Monthly Archives: August 2022

Adrian Monck is the managing director of the World Economic Forum.

Own nothing, be happy. You may have heard the phrase. It started life as a screenshot, culled from the internet by an anonymous antisemitic account on the image board 4chan. Own nothing, be happy The Jew World Order 2030, said the post, which went viral among extremists.

How did a years-old headline turn into a meme for the far right and a slogan picked up by mainstream conservative politicians? And whats the truth behind that headline?

The story begins in 2016 with the publication of an opinion piece on the World Economic Forums Agenda website by Danish MP Ida Auken under the headline Welcome to 2030: I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better.

It was part of an essay series intended to spark debate about socio-economic developments. This was the time of the booming app economy, and the commissioning editor had previously worked for conservative British newspaper The Telegraph. The piece gained a respectable readership and lived quietly on the website for a number of years.

Fast forward four years to 2020. The world looked very different. A pandemic was raging, and the World Economic Forum launched The Great Reset, promoting the idea of building back better so that economies could emerge greener and fairer out of the pandemic.

The pandemic magnified many societal ills. The mistrust in governments and leaders that had been building before the health crisis played into the hands of both fringe groups and state-sponsored actors looking to undermine and weaken rivals. Both came together on the anonymous dark web in places such as 4chans politically incorrect image board.

The board, which is completely unmoderated, was also used by operators of a Russian propaganda campaign. The intent was apparently to spread disinformation in a bid to stir far-right outrage about COVID-19 and perpetuate domestic extremism. The means was often via bots that would push far-right conspiracy theories to communities on boards such as 4chan.

Recent analysis explains how this context brought extremists together using rhetoric that trivialized National Socialism and the Holocaust. This same far-right, Holocaust-denying cohort latched onto the Great Reset, claiming that the Forum was part of a group that orchestrated the pandemic to take control of the global economy.

A number of threads appeared in this vein. One such 4chan thread linked the pandemic and the alleged nefarious control the Forum exercises over the global economy with the idea that youll own nothing and be happy.

It went truly viral, capturing the warped imagination of conspiracy and fringe groups. One neo-Nazi and white-supremacist website claimed the Great Reset was a response to the coronavirus faked crisis and would usher in global communism to ensure no one will be able to own anything.

Its popularity also saw more mainstream figures dog-whistle the phrase while ignoring its antisemitic and far-right origins. Threads proliferated, the catchphrase own nothing, be happy snowballed, and even more mainstream news sites, including Fox News and Sky News Australia, embraced it.

Actor and comedian Russell Brand talked about it in a video that received more than 1.8 million views on Facebook. Pierre Poilievre, currently running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, used it to discredit Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government, giving rise to a national movement.

Even though Reuters Fact Check concluded in February, 2021, that the World Economic Forum does not have a stated goal to have people own nothing and be happy by 2030, the trolling continues.

Users on Twitter and Facebook, for instance, have spread doctored content to promote the falsehood that, through the Great Reset, the Forum is advancing pernicious depopulation efforts. These include racist conspiracies that claim white people are the primary target for depopulation. Bad-faith actors have also targeted the Forums coverage of the circular economy (economic systems that aim to eliminate waste by reusing raw materials rather than disposing of them), decrying it as a top-down agenda coming from unelected globalists looking to reshape the world in their image. These are just some examples among many.

As far back as 2013, the World Economic Forums annual Global Risks Report flagged misinformation as a concern, warning then that it could spark digital wildfires in our hyperconnected world.

Today, that warning has largely been borne out. Misinformation is a serious challenge for regulators, a minefield for individuals who seek the facts, and a barrier to governments and organizations wanting to disseminate important information.

The consequences of unabated misinformation are dangerous. Misinformation concerning COVID-19 and vaccines cost lives during the pandemic. The revelations around the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot reveal how false information about elections can threaten the foundations of democracy. And 68 per cent of Americans agree, saying made-up news is detrimental to the countrys democratic system.

Moreover, the amount of data now being generated, predicted to almost quadruple by 2025, makes it easier and cheaper to use algorithms for malicious or manipulative purposes with unprecedented efficiency, speed and reach.

It is important to recognize that misinformation/disinformation is a tactic used to support an oftentimes political strategy. There are a variety of ways that bad information circulates for political gain. A classic example is for an actor to intentionally disseminate false, inaccurate or misleading information that inflicts demonstrable and significant public harm, said Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Another set of tactics involve trolling and harassment, probably the most common form of misinformation directed against the Forum. Trolling and harassment entail deliberately posting offensive content online in order to provoke or disrupt conversations.

The story of youll own nothing and be happy is anything but trivial and offers valuable insights into how misinformation is created and why its essential not to perpetuate its spread.

It also highlights how misinformation derails free speech. At the request of Ms. Auken, the Forum removed all media around her piece because of the online abuse and threats she had faced. Action to prevent lies being accepted as truth can help avoid similar situations and promote genuine free speech, allowing us all to freely exchange ideas and opinions.

In a world where the trolls often win, more forward-thinking conversations like the one Ms. Auken tried to initiate will be tarnished.

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Opinion: How 'own nothing and be happy' sparked a misinformation campaign that targeted the World Economic Forum - The Globe and Mail

The British left or what passes for it today briefly pretended to care about free speech this week. Which was kind of cute. It was all sparked by Tory leadership no-hoper Rishi Sunaks bonkers suggestion that people who vilify Britain should be put on the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme, alongside all the Islamists and fascists. Who are the real snowflakes?, thundered one left-wing commentator. Fascism creeps ever closer, warned Richard Murphy, a one-time adviser to Jeremy Corbyn, as he wondered out loud if he might soon end up in some camp of Sunaks choosing for re-education.

Such principled expressions of horror, over an insanely authoritarian policy that almost certainly will never be implemented, might have had a bit more weight had the exact same people not studiously ignored a very real incident of state censorship and attempted re-education that went viral last week. Im referring, of course, to Hampshire Polices arrest of 51-year-old army veteran Darren Brady, all because he posted an offensive meme, which arranged four Progress Pride flags to resemble a swastika a clumsy commentary on the authoritarianism of the contemporary LGBT movement.

The details chillingly echo Richard Murphys tweeted fever dream. Reportedly, the police had visited Brady 10 days before they tried to arrest him, informing him that he had committed an offence by posting the flag meme. They offered him a deal: pay for a 60 community-resolution course and theyd downgrade his offence to a non-crime hate incident, which would still appear on an advanced background check. Brady refused and contacted Harry Miller, leading campaigner against thoughtpolicing, who was present at the arrest and spent a night in the cells himself for trying to obstruct the cops. Going by the footage, now seen around the world, the (several) officers who attended Bradys home had no idea what offence he was supposed to have committed, saying only that he had caused anxiety.

So, state censorship? Yep. Threats of re-education? Yep. The police showing up at someones door for no other crime than expressing an opinion? Big yep. Just because it was done in a Keystone Cops sort of fashion doesnt make the treatment of Brady any less sinister. And yet there hasnt been a peep of protest from the left-leaning intelligentsia. The armed wing of the state is going about harassing and arresting people purely for upsetting someone on the internet. And yet the people who pass themselves off as liberal, progressive, radical even, are clearly not the tiniest bit bothered about it.

Brady isnt an isolated case, either. Britain is fast becoming a warning to the Western world about caring censorship, about trying to quite literally police hurtful speech. According to one investigation, nine people a day are arrested in the UK over offensive things they post on the internet. On top of that, more than 120,000 people have had so-called non-crime hate incidents recorded against their name. These alleged incidents neednt be investigated or even be credible to be recorded. So much so that an Oxford professor once managed to get a hate incident recorded against then home secretary Amber Rudd, for a speech she gave about immigration that he later admitted he hadnt even listened to, let alone witnessed in person.

There has been significant pushback against all this in recent years, the absurdity of it all brought into sharp relief by the polices failure to get a grip on violent crime. But the problem remains deeply entrenched. Tory ministers have repeatedly slammed the thoughtpolice, but have done nothing to stop them. The governments Online Safety Bill, alongside other censorious provisions, plans to change the notorious Section 127 of the Communications Act, which criminalises grossly offensive online speech, only to replace that prohibition with a harmful communications offence, criminalising those who send a message that is intended and likely to cause serious distress. This is more of an exercise in rebranding than reform.

Whats more, non-crime hate incidents continue to be recorded despite a series of successful legal challenges against them. Harry Miller, who in 2019 was visited by the police over his own gender-critical tweets, successfully took the cops to court. A High Court judge ruled that Humberside Police unlawfully intervened in Millers freedom of expression when they logged his tweets as a hate incident, called him up to check his thinking and showed up at his place of work. The Court of Appeal later ruled further in Millers favour, slamming the existing College of Policing guidance on hate incidents as unlawful. But the judges didnt rule out the practice per se and so they stagger on.

Last week, the College of Policing issued new guidelines in response to these rulings, insisting that non-crime hate incidents should not be recorded where they are trivial, irrational or if there is no basis to conclude that an incident was motivated by hostility. The guidelines also seek to exempt those who are commenting in a legitimate debate and ensure that, when they are recorded, incidents are recorded in the least intrusive way possible. But this of course still gives the police a wide latitude to interpret what speech is and isnt trivial, irrational, baseless or legitimate. As ever with freedom of speech, the question is who decides?, and the answer is the same police who thought investigating Millers gender-critical Twitter limericks was a legitimate use of their time and resources.

The rise of Britains thoughtpolice is not just about the letter of the law. Indeed, non-crime hate incidents were introduced by the College of Policing in 2014 in response, it says, to the recommendations of the Macpherson report. And so tens of thousands of people have been quasi-criminalised without an act of parliament being passed. The job of policing speech, especially that which is presumed to offend minorities, is a role the police have embraced with gusto. Desperate to overcome a history of discriminatory behaviour they have ended up not only cracking down on genuine bigots which would be illiberal in itself but also those merely airing views that dissent from the elite orthodoxy on issues like gender or immigration.

We saw that in Bradys viral arrest. The officers werent at all clear on what law they were supposed to be enforcing. The point was that someone had been caused anxiety by an anti-woke meme and so something had to be done about it. Last year, officers from Merseyside Police set up an electronic billboard outside an Asda, declaring that being offensive is an offence. After a backlash, superintendent Martin Earl had to put out a statement clarifying that this isnt actually the case. This authoritarian freelancing on the part of the cops shows how entrenched censorious woke orthodoxy is within the British state, even the more traditionally politically incorrect section of it.

Which brings us back to the deafening silence of the left. Leftists insist there is no free-speech crisis. They dismiss cancel culture as a myth, while tacitly supporting it. They call it a right-wing confection, even though gender-critical feminists are one of the primary targets of it. They argue No Platforming on university campuses isnt censorship because only the state can censor. Meanwhile, they completely ignore the vast apparatus of state censorship that has emerged in recent years a system which has, quite possibly, given the endlessness of the internet and the broad scope of our speech laws, led to more Brits being criminalised for speech than ever before.

The reasons for this blind spot are as obvious as they are pathetic. These supposed radicals are quite comfortable with police officers harassing people so long as those people hold the wrong views. This is why they only ever complain about censorship on the rare occasions one of their own is targeted by it. This is utterly misguided, of course. As Thomas Paine put it: He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. The lefts complacency speaks to how tame and in line with the establishment many supposed leftists are today. They dont fear censorship or re-education. They already love Big Brother, which is perhaps the most damning indictment of all.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_

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How the woke left learned to love Big Brother - Spiked

Paul Czanne said that the most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself. Barnaby Tobias's Fox-Light should be an all-consuming, intoxicating picture of the magnetism and irresistibility of two young artists in love with each other and art itself. Unfortunately, that's not it and it isn't the most genial of playwriting debuts. But this is what Camden Fringe festival is for. It allows artists the space to develop and grow.

There is no research on the meaning - or necessity - of art in this debut play; there is no deeper exploration into the human experience; mostly, there is very little appeal in these insufferable, self-important art school snobs and their story. There is no reason why we should follow them from Jay's house party to their unnecessary deaths - except for morbid curiosity.

In 90 never-ending and eye-rolling minutes of stark, unfeeling, pretentious gamourisation of toxic behaviours, Tobias introduces gorgeous, horrible, well-spoken people with a god complex each who talk about nothing. They're essentially the same concept of a person actualised in two genders. No nuance, no introspection.

Jay (portrayed by Tobias himself) is a cocky and vain man whose ambition rules every aspect of his life. He takes pride in his sexual conquests and relishes in being politically incorrect. He also desperately wants to be counterculture, but doesn't have the depth for it. Tess (Martina Rossi) is a posh, snooty, waif-like foreigner who looks down on everything and everyone. They are walking red flags ready to wave in the wind.

Directed by Simon Usher with simplicity and restraint, they address the audience in long streams of consciousness that interrupt one another. Their prose is bleak and cruel, lacking in artistic beauty for most of the show but for rare glimpses of famous poetry and a few brilliant turns of phrase by Tobias.

The main issue we find in Fox-Light is that the playwright tells a lot but shows nothing. He uses language for its shock value devoid of any real content, offering a cynical and frankly pointless story. They feed off of each other's purpose and darkness with a sex-drugs-and-rock'n'roll approach to life until Jay's needs take over and Tess becomes a lifeless sex object.

Orgasms become currency in their relationship and their self-destruction reaches its climax. It's unfortunate how numb and aimless this piece is. Described as a "tar-black dramedy", it sadly lacks humour and the quality of the narrative is the only tragedy in it. It's a first play and definitely not a death sentence, so onwards and upwards.

Fox-Light runs at The Hope Theatre until 7 August as part of Camden Fringe.

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Review: FOX-LIGHT, The Hope Theatre - Broadway World

OToole: And neither one of us had read it. Thats one of the things we look for; something neither one of us has read, like a classic we missed or a genre weve never read. It was such a wonderful experiment. Michael has a very mellifluous voice. I get up really early in the morning, so, Im really tired by the end of the night, and his voice completely puts me to sleep, not because Im bored, but because its so soothing. When were trying to remember who read last and he says its in the middle of the chapter, that means I must have read last, meaning I fell asleep.

Once youve started a book, have you ever abandoned it?

OToole: We got halfway through Gone with the Wind. I had read it when I was 14 but he had never read it, and I didnt remember a lot of it. It became unbearable. Did we abandon End of the Affair by Graham Greene? Its one of those very intimate stories you need to read on your own.

If I may ask, how do you handle sex scenes in a book?

McKean: There was this one Jack Reacher book by Lee Child that was a flashback to his Army days. He and his girlfriend liked to do it when the train came a-rumbling by. There were a couple of really purple chapters in there. It was fun.

Do you have a favorite among the books youve read to each other?

OToole: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It was so powerful and so beautifully written. I read the chapter about the Christmas tree. I was weeping so hard, I could barely get the words out.

McKean: Quest of the Sacred Slipper by Sax Rohmer. So much fun to read. He never saw a paragraph he couldnt turn into a sentence. The guy never punctuatesYes, keep rolling on this. And so politically incorrect. One of the toughest [to read] was There There by Tommy Orange. Its about an Oakland pow wow that goes horribly wrong. The characters became so important to us. You get to know these people and wed come to the end of the chapter, and we would fret about them.

Do you discuss the books either while reading them or afterward?

OToole: The first birthday gift I ever gave Michael was a book. We were working together (on Final Justice). It was Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. We still have it downstairs.

McKean: She said, Tell me when you finished the book. By this time, we were emailing pretty regularly. I finished it. I thought it was really wonderful. And then she expressed her outrage at the books ending.

OToole: Well, we become so invested in our hero and heroine trying to get to one another and then once they do, he dies in her arms. I wanted them to be together they earned it! And sure, he lives on in the daughter, but couldnt Frazier have given them a YEAR or something? I always prefer a happy ending.

What tips can you offer couples who want to give this a try?

McKean: Know when to fold em. Get to an agreement pointIf were 25 pages in and were, like, meh, then bail. It cant be adversarial.

OToole: Start with something with short chapters in a genre you both know you like. You know what we cant do? True crime. I read them on my own, but I can only take so much.

Do you always read at bedtime or do you read at different times of day?

OToole: Reading is always correct. Like pearls.

McKean: Or M&Ms.

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Michael McKean and Annette OToole Have Spent the Past 23 Years Reading to Each Other - Vanity Fair

The new academic year hasnt even begun and public school enrollment is already not looking good in some parts of the country.

Seattle Public School fall enrollment is projected to be down to its lowest rate in a decade, declining even further from last years significant drop. Similarly, the New York City public schools shared data last week suggesting a continued dip in public school enrollment, with more than 28,000 fewer students expected to attend a district school this fall.

We have a hemorrhaging of families that are leaving the city, leaving the school system, said New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

The Seattle Times editors seemed slightly perplexed by the drop in their citys public school enrollment. According to their recent editorial: But even more concerning is that Seattle and some other districts enrollment continue trending downward even as statewide enrollment slowly recovers.

They shouldnt be surprised. The American Enterprise Institute analyzed extensive data in the spring showing that school districts that remained remote or that imposed ongoing school mask mandates continued to lose students in the 2021/2022 academic year, while those districts that reopened more quickly and avoided restrictive virus policies saw public school enrollment rebound from the 2020/2021 academic year slide.

Major cities such as Seattle and New York City stayed shuttered longer and reopened with Covid policies that many families found unappealing. So families fled, either moving to freer states or choosing private schools, Catholic schools, charter schools, homeschooling, microschools, and other schooling alternatives.

With cities such as San Diego reinstating a school mask mandate this summer, and Los Angeles considering bringing back its indoor mask mandate, it is likely that public school enrollment in those cities will continue to decline.

Indeed, San Diego Unified Board President Sharon Whitehurst-Payne said this week that if students dont want to wear a mask at school, they should just not return.

Los Angeles lost 4.8 percent of its public school students in 2020/2021 and another 6 percent in the 2021/2022 academic year, despite schools reopening. San Diego public schools experienced a similar enrollment drop over the past two years. These enrollment declines outpaced earlier projections of declining enrollment due to demographic changes.

The good news is that coinciding with the drop in district school enrollment is the proliferation of a diverse assortment of accessible learning models, including low-cost microschools, learning pods, virtual platforms, and homeschooling collaboratives. Parents and teachers have more education options today than ever.

For Mercedes Grant, opening a new microschool is all about meeting growing demand for more transparent, personalized learning opportunities for children. A certified special education teacher, Grant taught in public middle schools in several states before deciding to launch her microschool, Path of Life Learning, in Yorktown, Virginia this fall.

The public education system is failing our students academic and social/emotional needs due to overfilled classrooms, watered-down content, and less individualized student focus because the curriculum is the priority over student mastery, she told me in an interview this week.

Microschools are typically small, multi-age learning communities that gather in private homes or local commercial spaces, often with hired teachers who facilitate a mastery-based curriculum. Microschools were gaining traction prior to 2020, but their popularity has surged over the past two years amidst the widespread education disruption caused by the pandemic response.

Microschools are offering us a way that our students can get a more authentic learning experience in a much smaller setting where the adults involved have a true passion for teaching in ways that are best for students rather than being bogged down by pacing guides, student behaviors, and curriculum constraints, said Grant.

Parents are also welcome members of most microschooling communities, something that can set these emerging learning models apart from school systems, which tend to be centralized and bureaucratic. Parents know they are valued instead of treated as the enemy, Grant added.

Her microschool, like most others that are sprouting nationwide, is a low-cost education option, with tuition rates that are far lower than other local private schools. Many microschools also try to offer sliding scale tuition and scholarships to reduce costs even further, or encourage families to take advantage of various school choice policies, such as education savings accounts, that make microschools and related learning models more accessible to more families.

As many families consider, perhaps for the first time, other education options beyond their local public school, they may be surprised to discover the variety of new learning models available to them. They may even discover, as more and more families have, that they prefer these education options far more than their government-assigned one.

This article first appeared in The Epoch Times.

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Public Schools Are 'Hemorrhaging' Students in Major Cities. Here's Where They're Going | Kerry McDonald - Foundation for Economic Education