The WEF issued a call in May, gaining the support of Prince Charles, for a summit of world leaders to discuss the twin challenges of climate change and economic recovery from the global pandemic. It did so under the label of the Great Reset. The noun phrase is an essentially empty slogan that anyone can interpret to their taste, but it conveys the essential message that the world was unprepared for the current crisis and needs to become more resilient to external shocks. In a broadcast this week, it was used by Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, as a call for action.
And then it took off. To those who see global policymakers as malign and scheming rather than basically well-intentioned, it was a sign that the whole experience of lockdown had been long planned. The propaganda apparatus of the Putin regime has for many months published wild allegations from obscure bloggers that the Great Reset is code for oligarchs to amass wealth and control populations. As one of them wrote last month for Russia Today: “The production and supply of goods will be coordinated by a central directorate, led not by elected representatives (whose roles, where they exist, will be nominal anyway) but by technocrat factotums.”
There is, of course, no evidence whatever for any of this, but watch how the Great Reset is suddenly gaining traction in the discourse of paranoia.