Al Gore, John Kerry, Other World Leaders Call for Radical ‘Great Reset’ of Capitalism

Former Vice President Al Gore in Berlin, Germany, on Aug. 8, 2017. Matthias Nareyek/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures

Commentary

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced unprecedented economic conditions. Around the world, millions of people have lost their jobs, thousands of businesses have closed, and travel has been limited.

The United States hasn’t experienced an economic calamity of this magnitude since the Great Depression.

But one man’s economic depression can be another man’s “golden opportunity”—the words used by Prince Charles at a recent meeting of world powers seeking to impose a “Great Reset” of the global economy.

For Charles and other powerful international leaders, the current economic chaos offers a chance to remake nations across the planet, because desperate populations are now “more receptive to big visions of change.”

“We have a golden opportunity to seize something good from this crisis—its unprecedented shockwaves may well make people more receptive to big visions of change,” Charles said.

“It is an opportunity we have never had before and may never have again.”

Of course, he’s right. The present state of affairs is so chaotic that virtually anything is possible, including a total transformation of capitalism, and that’s precisely what Charles and his allies want.

At a virtual meeting held by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in June, global leaders, including Charles, gathered together to call for a Great Reset of capitalism.

Among those who spoke at the event or expressed their support separately for the plan were Ma Jun, the chairman of the Green Finance Committee at the China Society for Finance and Banking and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China; António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations; powerful union leaders; activists from groups such as Greenpeace International; CEOs and presidents of large corporations such as BP, MasterCard, and Microsoft; and officials from the International Monetary Fund.

Many of those at the meeting support the elimination of the world’s current capitalist system and have promoted socialist policies—such as wealth taxes, Green New Deal-like programs, and national job guarantees and government incomes. But the person who has most clearly articulated the vision of the Great Reset is Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum and one of the Reset’s most ardent supporters.

“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed,” Schwab wrote in an article published on WEF’s website. “In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

He also said that “all aspects of our societies and economies” must be “revamped,” “from education to social contracts and working conditions.”

Of course, the elites at the World Economic Forum know that the COVID-19 pandemic won’t last forever, so how do they plan to pressure thousands of government officials and billions of people into adopting their vision for the Global Reset? By turning to yet another “crisis”: climate change.

In presentation after presentation, speakers at WEF’s June event used climate change and environmental sustainability as a primary justification for a permanent, global economic overhaul.

“The threat of climate change has been more gradual—but its devastating reality for many people and their livelihoods around the world, and its ever-greater potential to disrupt, surpasses even that of COVID-19,” Prince Charles said.

As terrifying as all of this sounds to those of us who support free markets and property rights, the worst has yet to come. At the June event, the World Economic Forum announced that the Great Reset will be the focus of its next highly influential annual meeting in Davos, scheduled for January 2021.

At the Davos meeting, powerful business leaders, government officials, activists, and academics will promote the Great Reset and coordinate a massive worldwide campaign to promote their agenda with a large youth activist organization called the Global Shapers Community.

The Global Shapers are present in 400 cities around the world and have close ties to Al Gore’s radical Climate Reality Project, which has already trained more than 1,300 people in climate activism.

Gore, who serves on the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees, has a vast network of climate activists of his own—the Climate Reality Leadership Corps—which could also be used to promote the Great Reset, especially through strikes and protests. Climate Reality Leaders played a key role in the highly publicized “climate strikes” that occurred throughout the world in 2019.

In a June 19 interview with NBC’s “Today” television show, Gore endorsed the Great Reset, making him the first notable U.S. political figure to do so.

But Gore isn’t alone. Since that interview, John Kerry, the co-chair of Joe Biden’s climate change “unity task force,” has also promoted the “Great Reset” and even encouraged the World Economic Forum to continue leading on the effort.

“This is a big moment,” Kerry said. “The World Economic Forum ... is really going to have to play a front and center role in refining the Great Reset to deal with climate change and inequity—all of which is being laid bare as a consequence of COVID-19.”

With Gore and Kerry already actively promoting the Great Reset, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a key part of the left’s platform—and potentially Biden’s, too—for 2020 and beyond.

This is a remarkable and dangerous moment for freedom, both in the United States and across the planet. Not only has government used the COVID-19 pandemic to increase its power, world leaders are now planning to expand it dramatically in the years to come through their Great Reset reforms.

If we don’t stop this radical move toward collectivism and the decimation of capitalism, the world’s freedom movement might never recover.

Justin Haskins ([email protected]) is editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com and the editorial director of The Heartland Institute.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.