test
00:33:50.960 ground so italy was was effectively the first country to uh to to seriously introduce um vaccine
00:33:59.920 passes and again you know once italy did it it suddenly became more acceptable to do it in other
00:34:05.200 countries um as well italy is the country that took uh among the the most um extreme vaccine mandates
00:34:15.040 in in the world it's one of the few uh it was definitely the first country where
00:34:19.920 well for example uh healthcare man you know the mandate for healthcare workers was introduced but
00:34:25.040 it's also the first country that introduced a um um uh a wider mandate for people over 50 for everyone
00:34:32.080 over right you know uh you know without without without the vaccine you can you can work um and
00:34:38.800 so italy really proved to be a testing ground for a lot of these measures and again um you know this
00:34:44.320 doesn't fit with our usual understanding of you would expect um uh you know these measures maybe to be
00:34:51.040 taken by uh expect you know particularly powerful governments and i think it instead it makes sense for
00:34:57.440 the fact that these measures were initially taken by weaker governments because
00:35:01.760 governments that are more dependent on outside and external approval external support than they are
00:35:08.560 um of the support of their own people than they are of of consensus and um and again this is another
00:35:15.200 problem and the fact that um nowadays for for a lot of national politicians i mean national politics is
00:35:22.720 kind of a uh it's a it's a stepping stone you know to to to when their real career begins and
00:35:29.600 that could be the private sector it could be uh kind of international or or or or supranational
00:35:35.200 or bureaucracy that said that's been created but for a lot of these politicians it's not it's not a
00:35:39.760 problem to go against the will of their people because you know getting re-elected 10 20 years down the road
00:35:45.600 is not really what they uh what they aspire to i mean the big the big bucks come in for these people
00:35:50.560 when they when you know when their term of office ends and they move into the private sector or they move into
00:35:55.840 the kind of um uh international bureaucracy and so i think in this respect italy um really was the
00:36:02.560 perfect country where to test out these um to test out these policies and uh you know i think this uh
00:36:09.840 this is going to continue to be the case in the future so you know everyone just you know look at
00:36:14.000 what italy is doing because what you know what happens in only one day is likely coming for you
00:36:18.320 uh not too far uh well i mean i i wouldn't complain if it's the food and the culture and
00:36:25.760 that sort of thing but uh no more lockdowns i i think we've had enough of that uh but thomas i don't
00:36:31.600 want to take up too much of your time just i actually have like two other questions for you
00:36:36.960 from your from your book i actually it's not really a question but something i really liked uh from your book
00:36:43.280 you know you talk about how a western society has tried to cleanse itself from death um so death is
00:36:49.520 not part of our daily lives um as it's been with uh you know cultures throughout the ages uh as and as
00:36:56.400 it continues to be in many countries around the world including uh where i originally come from india
00:37:01.840 um and i i and you call it the bureaucratization of death you know we put uh the elderly and the sick
00:37:08.160 in hospices and hospitals and that's it you know that's that's where they die and death has just
00:37:13.760 basically you know not been part of our everyday lives here in the west i think that's a very deeply
00:37:19.760 philosophical point you made and um and um you know just i just wanted to point that out to our readers
00:37:25.680 but uh one of the things that i final question that i have for you uh you talk about the winners and
00:37:30.320 losers of the pandemic and uh you know who who to your who who are the winners and losers in the
00:37:36.800 pandemic according to you well and and also to you know to hark back to your question which was you
00:37:43.280 know how is this in continuity with previous policies again you know this was all possible
00:37:48.080 because all the right pieces were there i think this is and again it wasn't it wasn't a radical
00:37:54.080 break with the past i think it was a if anything was a quantum leap but what we saw was a kind of
00:38:00.080 you know interstellar acceleration in a number of trends that had been going on for for a number of
00:38:05.120 times in terms of you know western societies and western capitalism growing increasingly authoritarian
00:38:10.880 increasingly oligarchic increasingly plutocratic i mean this has been going on for a lot of time
00:38:16.160 it's it's it's the reason why um
00:38:22.000 actors you know it's the reason why for example um big pharma was able to play such an important role
00:38:30.960 in in the pandemic because it was really incredibly powerful before the pandemic you know right it
00:38:36.240 already wasn't a condition to exercise an incredible amount of influence over politics and in fact had
00:38:42.400 become you know uh enmeshed into uh international politics and you know we're talking about one of the
00:38:48.320 most corrupt uh industries in in the world which has an endless uh you know catalog of malfeasances and
00:38:55.680 malpractices and uh cases of corruption over the years uh so it's been working to kind of you know
00:39:01.520 accrue more and more power more and more influence and suddenly you know it was it was well positioned
00:39:07.920 to uh to to play a fundamental role in the response just like you know um uh organizations like the wef or
00:39:15.520 just like um you know philanthropic capitalists uh like bill gates uh um you know the reason that they were able
00:39:22.480 to play such a a crucial role in the pandemic response a role that goes way beyond the role that
00:39:28.480 you know most individual governments had was because you know we had been moving toward we had
00:39:34.000 been giving power to these people and institutions and corporations for for a number of years and so
00:39:39.760 all the right conditions were um were in place there you know and also also technical kind of
00:39:46.320 technological conditions as i you know as i said earlier i don't know if uh if if what we saw would
00:39:51.680 have been possible in a world where you know we all don't have one of these um in our pockets as i
00:39:57.280 said earlier and and very briefly it's interesting for example to compare the response to what has
00:40:03.200 what at the time was officially recognized and officially called out even by um um you know
00:40:10.480 major members of the um of european institutions of the european parliament and so on as a as a kind of
00:40:15.440 fake pandemic and was that was the 2009 uh pandemic declared by the who which was uh you know at the
00:40:24.240 time you know you recognized even by most politicians as clearly a a fraudulent attempt to uh declare
00:40:33.200 a pandemic a pandemic just to make um just to make the vaccine contracts that governments had signed
00:40:39.440 uh become active basically you know earning a lot of money to uh the companies that made the vaccines
00:40:44.560 even in the absence of any real threat from um from swine flu and um and but maybe you know the
00:40:51.440 conditions weren't ripe for the kind of operation that we saw 10 years down the line uh and so i think
00:40:56.080 you know many of the conditions for what we saw what were in place um and i think that's that's what
00:41:01.520 made it possible um but of course what what happened was that you know this all all these elements
00:41:09.520 became kind of multiplied times a thousand with the pandemic and so when we look at the winners um
00:41:16.640 what we clearly we see the um the the the actors at the you know the kind of corporations at the pinnacle
00:41:23.120 of western capitalism and today that is uh big tech uh big pharma um which are then intertwined with
00:41:32.480 uh big media and all of these sectors ultimately um are controlled by um a very small number of
00:41:42.880 financial institutions so institutional investors such as uh um blackrock and vanguard i mean they've
00:41:49.600 they control uh you know a large amount of uh of the shares of all the major companies of all the major
00:41:58.480 sectors and so what we have is you know so and what we saw throughout the pandemic was an increased
00:42:05.120 um consolidation between these various sectors and in fact uh we we talk of the rise of the you know
00:42:12.240 techno media pharma complex as a result of the pandemic and uh what we saw was uh these these corporations
00:42:20.240 uh so corporations in in digital capitalism and pharmaceutical capitalism making profits
00:42:27.040 i mean almost unbelievable i mean unlike anything that's really that that that these and we're
00:42:34.000 talking about already the biggest sectors in the world and yet in 2020 2021 uh they made uh profits
00:42:42.320 you know beyond uh what they'd uh you know ever dreamt of making before before the pandemic so clearly
00:42:49.920 uh you know clearly clearly these actors benefited to a huge degree from um from from the from the
00:42:56.960 pandemic response uh so obviously you know big we know what how big tech benefited from you know closing
00:43:02.560 everyone at home and forcing everyone to live uh through their screen um and of course it's far too
00:43:08.400 obvious how big pharma benefited from the uh from the pandemic response there's no need to go uh in detail
00:43:14.880 into that now um and so what we've seen is as is an increased consolidation of these powers and um
00:43:23.280 and so so clearly i mean that that's that's one element and those are the winners obvious winners
00:43:28.480 so those are the most obvious winners and then to some just to one degree or another you know uh the the
00:43:34.320 the kind of the the even the political establishments obviously benefited from the fact of
00:43:39.840 you know suddenly having carte blanche and you know being able to do what they wanted all this
00:43:45.040 control held accountable uh also gave rise to you know i mean ludicrous levels of of corruption we know
00:43:53.200 the amount of money that was created to respond to the pandemic uh and much of that money we don't
00:43:58.560 even know where it went but i mean what we know was that you know if very very little of that money went
00:44:05.200 into you know our pockets and and it went into uh the pockets of the usual corporates um so um so
00:44:12.400 clearly you know political and economic elites benefited on on so many levels um and clearly the the and
00:44:19.440 also the supranational and globalist organizations that we've been talking of they benefited hugely as
00:44:23.600 well um now you know there's there's um increased uh talk of institutionalizing um ever more powers
00:44:34.160 in the hands of the world health organization so making giving the world health organization
00:44:39.920 binding powers to kind of implement public health measures in national countries through international
00:44:45.360 treaties and so on uh so so clearly you know what we've seen that the globalist push that we've been
00:44:50.720 talking about also uh gained a massive uh boost um in terms of who lost well i would say um i mean
00:44:59.440 obviously the poor and the marginalized yeah everybody else yeah we know that you know i mean the
00:45:04.800 the um the the incomes of uh of of working classes everywhere took a massive uh hit we know that
00:45:13.040 um unemployment uh shut up in a number of countries and it's still higher than the pandemic in most
00:45:17.680 countries um and uh um clearly i think and that was maybe the most harrowing chapter to um to write
00:45:27.840 uh younger people uh suffered maybe uh more than anyone else i think uh you know throughout the
00:45:34.320 pandemic um the notion of denying uh social life to uh to young people to kids uh for uh for months
00:45:43.840 on end to keep them out of school for months and after months on end uh is uh that's probably the most
00:45:48.800 monstrous aspect i think of of this of this whole story um because this is the one that couldn't have
00:45:55.680 been prevented any other way i mean you could argue that you know economic measures could have uh
00:46:00.800 hampered the the effects on you know working classes you know greater greater government
00:46:05.280 support and so on but there's no no money can make up for not being able to uh uh to see uh other kids
00:46:13.200 to touch other kids uh for months uh to uh not be able to uh be be in class be in school i mean though
00:46:20.000 the in in what are the most formative years of of a child uh i mean in some countries schools were
00:46:26.240 closed for up to a year in some cases even more than a full year i mean that's uh you know that's
00:46:31.120 a kind of a psycho i would say almost anthropological damage that will that will be felt for uh and
00:46:37.280 decades to come and in fact there's talk of the fact that we have studies into the fact that children
00:46:41.440 are now showing uh reduced um brain development so we see actual physical damage done to the brains of
00:46:48.400 these kids in a number of uh of places um and i think i i'm also proud to say that one of the um
00:46:57.280 one of the focuses of the book is also um the global south and i think i think a lot of lockdown
00:47:04.800 critics uh in the west uh as much as they were rightly so criticizing measures in their own countries
00:47:10.320 and in western countries because that's what they knew a lot of people kind of forgot and ignored
00:47:15.760 or didn't know about um that a lot of these measures were also being implemented in extremely
00:47:20.960 poor extremely underdeveloped countries in africa in india um uh your country and uh um and in these
00:47:29.040 countries these measures had uh probably the most devastating effects in economic terms and that
00:47:34.960 again that was easily predictable we're talking about countries where a huge part of the economy uh of
00:47:40.080 people's income is based on the informal economy uh you know of open-air markets and so on and so
00:47:46.960 forth and when you shut when you shut all that down uh in countries that weren't able to provide any
00:47:53.360 economic support to people what you're essentially uh doing is you're condemning uh people to to to
00:47:59.840 death starvation and that's what happened in a number of uh in a number of countries so as as
00:48:05.200 terrible as the lockdown measures were in western countries in purely economic terms and purely in
00:48:10.240 terms of the effects on the working classes they were infinitely worse in um in in developing
00:48:16.320 countries and we have a number of uh you know you know painful stories human stories that we talk
00:48:22.000 about in the book from you know from countries like india and several african countries my co-author
00:48:27.520 toby green is a historian that has known africa for a very long time uh and so you know that that
00:48:33.040 doesn't that that was a very important part of the story i think how these policies were also exported
00:48:38.640 by you know the kind of imperialist west uh and imposed in many cases on poorer countries which
00:48:44.480 really didn't feel like they had much of a choice but to go along with what was you know the covert
00:48:48.800 consensus in the west even though these these these policies were bound to have devastating
00:48:54.880 consequences in these countries and they uh and they did um so the list of losers is really endless
00:49:01.360 and and i would also include include finally those people that we were told these measures were
00:49:06.960 supposed to protect and that's the elderly i mean you know what you were mentioning earlier um how
00:49:13.120 you know we just shut these people away uh and how we accepted the fact that you know in the name
00:49:20.000 of maybe uh hopefully in most cases not even that happened uh prolonging that kind of you know that
00:49:28.000 that the the the the the number of uh of of days that they could stay alive we condemned a lot of
00:49:35.520 these people to you know maybe living a bit longer uh in a lot of cases that wasn't the case but even if
00:49:41.760 it had been the case the notion of uh that that life is just about prolonging uh you know the time on
00:49:49.360 this planet and ignoring just how important it is especially for for elderly people especially for people
00:49:55.200 who are um going through you know what are the final moments the final years on this planet how
00:50:01.200 important it is for them to uh you know to spend these these moments you know with the with the
00:50:06.960 people they love they love with their families with their loved ones with their you know with
00:50:12.320 their closest relatives and they were denied that i think that that is also you know really
00:50:18.080 something that almost makes you sick to the stomach and you know we have videos of you know elderly
00:50:22.960 people you know that were pining for some physical contact you know with the sons and daughters and
00:50:29.120 nephews and instead were forced to look at them through a computer screen uh or through a plastic
00:50:34.640 uh for for a piece of plastic and and again that's just um that's really just horrendous what happened
00:50:40.480 and uh and again you know this was all done supposedly to protect these people i think what we did instead
00:50:46.640 was um condemn these people uh when only we didn't really help them uh dying from from covid or all
00:50:55.760 the contrary in fact we know that the overwhelming number of uh covert deaths and in most western
00:51:00.320 countries happened in uh care home and nurse care homes nursing homes um the places where all our
00:51:06.400 efforts should have been focused on in protect you know in in truly implementing what yeah for example
00:51:11.920 the authors of the great barrington declaration declaration protection you know i mean these are
00:51:16.800 the people we had to protect and instead you know what we what we opted for was locking everyone down
00:51:23.200 and completely forgetting about the people we were actually supposed to protect a huge number of which
00:51:27.760 um died so um colossal failure on on all levels yeah well thomas um you know i know it's getting late
00:51:35.360 where you are and uh but um you know i this has been a real privilege to have you on the show to talk
00:51:42.240 about not just your article in the world economic forum which i urge people to read but also your
00:51:47.760 uh brilliant new book uh which has received some great endorsements and some great reviews so far
00:51:53.440 and uh and i urge people to pick up a copy of your book and uh co-written with toby green and uh listen i
00:52:01.200 really appreciate this very very insightful conversation thank you for taking the time and
00:52:07.200 and hopefully we've learned the right lessons from the pandemic and uh and hopefully more people people
00:52:13.040 read your book and realize you know the mistakes that were made and that that this never happens
00:52:17.920 ever again and uh i really thank you for being on the show and i hope to have you here again
00:52:24.800 well thanks a lot rupert it's been a lovely conversation and um yes i would love to be back on your
00:52:30.160 show and uh yes absolutely i think uh you know what we should all work towards is avoiding that this
00:52:37.040 ever happens uh again it's been absolutely uh it's been absolutely tragic and uh um all we can do is
00:52:43.520 learn from uh from the mistakes of the past and that's what we uh um hope that you know help people
00:52:49.920 uh do with um with our book yeah absolutely well a real pleasure thomas and uh um um and have a great
00:52:58.560 rest of your evening uh in rome thanks a lot rupa thank you take care