Ugh.
With my blog being one of few places legitimately exploring The Great Reset there has been an unexpected consequence, traffic has exploded. To give you an idea my post 'George Floyd, the hero that broke the camel's back' after Candace Owens created the controversy around George Floyd being regarded a hero ended up attracting roughly 3x the traffic I normally would. My two posts on The Great Reset have doubled those numbers in about 10% of the time.
For the (many) new readers my blog is intended for a small audience... not that you're not welcome, but to have so many Canadians using my blog as a reference was never my intent in publishing these posts. Be that as it may, what's done is done, isn't it?
I've been observing the various discussions and reading the "debunkings" of The Great Reset with interest. The reactions to Spencer Fernando and the CPC's poorly explained and partisan campaign (especially given the CPC is an IDU member which is just another front group for the folks pulling the strings) is a mix of confusion and dismissal among the left with a small fraction of support (mostly based on the elite's promises of utopia for all). The right has mostly united in opposition to it though with no alternative plan put forward. Don't be fooled, those leading this campaign are in on it and want to control and limit the message keeping it inside it's partisan box.
If the Trump era is the post-truth era, then I'd call the period leading up to it the truth era. This era saw both the rise of Occupy, and the rise of the (real) Tea Party. Both of these forces were quite similar in their complaints even though ideologically at odds.
Then again, maybe it is surprising. As more than a few observers have noted, the Occupy Wall Street chant, “We Are the 99 Percent” — a shot across the bow of the wealthiest 1 percent of the country, which includes the financial predators and confidence gamers who crashed the global economy with impunity — seems synonymous with the Tea Party’s “Take Back America” ethos.
Those similarities, though, mask profound differences. The two movements both loathe the elite, but their goals, and the passions that drive them forward, could not be more at odds.
For a time people were identifying and targeting the real enemy, the bankers. Alternative medias were flourishing and the establishment's forth estate had lost the monopoly on truth. The system's response to this was to create the post-truth era.
Supposedly non-partisan actors that are likely compromised such as Alex Jones began to attach themselves to Trump and elevate what would become the "alt-right". After so many years of delivering somewhat dependable alternative news Jones had gained a significant following and trust, along with others in their same circle of thought such as Stefan Molyneux and this trust and support was leveraged into support for Trump.
As I've pointed out in '
Building bridges when the cause has been hijacked' the message coming from these outlets began to change, as did the tactics the style and the amplification. In effect the system flooded every channel they could find with "fake news" which by association tarnished a lot of the hard work and ground claimed by the people against the elite.
Overloaded with junk information and partisan babble I find the people now have largely been caught in one layer of the propaganda onion or another.
The Great Reset and the responses to it (particularly from the left) are perhaps the best evidence to show we have now entered into what I would deem the post-post-truth era. If the post-truth era was a crisis of people falling for fake news, the post-post-truth era is a crisis of people not believing that which is right in front of their faces. The capacity for critical thought has been attacked to the point that simply the act now of debating a public heavily funded initiative draws the ire of true believers and accusations of "conspiracy theorist".
Wow, well that settles it then. It's a "debunked conspiracy theory". Given I had been writing about this for years I was very curious to see the New York Time's investigation into it and all of the debunking they would do. So let us take a gander, shall we?
A baseless conspiracy theory about the coronavirus has found new life as cases surge once again.
Observe how they start the article, A "baseless conspiracy theory". This is to set the tone and framing in your mind. Regardless what you read from this point further investigation is not needed because it's all "baseless" anyway. Should you feel inclined to think wrongly you'd be believing in baseless nonsense, and nobody wants to do that. This forms a wall in your brain and I would bet most people who have no opinion on the matter after reading this first line have had their objectivity nudged just enough that despite the lack of evidence provided it's sufficient to satisfy their curiosity and not attract scorn.
Let's continue.
On Monday morning, the phrase “The Great Reset” trended with nearly 80,000 tweets, with most of the posts coming from familiar far-right internet personalities. The conspiracy alleges that a cabal of elites has long planned for the pandemic so that they could use it to impose their global economic control on the masses. In some versions of the unfounded rumor, it is only President Trump who is thwarting this plan and keeping the scheme at bay.
Again, notice the strong language. It's not just a baseless conspiracy theory but it's also an unfounded rumor. Also notice now the mention of Trump which adds an additional layer of doubt to the credibility. Nobody wants to be associated to Trump...
We are now two paragraphs in, with numerous generic statements against but not even the slightest explanation of what it actually is or any evidence offered or counterpoint from those actually talking about it. This is the same tactic outlets like Rebel Media take in their presentations.
The first argument presented by the New York Times comes in the form of a tweet and it's an inaccurate strawman. This is the world's billionaire's and mega-corporations coordinating this agenda the talking head politicians are just there to help you take your medicine. It's a weak point that doesn't address the evidence but even still I will offer this counterpoint: Always love it when the same crowd who tells us billionaires shouldn't exist simultaneously believe they all came together to brilliantly save the planet.
The narrative first took root in late May, when Prince Charles and Klaus Schwab, the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, announced plans to convene world leaders and discuss climate change and how to rebuild an economy damaged by the pandemic. The meeting was branded as a “Great Reset,” and the false rumors about the tight-knit group of elites manipulating the global economy took off.
So here we can see the shitty research of the NYT really shining through. Is that when "the narrative" first took root? Are you sure it wasn't back in 2016 when the World Economic Forum released their first Great Reset slide-show? Of course they don't make mention of that 2016 slideshow at all in this post instead making the claim.
If
the NYT is to be believed how do they explain this article from 2016? The second portion is how the NYT explains it away, and as you all have seen from the information posted
here and
here it is a blatant lie. It can not be denied this has been prepared and planned years in the making. The meeting was named after the plan that has existed long before, so why would the NYT want you to think differently?
Then, over the weekend and into Monday morning, a video of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada speaking from a United Nations meeting in September gained millions of views online. In the video, Mr. Trudeau referred to a “great reset” and also happened to utter the words “build back better,” which conspiracists saw as a tie-in to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. — who had used the phrase as a campaign slogan.
(Actually, he just said "reset" but as you know from my post '
Alberta in the context of the Great Reset' it is clearly in reference to The Great Reset Initiative. The fucking NYT can't even get his quote right.)
Soon, far-right internet commentators with records of spreading misinformation posted about the conspiracy, collecting tens of thousands of likes and shares on Facebook and Twitter. The posters included Paul Joseph Watson, a former contributor to Infowars, and Steven Crowder, who has falsely asserted that coronavirus death tolls are inflated.
The New York Times continues with "baseless by association" as an argument. Still not a single reference to an actual argument made against the source or the source itself.
Joan Donovan, the research director at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center, said it is “maddening” to see the same networks of influencers traffic in recycled conspiracies and get in the way of delivering accurate information to the public. “What is true is that Covid is on the rise in the U.S. because of poor leadership and the lack of a nationally coordinated response,” Ms. Donovan said.
Twitter said the tweets about the conspiracy did not violate its rules, and that “The Great Reset” was no longer trending.
Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Hilarious eh? Here you have the NYT that can't get basic facts, dates, sources, or quotes correct being referenced as proof that The Great Reset is a conspiracy. That is the post-post-truth era in a nutshell.
Nothing presented here debunks anything. They don't link to anything that debunks anything. They just repeat, over and over again how debunked it is and lie to you about the purpose and intent. The system has an invested interest in people genuinely believing this Great Reset has come about due to the pandemic. Guess what? that was planned too. Do you really want to go for a ride? read this and this.
The other pieces I've read "debunking" The Great Reset have been similar to the NYT a large pile of nonsense aiming to make you feel like an idiot for being concerned without presenting even one shred of evidence despite the content available everywhere. Hell, here's an Australian Senator opposing it.
Here's me talking about it in March in relation to a peer-reviewed report on peak oil that said a reset would be needed:
And on
And on.
Welcome to the post-post-truth era.
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Richard Fantin is a self-taught software developer who has mostly throughout his career focused on financial applications and high frequency trading. He currently works for CenturyLink
Nazayh Zanidean is a Project Coordinator for a mid-sized construction contractor in Calgary, Alberta. He enjoys writing as a hobby on topics that include foreign policy, international human rights, security and systemic media bias.
