Here are the show notes to this week’s Leaked Lunch podcast with WEF’s head of comms, Adrian Monck, recorded at La Finestra restaurant in Geneva on August 17.
Show Notes:
2:05 – 7:45
- Adrian introduces himself. Izzie and Adrian chat about local food options in Geneva and the WEF compound.
7:45 – 12:00
- Adrian on whether he misses his career as head of a newsroom, the pros and cons of no longer working there.
12:00 – 17:30
- Discuss the media landscape and how incredibly consolidated it has become – including the loss of regional/small-scale journalism and accountability. Adrian talks about how he looked up to working class journalists who worked their way up the newsroom, and hoped this would become more common in the future. They discuss how nepotism and old money continue to dominate both the current media (and political) landscape.
17:30 – 21:10
- Why is the WEF seen as elite? Adrian says they need to go to the top of society to engender the changes the WEF wants to see in the world, which is why there’s so many large corporates at the WEF – it’s quite simple to enter if you represent a large business. The WEF wants to encourage work that fosters supply chain decarbonization, pushing private companies and individuals to do things governments can’t to slowly move in the right direction.
21:10 – 24:45
- What is the Forum exactly? Is it a cult or a conference organiser? Adrian says they are an incrementalist organization that believes in climate change, empowering women and that small-c capitalism can help implement the changes they want. Their critics in the early 2000s were usually the far left / black bloc types who didn’t want to see that. Adrian also says there’s the argument for sudden change rather than gradual change.
24:45 – 31:45
- How has the WEF tackled the Great Reset conspiracies about it? Adrian says it is a fringe thing in the disinformation space – but it is 100% tied to state-sponsored disinformation. These claims are ultimately just a minority view he says – but a noisy minority; there’s a lot of bots and state-sponsored actors pushing them. He says the Great Reset book was particularly picked up by the anonymous and anti-semitic boards on 4chan – which he claims are test sandboxes for Russian disinformation and latched onto this as part of their anti-vax, anti-WHO narrative.
He says that for a large part the West has ignored this. Adrian thinks this is totally wrong, using the WHO as a vehicle for division and hatred – ‘it typically goes alongside anti-semitic narratives’. He then blames right-wing outlets like the Blaze that give these ‘conspiracies’ wings. “As democracies, we need to get a handle on who is poisoning the well and grow up and get some coordinated responses about it.” “The public sphere needs help and protection”.
31:45 -34:13
- Izzy asks don’t you need to bring some of these critics into the fold? She also asks whether lumping together critics together does more harm than good, justifying their claims? Adrian says you can have debates with people around facts – which is what politics does. When you move away from a world of facts you can’t debate.
34:13 – 35:50
- Eating bugs. Adrian says this meme was aired by CNN and was then picked up by 4chan, which basically amounts to a modern version of the protocols of the elders of zion and includes Jordan Peterson in this narrative.
35:50 – 38:20
- Izzy says she doesn’t think the anti-global elite meme is as fringe as he implies – the concern being there isn’t enough transparency. Is the WEF doing enough for transparency? Adrian says there are very few places for people to have actual conversations and interactions – and the WEF does some things to help. Says that sometimes obscurity is needed; you don’t want people to know you’ve met company x if it helps their objectives – which is not easy to explain to people.
38:20 – 43:40
- Izzy notes there is a contradiction between the Forum presenting itself as pro-democracy and transparency, but then fomenting a backchannelling mechanism. Is that a conflict? Adrian says the simple answer is there is no simple answer. Incrementalism is about working within the system to change it. Politics is about delivering; to do that you need to meet with people you don’t like, you don’t want to even meet, but that help.
43:40 – 47:40
- The WEF famously hosted Putin. Would he be invited again? Adrian says you can’t predict what’s going to happen, if he gives back Crimea, who knows. Russia is a pernicious influence on the world. Izzy notes the WEF is in some ways very anti-woke because they rarely cancel people; hosted Trump, Putin, Xi. Adrian says if you want change, you need important people in the room.
47:40 – 51:15
- How do you get Putin into the WEF? Adrian says a lot of work goes into convincing governments the Forum can do things for them and conversely. Sometimes it works, many times it doesn’t.
51:15 – 53:50
- Is there an argument that you should try to engage with the Alex Joneses of this world? Adrian says he’s not a good faith actor. More of an entertainer. Izabella points out this is true of many politicians too. Adrian says at the end of the day, we deal with people if they are in office at the time. Izzy asks if there is a “bring them into the fold” argument for these people? Adrian says there are all varieties of political opinion at Davos.
54:50 – 55:50
- What was it like having Trump at Davos? Adrian says his team and everyone around him were super professional and easy to deal with. He then talks about Putin’s involvement with the Forum, when he came as part of the Leningrad government in the 90s, 2009, and 2019 online.
55:50 -1:01:50
- What happened to WEF under Covid? Adrian says it was a pain, and that they organized it four times and eventually cancelled. But the online movement also taught them that they’re no longer a conference organiser, they produce complicated reports and analyses etc. Pandemic proved this, as they managed to continue functioning throughout. Ratcheted up to 6,000 hours of online meetings. WEF faced similar challenges to other businesses. Not all of their workforce wanted to be vaccinated either and it’s been tough to get people back in the office.
1:01:50-1:03:10
- “You will own nothing and be happy” – what’s that about? Adrian says it got traction because it was picked up by an antisemitic bot account that was probably Russian, and suddenly it took off in that community. It’s an opinion piece by the author, not necessarily the opinion of the WEF.
1:03:10 – END
- How does Klaus take it all? Adrian says he is way too busy to take it personally – it would be like an actor reading a bad review. He’s more upset about climate change and a host of other issues that affect the world.
One Response