WARNING TO ALL OF HUMANITY
The Great Reset Initiative is an economic recovery plan drawn up by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[1] The project was launched in June 2020, with a video featuring the then-Prince of Wales Charles released to mark its launch.[2] The initiative's stated aim is to facilitate rebuilding from the global COVID-19 crisis in a way that prioritizes sustainable development.[3]
WEF chief executive officer Klaus Schwab described three core components of the Great Reset: creating conditions for a "stakeholder economy"; building in a more "resilient, equitable, and sustainable" way, utilising environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics; and "harness[ing] the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution."[4][5] In a speech introducing the initiative, International Monetary Fund director Kristalina Georgieva listed three key aspects of a sustainable response to COVID-19: green growth, smarter growth, and fairer growth.[3][6]
"The Great Reset" was to be the theme of the 2021 World Economic Forum annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, scheduled for January 2021.[7] Due to disruption from COVID-19, the summit was postponed to May 2021, and again to 2022.[8][9] The Davos 2022 theme was "History at a Turning Point", and the summit was dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[10]
The Great Reset Initiative, and the World Economic Forum more generally,[11] have been criticised by some commentators for promoting economic deregulation and a greater role in policy for unrepresentative private businesses, particularly large multinational corporations, at the expense of government institutions.[12][13] Other commentators attacked the scheme for fixating on the concept of education, health and vastly overestimating the ability of a group of decision makers to bring about global change,[14] or for promoting crony capitalism.[15]
The initiative triggered a range of diverse conspiracy theories spread by conservative commentators on social media such as YouTube, Tumblr, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Among the unsupported theories were the assertions that the COVID-19 pandemic was created by a secret group in order to seize control of the global economy,[1] that lockdown restrictions were deliberately designed to induce economic meltdown,[16] or that a global elite was attempting to abolish private property while using COVID-19 to enslave humanity with vaccines.[17][12] Great Reset conspiracy theories increased in intensity when leaders such as U.S. president Joe Biden, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau incorporated ideas of a post-COVID-19 "reset" in their speeches.[1][18]