The notorious World Economic Forum headed by Klaus Schwab has spawned two worldwide youth organisations, i.e. the Forum of Young Global Leaders (2004) and the Global Shapers Community (2011). Their websites fraught with snapshots or short films featuring hackneyed images of smiling faces of men and women cooperating in a peaceful manner and necessarily shaking hands and drawing graphs – the usual propaganda stuff we are familiar with – assault the reader with catchy slogans of providing solutions to global issues, improving the state of the world, building a better future, fighting climate change, building inclusive communities, having impact on a global scale, raising awareness of gender equality and the like. None of the items comes as a surprise or does it?
The blueprint is as follows. Young impressionable people are used to bring about change. Young people make up a quarter of the global population. Change is touted as something desirable and ranges from climate to society, from education to governance. It is a creeping revolution, the march through institutions par excellence targeting the world as it is: a repeat of what the Jacobins in France, Bolsheviks in Russia and the Red Guards in China already attempted to achieve. They, too, appealed to young people with images of a bright future and fraternity spanning the globe, with promises of universal happiness and joy, with visions of unstoppable progress and unbridled liberty.
Youth guide
The alumni of the Global Leaders and the Global Shapers – carefully selected, guided and groomed by their patrons – are then helped to find their way to important organisations, institutions, corporations, where their influence is multiplied or – to be precise – where they relay the ideas that they imbibed while being members of the Forum and the Community. Have you ever wondered about how it happens that so many actions are coordinated across state borders at the drop of a hat? Now you know. The Global Leaders and the Global Shapers inform us via their websites that they have members in almost all countries in the world and that they foster lifelong connections. Lifelong, you see. Continue reading