Conspiracy theories thrive online as World Economic Forum opens

When some of the world’s richest and most influential figures gathered at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting last year, a session on climate change created high-level discussions on topics such as carbon financing and sustainable food systems.

But a very different narrative is playing out on the internet, where social media users claim leaders want to force the population to eat insects instead of meat in the name of saving the environment.

The annual event in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos, which opens Monday, has increasingly become the target of bizarre claims from a growing chorus of commentators who believe the forum belongs to an elite group that manipulates global events for their own benefit.

Experts say conspiracy theories found in the underbelly of the internet are now mainstream.

“This is not a conspiracy on the extreme fringes,” said Alex Friedfeld, a researcher at the Anti-Defamation League who studies anti-government extremism. “We’re seeing it on the major social media platforms that ordinary Americans are sharing. We’re seeing the spread of mainstream media figures in major news, on the networks every night.”

Solving global problems

The meeting attracts heads of state, business executives, cultural trendsetters and representatives of international organizations to the luxurious mountain town. Although it is unclear what concrete actions will be taken, the meeting is scheduled to address global issues ranging from climate change and economic uncertainty to geopolitical instability and public health.

Hundreds of public sessions are planned, but the four-day conference is also known for secret backroom meetings and deal-making by business leaders. The gap between what was shown to the public and what happened behind closed doors helped make the meeting a flashpoint for misinformation.

“When we have a very high level of ambiguity, it’s very easy to fill the narrative,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who is the director of the Annenberg Center for Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and studies misinformation.

The theory about influential global leaders is not new, he said, but scrutiny of the forum and its chairman, Klaus Schwab, has increased in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. That year, the theme of the annual meeting was “The Great Reset.” The initiative represents a major shift in how societies and economies can recover from the pandemic and build a more sustainable future.

Now, in the corners of the internet where I play and on conservative talk shows, the Great Reset has become shorthand for what skeptics call the reorganization of society, using global uncertainty as a guise for disenfranchisement. Believers argue that measures including pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates are tools for consolidating power and undermining individual sovereignty.

In an increasingly worrying time, Jamieson says the public is becoming more susceptible to falsehoods, as conspiracy theories emerge as tools to deal with the chaos. Researchers who monitor extremism say the belief is becoming more popular and more concerning.

At a rally held in the backyard of a New York church last fall, Schwab’s photo was displayed in the center of a large screen along with other “criminals” accused of threatening American values. Thousands of people have gathered in revivalist tents in a traveling roadshow used as a recruiting tool for the ascendant Christian nationalist movement.

Participants discussed the Great Reset, among several other theories, as an attack on America’s foundations.

The phrase was used more than 60 times across all programs on Fox News in 2022, according to one tally compiled by the Internet Archive TV news database. It is up from 30 mentions in 2021 and about 20 in 2020. It is discussed most often in Ingraham Angle and Tucker Carlson Tonight.

In August, in the midst of a defamation lawsuit for mentioning the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting hoax, Infowars host Alex Jones released a book called The Great Reset: And The War For The World. It is described as an analysis of “the global elite’s international conspiracy to enslave humanity and all life on this planet.”

As the World Economic Forum has become intertwined with this narrative, a steady stream of claims has rocked the organization. While some people make legitimate criticisms on the forum – namely hosting rich executives who fly in emission-emitting corporate jets – others spread unverified or unfounded information as fact.

For example, a site known to spread false stories claimed last month that Schwab publicly supports the decriminalization of sex between children and adults, using invented quotes and other baseless statements. However, it attracted tens of thousands of shares on Twitter and Facebook.