Klaus Schwab Has a Statue of Lenin in His Office: What Does It Signify?

Regarding the accuracy of labeling the WEF “communist,” I appreciate all of the insightful comments, even ones that expressed disagreements with my central claim that the multinational corporate state is not accurately described as “communist” for reasons I elaborated on there.

Related: Can We Stop Calling the Global Corporate State ‘Communist’?

Some people believe that terminology doesn’t matter in political messaging — the “rose by any other name” perspective on things. I am of the school of thought that words do matter, so this is a necessary conversation in my estimation.

The Lenin statue in Schwab’s office, if we take for granted that the footage is legitimate, presents a thorny challenge to my central argument that the WEF is best described as something other than “communist.” But without more corroborating evidence, I don’t believe it’s the dispositive proof of the organization’s communist ideology that it might appear.

When I lived in Vietnam, there were busts of “Uncle Ho” (as they call him) Chi Minh — the 20th Century Communist revolutionary who fought the French then the Americans then the Chinese, and beat them all — in every classroom. Red-and-yellow communist flags, likewise, dot every street corner and hang from every government building.

That is to say: Vietnam is nominally communist. Yet, in practice, the country has become more capitalist than the modern West as a major manufacturing hub. The Vietnamese appetite for economic growth is palpable, as is its enthusiasm for the prospect of material wealth.

That the state still looks backward into history for its ideological identity doesn’t necessarily mean that it functions in the modern period as a communist country.

Likewise, that Klaus Schwab draws inspiration from despotic totalitarians of the past does not necessarily mean that he or his organization subscribes wholesale to communist ideology. It could merely mean that each successive authoritarian regime in history attempts to learn from the past attempts to control everything totally (hence the term “totalitarian”).

I wish to emphasize that it’s not that I do not subscribe to the claim that there are no commonalities between the ideologies and methodologies of infamous communist dictators of posterity and modern multinational technocrats at the World Economic Forum. There are surely many, many similarities, including but not limited to:

• The capture of the psychology of the youth to weaponize it and subvert traditional culture
• International orientation with the intent to destroy the nation-state
• Collectivization and the total domination of the individual
• The tightly consolidated and centralized power structure

But simply placing the WEF in the “communist” box as if it is indistinguishable from 20th-century authoritarian power grabs predicated on 19-century political ideology created in response to the Industrial Revolution is extremely simplistic.

Nearly all popular ideologies are inter-bred, and very few exist as “pure” ideologies unadulterated by foreign influences. The real world has a way of muddying the waters.

The United States itself, for instance, is a blend of socialist and capitalist features. The military, the police, the fire department, and the education system are all socialistic institutions, funded in the public name and nominally in service to the public. Yet very few people would categorize the current configuration of the American political system and economy as purely socialist.

In the domain of religion, in addition to political ideologies, traditions and ideas are often co-opted and adapted to fit the adoptive culture.

The tradition of Christmas in Christianity, for instance, was appropriated in large part from the Pagan celebration of Winter Solstice by the Germanic tribes of Europe.

Via Britannica:

Yule [is a] festival observed historically by Germanic peoples and in modern times primarily by Neo-Pagans, coinciding with the winter solstice (December 21–22 in the Northern Hemisphere; June 20–21 in the Southern Hemisphere). The pre-Christian festival originated in Scandinavia and was later subsumed, along with other pagan celebrations, into the Christian holiday of Christmas.

But that doesn’t make Christianity a Pagan religion. They are separate things with a few common traits.

Most ideologies are amalgamations of past ideologies, as progenitors take elements from another tradition and adapt them to suit their purposes.

In much the same way, just because the modern multinational technocrats are inspired by communist authoritarians of the past and borrow from their ideologies and methodologies does not mean they are one and the same.

Here’s another point I would like to emphasize that I perhaps didn’t flesh out in the original article: ultimately, although semantics do matter, they matter only for rhetorical purposes, to assign properties to various government and pseudo-government organizations.

Should we all end up shuttered in coffin apartments, injected over and over with synthetic mRNA for experimental purposes, forced to eat zhe bugs, and ultimately depopulated, as the World Economic Forum envisions for the peasants under its dominion, I suspect the prevailing dogma of the technocrats — who, at any rate, are likely to be replaced at some point with AI that has no discernible ideology in the human sense — won’t much matter.

Aside from the inaccuracy of labeling the World Economic Forum “communist,” there’s the practical real politick problem that the term “communism” has been used for so long to criticize left-wing politics, rightly or wrongly, that when it’s echoed in criticism of the World Economic Forum, it has the effect of instantaneously alienating potential brothers-in-arms who identify with the left and therefore have a well-conditioned, reflexive defensive reaction to the term.

Maybe, one could argue, it doesn’t matter whether the anti-WEF human freedom movement recruits any nominal members of the left, but I would assert that it does. Why would we not want to make the messaging as compelling and attractive as possible, to gain as many allies as we are able? History is replete with meaningful political movements that were predicated on coalitions of people who united for a common cause despite otherwise notable differences.