WEF Post Mortem: The Decline and Fall of the 'Davos Man'

A pendulum swing is underway in the world

Translated from https://essentiel.news/wef-post-mortem-declin-et-chute-homme-de-davos/

For decades you have venerated a sinister and murderous ideology as if it were a golden calf and have moved heaven and earth to impose it on humanity. This same organization, as well as the most influential supranational bodies, have been the ideologues of this barbarity. […]

Fortunately, in the free world, a silent majority is organizing itself and, in every corner of our hemisphere, the echo of this cry for freedom resounds.

(Javier Milei)

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (Switzerland) has just ended, and already a consensus is emerging: a pendulum swing is underway in the world.

As a reminder, the WEF is famous for its annual meeting in January in Davos, which brings together multinational bosses, bankers, billionaires, and politicians from around the world. Their goal: to decide, comment on, and communicate the broad outlines of “multilateral cooperation,” that is, global governance, in order to “improve the state of the world.”

But this year, the decline of “Davos Man,” as Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington put it, seems to have come to light.

Trump Speech

The decline and fall of “Davos Man” has been talked about for a few years now. However, one recent episode has, on the surface at least, shaken global political orthodoxy more than anything else: Donald Trump’s rise to the US presidency.

The real estate mogul, reality TV star, and 47th president of the United States appeared on screen in Davos three days after his inauguration. He delivered a speech in his trademark style, translated here by the White House.

The mass media are not mincing their words; the Wall Street Journal calls it a “warning to the global elite”; Politico says he “ridiculed the tortoise-like pace” of the European system; CNN calls it an “ultimatum.” and the BBC reports that several delegates left the room at the end of Trump's speech with "stone faces."

The reason for this is the protectionist threats from the new American president, who says he wants to impose customs duties on products manufactured outside the United States.

This idea, which is at odds with the principles underlying the current international order and formulated by the president of the country that has been imposing its opposite on the world for decades, is sure to leave its mark; all the more so since this same president has already announced the American withdrawal from the WHO, the withdrawal from the climate conference, and the end of "wokeism" and "transgender" ideology.

In other words: these are apparently the very precepts of the WEF whose end Donald Trump came to Davos to announce. Implicitly, he is thus indicating that the organization is obsolete, and that the pendulum has just swung back.

Milei’s Speech

Argentina does not have the American firepower, neither in economic nor military terms. And yet, its president also shook the Davos audience, delivering a much more incisive speech, and with a much more philosophical content.

(…)

How much has changed in such a short time. A year ago, I stood here, before you, in solitude, and I told some truths about the state of the Western world that were received with surprise and astonishment by a large part of the Western political, economic and media establishment. […]

Throughout this year, I have been able to find comrades in this fight for the ideas of freedom in every corner of the planet. From the wonderful Elon Musk to the fierce Italian lady, my dear friend, Giorgia Meloni; from Bukele in El Salvador to Victor Orbán in Hungary; from Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel to Donald Trump in the United States. Slowly, an international alliance of all nations that want to be free and believe in the ideas of freedom has been formed. […]

I am here today to tell you that our battle is not won, that if hope is reborn, it is our moral duty and our historical responsibility to dismantle the ideological edifice of sick wokeness. […]

And the truth is that there is something deeply wrong with the ideas that have been promoted in forums like this. I would like to take a few minutes today to discuss them. Few people today deny that the winds of change are blowing through the West. There are those who resist change, those who reluctantly accept it but eventually embrace it, the new converts who emerge when they see it as inevitable, and finally, those of us who have fought our entire lives for its advent. […]

For decades you have venerated a sinister and murderous ideology as if it were a golden calf and have moved heaven and earth to impose it on humanity. This same organization, as well as the most influential supranational bodies, have been the ideologues of this barbarity. […]

Fortunately, in the free world, a silent majority is organizing and in every corner of our hemisphere, the echo of this cry for freedom resonates. We are facing a change of era, a Copernican turning point, the destruction of one paradigm and the construction of another, and if institutions of global influence, such as this assembly, want to turn the page and participate in good faith in this new paradigm, they will have to assume responsibility for the role they have played in recent decades and acknowledge before society the mea culpa that is required of them. […]

The full speech is worth reading. It is a stunning indictment of globalism, collectivism, statism, obscurantism, and the WEF itself. Again, it is a serious challenge to the consensus, and an apparent turning point for the “Davos man.”

Co-founder of the Al-Nusra Front on the podium

This year, Assaad Hassan el-Chibani, co-founder of the jihadist groupuscule al-Nusra, leader of the Salafist movement Hayat Tahrir al-Cham, and “Foreign Minister” in Syria since the overthrow of the Assad government in December 2024, was a guest of honor in Davos.

Sharing the stage with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and co-author with George W. Bush of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mr. el-Chibani explained his vision of the challenges facing Syria.

The irony of finding these two protagonists chatting politely in Davos, when al-Nusra was long affiliated with al-Qaeda and is still considered a terrorist organization by the United Nations, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and many other countries, was not lost on the most astute observers.

In this case, it is not the preference for Islamists in Syria that is surprising, for it has been known for a long time, and has underpinned thirteen years of war. Rather, this meeting illustrates the apparent contradictions and bungling of Western foreign policy, and thus the decline of the international order and the credibility of its institutions.

Post mortem

Ultimately, the central theme that was announced at Davos this year, that of “collaboration in the age of intelligence” (referring to artificial intelligence), was totally eclipsed.

What history will remember about WEF 2025 is the pendulum swing that seems to be taking place against the international order, of which the WEF has long been a figurehead. To be convinced of this, one only has to listen to the WEF experts themselves; on a panel in Davos, Yale professor Walter Reed said:

I think we also have to consider not only who won (Trump) but also who lost, which is us.

Time will certainly tell whether the global elites have indeed lost as a result of this apparent change in the direction of the wind, or whether it is a new hoax.

By Icaros for Essentiel News