Those at the World Economic Forum say that misinformation is one of the largest threats left to tackle and that critics of the organization are ‘agents’ of spreading lies. In this clip, Glenn is joined by author Michael Shellenberger, who recently wrote about how the World Economic Forum is a 'cult' bidding for 'global domination.' He explains why the World Economic Forum is so dangerous to personal freedom, why it represents a kind of ‘thuggery,’ and how its leaders — like WEF Chairperson Klaus Schwab — is using ‘mob rule’ to push forward their plans…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Michael Shellenberger. You're a -- user growing into one of my favorite people on the planet, Michael.

MICHAEL: Oh, thank you, so much, man. Good to be with you.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. I read your -- your takedown or your observations of the World Economic Forum. They are coming out today, and saying misinformation is one of the things that they have to tackle. I think it was number five on their list of most dangerous threats, was misinformation.

And they're claiming people like you, people like me, are just nothing, but misinformation or disinformation agents. About the WEF.

MICHAEL: Well, yeah. You know there's been just dozens, I mean, hundreds of articles saying, there's these conspiracy theories about this thing called the World Economic Forum. The conspiracy theories claim that the World Economic Forum wants a great reset. That they want you to eat insects rather than meat. And that they don't want you to own anything or have any privacy. And that you'll be happier if you do that. Okay. Those are all supposedly conspiracy theories.

Well, my colleague, Isabella Kaminski, who actually used to work at the Financial Times, which is a great fan of the World Economic Forum. And she had been investigating them for almost a decade. And I both published a piece, where all of those things are not only true, the Great Reset, insects as the new meat, and -- and owning nothing and having no privacy.

Those are not only true things. They're actually from the World Economic Forum's Davos summit itself. And from the website. They say they want transparency, but they've actually deleted a number of those things.

GLENN: Yep.

MICHAEL: They say they want more -- they want to know our financial information. Okay. That's like part of what gets promoted at these conferences.

GLENN: Right.

MICHAEL: Like, we should know what's in your bank account.

And we should probably be able to control it too.

As we saw in Canada with the truckers. That comes in handy, if you're trying to move away from a democratic system, to an authoritarian system.

So they want that too. But when we say, how do you invest your money? They wouldn't tell us. They just said, Swiss law says, we don't have to tell you. Sure Swiss law tells you that. Are you familiar with Switzerland's banking laws.

GLENN: Well, yes. Maybe Klaus may not have, but I think his father was clear about the Swiss banking laws.

MICHAEL: You know, his father ran a Swiss company in Germany during World War II, during the Holocaust.

Historians who have listened to this, said that indeed he did use forced labor, you know, Jewish labor, during the Holocaust.

During World War II. That's not actually in question.

He is a very creepy person. And so the natural sense -- I mean, I think it's okay to say that. I'm using it in a technical sense.
(laughter)

MICHAEL: The creepy feeling you get from Klaus Schwab is accurate. The basic picture of World Economic Forum as a creepy event, is accurate.

GLENN: Yes. Well, his father believed in public/private partnerships. Which is fascism. That's the definition of fascism.

You own the company. But the country. The authoritarian leadership tells you exactly what you're going to make. When you're going to make it. How to do it.

And you get to keep your -- it's exactly what's happening in China. That's not communism. That's more fascistic. In nature.

The way they run their -- their -- their businesses over there.

He was a fan of it. Klaus is still a fan of it.

That -- that -- I mean, forget about the -- the Holocaust for a second. But that's the basis of what Germany was going for, on the economic front. Correct?

RILEY: Of course. Yes. I mean, that's what every schoolchild learns. I mean, it's almost a kind of -- it's a thug -- it's a kind of thuggery.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

MICHAEL: It's a kind of magazine rule, by the -- by these con artists.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

MICHAEL: I mean, look, your intuitive intuition against eating bugs is correct. There's all sorts of parasites in these bugs.

It's obviously not a human custom. You know, my -- my wife is Korean American people, and I spent as much time in Korea, and her parents ate bugs. And I ate some bugs. In Korea. It's a little bit of a novelty. Most people don't. Most Koreans like to eight beef.

And when my wife asked her father about the insect-eating.

He says, you know, we were poor and starving, you know, during the war.

GLENN: Right.

MICHAEL: So insect eating -- insect eating is something that noble Asians and Africans do is nonsense.

And so it really does come out. And they say it very clearly, in promoting insect eating, that they don't want you to eat meat. So then if you go and report that, what it is, they come out and say, it's a conspiracy theory. But when you go check on their own website. That's what they say. And it's basically all the things that you've been writing about.

I mean, I think ultimately, you and Russell Brand and the other major critics of the World Economic Forum are proven correct, in what we discovered. And not only that. I think it's ultimately going to destroy the organization. Most world leaders, I think in part because of this heavy backlash against World Economic Forum, did not go. Only the German chancellor went. And he has to go to every one of these events to suck up to world leaders and sheiks and stuff. Because they need world gas.

So -- but other world leaders don't want to go, because they know it's bad for their PR. They know it hurts their image, and you saw Elon Musk responded to me on Twitter.

You know, saying, yeah. It seems like -- you know, while everybody would support dialogue, it's a creepy event.

GLENN: But didn't he just say, it seemed boring.

I thought that was an odd statement, for him to make. He's smarter than that.

MICHAEL: I mean, sure. I mean, I think -- look, I think part of the thing we discovered as well, that this is how they rip you off. This is the grift part of it. Is that when you and I buy, you know, stocks or people have pensions.

And retirement funds, that are buying stocks. They're not getting the early stock or the early investment money. That's the stuff that gets traded at Davos. So in the front house, they talk about, we love the environment. And racial equality. That's the main story. And then behind the scenes, they're just doing grift-y type deals, and we're seeing it bust on people. A lot of people got into crypto. A lot of money got lost.

You know, it wasn't a real asset. So for me -- I think for Izzy and me, that's been my coauthor on this.

We -- so we were like, what is the right thing to say? Is it a grift? Yes. Is it a cult around this kind of creepy dude, Klaus Schwab?

Yes. But it is also a bid for global domination. In the sense, they want to take hold of the economy. And they are doing that. I mean, the energy economy, at this point in Europe, and heavily in the United States, is overwhelmingly controlled by governments.

Because they put so many subsidies in it. They're basically controlling it now. And they've made electricity reliable in the United States. They will have to create another set of subsidies, just to pay somebody to try to keep power plants operating, when the sun is not shining, when the wind is not blowing.

So it is making progress. Klaus Schwab is sick.

It may be that in the future, because you and Russell have so demonized the World Economic Forum so successfully, it may be like something else.

But definitely global elites are constantly trying to take advantage of ordinary retirement-holding citizens. With their stocks and bonds and whatever.

But there's also this kind of creepy low energy return to, you know, 18th century economies.

GLENN: Yes.

MICHAEL: Kind of an ideology behind it. We've talked about it before. It's low energy. And you should be basically -- the idea is basically, you should be poorer. That's the idea. Eat insects. Don't eat meat. Don't own anything. Don't have any privacy.

GLENN: Right. This --

MICHAEL: It's pretty terrible.

GLENN: It's gone back to serfdom. You don't even anything.

Because the king owns it. Or one of his lords. You're not going to invent anything. Because you're not going to get anything from it. You can't improve your life because you can't. You can't improve your station ever. Because you can't own anything.

I mean, it's -- it's right back to the feudal system.

The -- in the meeting, Klaus Schwab opened up yesterday, and he said, we have to master the future. And what he was talking about was there are so many crisis -- crises, that are going on right now, that they have to master them. And use them, to push us into this new world.

That's the only thing that -- I mean, if we had time on our side, I would think that we are going to beat them.

But I think this is going to be a photo finish at the wire on who wins on this if people don't wake up to -- their tentacles are everywhere.

And when you have a crisis, and they create -- they're creating all of these crisis, when you have a crisis of food, when you have a crisis of money, people will just reach out for whoever is going to say, I have the solution.

MICHAEL: Well, yeah. Absolutely. I think the one thing that's proven, that you've proven, that Russell Brand has proven and others have proven, is that the World Economic Forum, when you actually know what it's promoting, it's wildly unpopular. That's why the change in the media environment. It starts, of course, with radio. But the internet really takes it to another level. Means that the old regime struggles constantly. So why are they always talking about disinformation?

It's because people like us are out here, explaining actually -- that is what they want.

GLENN: Yes.

MICHAEL: They want the bugs. The not owning anything. And a move to low energy living. Great reset was always just like, we're going to stop using fossil fuels and nuclear and reliable energy. And we'll use unreliable and solar and wind. And only when that is possible, because of the weather. That was what The Great Reset was. And fundamentally, the organization is about what they call sustainability, what I think we would call basically making everybody much poorer.

GLENN: Yes.

MICHAEL: Returning to a kind of immiseration, that we had before the Industrial Revolution, before we had reliable energy sources, and energy dense fuels.

So, yeah. It's a pretty -- all I can say is that you're right. I totally agree. There's a fight going on, between those of us that think that individuals and families and nations should be able to determine their own identity. And a group of other people that think it should be worked out bay --

GLENN: The elites.

MICHAEL: The supposedly smart elites. Working out the think tank and UN meetings. And business conferences. And Elon, he's a complicated person. And I've gotten to know him a little bit. And what I would say, I think he's seen the dark side of that hyper wokism. And his purchase of Twitter, is maybe the most significant thing he's done.

GLENN: I think so too.

MICHAEL: Because he's basically said, ordinary people should be on an equal platform to communicate as elites.

And we should stop censoring ordinary folks, because the elites demand it.

GLENN: Michael Shellenberger. Thank you for everything that you do. Appreciate it. Always great to have you on. God bless.

MICHAEL: Great to be with you, Glenn. God bless.

GLENN: You bet. Michael Shellenberger, he's the author of San Fransicko.

If you haven't read his work, he's not a conservative. He's just common sense -- and was at one point, the -- the friend of the earth, from TIME Magazine. He was like on the cover of TIME Magazine.
As the -- you know, the best climate justice kind of guy.

Nope. Nope. Not so much. He doesn't agree with any of the stuff that is going on right now. He thinks it is a grift.

And good to have him check in on the world economical forum