In August 1787, THOMAS JEFFERSON AUTHORED A LETTER TO his nephew Peter Carr, who had lived with Jefferson at Monticello. At the time, Jefferson was living in Paris while serving as a vital diplomat for the emerging American nation. In the letter, Jefferson advised Carr about various topics, including religion.
“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion,” Jefferson wrote. “Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”
(Please enjoy this excerpt from the book and consider supporting the Author)
Question with boldness. Those words instantly captured me. It’s as though they were embedded in my soul. And since reading them, many years ago, I have tried to the best of my ability to live by them. I think it’s one of the reasons so many in my audience respect the work my team and I have accomplished over the past couple of decades.
Of course, questioning with boldness can also be a dangerous business. There are many people in power who wish I and tens of millions of other Americans would just shut the heck up and do what we’re told. That would, after all, make it a whole lot easier for the ruling class to achieve its goal of further consolidating its wealth and authority over the rest of society. Asking questions is one of the most important things any American can do today, because the roots of so many of the world’s problems have been concealed from the public. Only by asking questions can we discover the truth and chart a new course for the United States.
Throughout this book, you are going to discover many concepts very few people today understand or have even heard of. Some of this material will shock you, as it did me—and I’m not easily shocked. You will at times be skeptical, and that’s a good thing. I don’t want you to take my word for anything that’s in this book, which is why I have included several hundred citations and mountains of direct quotes from important sources.
I do have one request for you, however. Before we start our journey together, I would like you to take a moment to think about how much the world you live in today has become a fun house mirror distortion of the world you used to know and understand. Then I’d like you to ask yourself the following questions.
Why are large corporations becoming the champions of “woke” causes and engaging in political debates about things like voter identification laws?
Why did the stock market grow substantially throughout 2020 and 2021, despite one of the big‐ gest global economic collapses in history?
Why did housing prices skyrocket in 2020 and 2021?
Why are politicians in both the Democratic and the Republican Parties now spending trillions of dollars more than the government takes in, and why aren’t they afraid of runaway inflation?
Why are central banks all over the world talking about creating their own digital currencies?
Why are people who claim that climate change is an existential threat to human life building mansions on islands and beaches, despite alleged fears of rising sea levels, and flying around the world in private jets that spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?
Why are social media giants scrambling to stifle speech at every turn?
Why are web hosting companies shutting down massive platforms that advocate free speech, silencing millions of people?
Why are the heads of numerous Western countries—including Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and America—all using the exact same “Build Back Better” slogan?
Why are leading figures on the left, including President Joe Biden, calling for “stakeholder capital‐ ism,” and what is the difference between stakeholder capitalism and a free market economic model?
Why do the American people no longer trust many of our society’s most important institutions?
Why does the media pay more attention to a tweet from Donald Trump than to a mob burning down a police station or to rioters taking over whole city blocks for days at a time?
Why can’t we have an honest dialogue anymore? Why has the political discourse become so vitriolic?
Why are people on the ideological right and left being “canceled” over the slightest societal misstep?
Why were the size and scope of the coronavirus-related stimulus programs so large?
Why did government officials distribute thousands of dollars to families who never lost their jobs or suffered from any economic hardships during the pandemic?
Why were massive corporations allowed to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic while many small businesses were forced to close?
Why has President Joe Biden worked so hard to impose coronavirus vaccine mandates on Americans, regardless of whether they have already developed natural immunity?
Why are people who have been vaccinated forced in many states to wear masks in public places, even when there are very few people present? If you don’t know the answer to all of these questions, it is because you have yet to fully under‐ stand the Great Reset—the single most important topic I have covered in my career, and the movement that could finally snuff out the flame of liberty in America. I do not expect you to agree with everything I have written in this book, but I firmly believe that if you approach this material with an open mind and a commitment to pursuing the truth, you will agree that the United States—and indeed the entirety of Western civilization—is in grave peril because of the Great Reset. Only strong resistance from those who believe in democratic principles and individual liberty can stop it
***
- To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. . . . In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism. —KLAUS SCHWAB, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OF THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, JUNE 3, 2020
Yes, it will happen. And I think it will happen with greater speed and with greater intensity than a lot of people might imagine. —JOHN KERRY, SPECIAL CLIMATE ENVOY FOR PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN, DISCUSSING THE GREAT RESET AT A NOVEMBER 2020 EVENT HOSTED BY THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
THE DATE IS AUGUST 29, 2040.
TWO DECADES AFTER WORLD leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum’s 2020 event to formulate a plan for imposing a Great Reset of the global economic system, life in America has dramatically changed. The rules, social norms, and market economic principles that used to define the American experience have been permanently rewritten.
The economy, once driven by the wants and needs of the individual consumer, is now guided by an agenda crafted by a cabal of international elites. Despite having been marketed as a solution to all of society’s ills, the Great Reset agenda has left everyday Americans worse off than ever before and increasingly dependent on the government and wealthy global corporations that serve as the foundation of this brave and terrifying new world.
After committing to the principles of the Great Reset, Congress passed a version of the Green New Deal. The legislation has wiped out more than ten million jobs supported by the oil and gas industry, devastating the economies of Colorado, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and other states that once benefited from fracking and other forms of conventional energy development.
A billion solar panels and more than a million wind turbines have been constructed across the United States, destroying tens of millions of acres of land. Hundreds of thousands of additional acres have been decimated by the thousands of miles of new power lines and extensive mining operations needed to obtain the natural resources used to build America’s expansive wind and solar facilities.
Millions of birds and bats, including endangered species, are killed every year by the massive spinning blades of America’s vast wind farms. Millions of other animals have been displaced following the collapse of countless ecosystems resulting from the destruction caused by developers building new renewable energy facilities.
Energy prices have more than tripled in many parts of the country. In places with less sunshine and wind, energy prices are five times higher. Blackouts are common, especially in regions with frigid winters.
The widespread construction that occurred under the Reset’s rapid transformation of America’s energy sector has replaced some of the jobs lost in the oil and gas industry, but millions of additional jobs —many of which were once located in America’s heartland—have been shipped overseas, as manufacturers and other energy-intensive industries have fled in droves to nations with lower prices for electricity and other forms of energy. As a result, hundreds of cities and towns across the United States have become economically depressed.
Restaurants, food vendors, and grocery stores limit meat sales to help battle climate change. High fat and sugary foods are restricted or banned outright.
Gasoline-powered cars have been outlawed or rendered useless by the elimination of fossil fuels. Air travel has decreased dramatically as prices have increased because of harsh regulations on carbon dioxide emissions. Americans have been promised a new national network of high-speed rail, but more than ten years into its construction, little progress has been made, as environmentalists, concerned communities, and politicians continue to fight over the location of the rail lines.
Taxes on businesses have doubled, and a slew of new sales, wealth, and real estate levies have been created by government officials in an attempt to create greater economic “equity.” America’s wealthiest business owners and innovators have left the country and moved to competitor nations that refused to go along with the Great Reset, flooding those nations with hundreds of billions of dollars in new wealth. The groups of Americans hit hardest by the economic exodus are lower-income and working-class families.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans now depend on the federal government for many basic goods and services. Tens of millions of working-age adults refuse to find a job and instead live off the government’s basic income system. Millions of others are employed by federal or state government agencies through the national government’s “job guarantee” program.
The federal government routinely runs deficits of $10 trillion or more. The national debt has sur‐ passed $100 trillion. International unease about the strength of the U.S. dollar galvanized the world’s largest economies to develop a new currency for international transactions, causing investors and foreign banks to flood American markets with their cash. Historically high levels of inflation in key industries followed, pushing the United States into a second Great Depression. National GDP has been sluggish, at best, for more than a decade.
A new federal agency—the U.S. Department of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Compliance—has been created to develop and maintain an ever-shifting series of standards that deter‐ mine which American businesses are permitted to trade in the country’s largest stock exchanges, as well as who can receive the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into corporations every year by government officials desperate to keep more companies from heading overseas.
Many businesses spend hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars every year attempting to meet ESG standards, and every corporation is required to have an ESG compliance officer on its board of directors, matching standards that had already been in place for decades in China.
In line with the standards created by the U.S. Department of Environmental, Social, and Governance Compliance, businesses shift their product development toward causes endorsed by and favoring elites in government and business. Every American corporation is forced to report the racial and gender demographics of its staff and management and to justify every hiring decision made over the past year.
Gun and ammunition manufacturers and sellers, frequent targets of government bureaucrats, are effectively forced to close their doors due to overwhelming regulatory compliance costs.
Individual investors, large and small, are given specialized ratings for their investments. Investors who attempt to earn money in those businesses that the ruling class considers to be undesirable for society—like candy stores, vape shops, and ranches—are punished with financial penalties.
Newly structured, ESG-compliant corporations wield more influence than ever over society. Private ownership of most products is a thing of the past. Housing, automobiles, and many other key goods are now available only as services offered by corporations. Most consumers rent products instead of buying, not because they want to but because they can’t afford to own property anymore.
Everyday Americans’ credit scores—the ratings used by financial institutions to determine credit‐ worthiness for credit cards, car loans, and mortgages, among other things—are no longer based on traditional financial metrics. Instead, financial institutions use consumers’ browser history, social media activity, and other previously private user information from tech devices to craft credit scores for the Americans still wealthy enough to own high-priced property. Individuals and business owners with a history of browsing “dangerous” websites that dare to challenge the government’s official narrative or of searching for concerning topics online are deemed too untrustworthy for many lenders and credit service companies.
A national free college tuition plan has put, directly or indirectly, the federal government in charge of virtually every higher education institution in America. Most private colleges, including the vast majority of religious schools, have shut their doors forever or have agreed to become secular public institutions in order to take part in the free tuition plan, which is available only to students attending government-run colleges.
Nearly all K–12 school choice programs across the United States have been defunded, pushing thousands of parents to send their children back to their local government-run school district, no matter how dangerous or dysfunctional it is. Parents have virtually no control over curriculum standards. Children spend less time learning about math and science and much more time learning about critical race theory and other social justice topics, causing them to fall even further behind their peers in other developed nations.
Using ESG standards as their excuse, social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, and search engines such as Google, have expanded their content restrictions, banning from their platforms many types of speech, including political and religious speech, which have been labeled “offensive,” “misleading,” or “misinformation.” As a result, tens of millions of voices across the country have been silenced.
China, India, and Russia have refused to comply with the Great Reset reforms mandated by newly created climate accords and several international meetings of government and business officials. This has allowed these countries to keep their energy costs down, which in turn provides them with substantial leverage in trade agreements.
China and India are now the world’s most influential and powerful nations. They use their vast wealth to continue buying large amounts of land and natural resources from developing nations in Asia and Africa, setting the stage for their global dominance over the next one hundred years.
This is what life looks like in a post Great Reset World. This is the potential future we must do everything in our power to stop.
THE AMERICA WE REMEMBER
For the past two decades, I have been warning my audience that the country millions of us grew up in— a nation built on hard work, honor, kindness toward neighbors, and unashamed, flag-waving love of freedom—is on the verge of vanishing, and that the day in which we would no longer recognize our country would soon be upon us. Unfortunately, the events of the past year have proven, beyond any doubt, that the moment I have long feared has come.
The America we remember, the America of carefree summers, Saturday night trips to movie theaters, warm family holiday gatherings, and mom-and-pop restaurants, has been replaced with a culture driven by suspicion, rampant fear, and ideological and political tribalism and dominated by massive, multinational corporations.
Sure, Grandma can still bake apple pies while the family watches a good, ol’-fashioned baseball game, but whatever elements of American culture remain are now superficial. Beneath the glowing stars-and-stripes veneer is a terminally ill superpower teetering on the edge. And the worst part is, our most disruptive, dangerous days still lie ahead.
At lavish cocktail parties in European resort towns and in the boardrooms of the world’s largest corporations, powerful and influential leaders are putting the finishing touches on the vast infrastructure needed to alter our communities forever. These changes—some enormous, some barely noticeable —are all part of a sweeping proposal to transform the global economy, a plan ominously named the Great Reset.
The final result of the Great Reset would be the disturbing vision of the future I laid out earlier in this chapter—societies with fewer personal freedoms and even more cronyism and political and eco‐ nomic centralization. And these are just the features of their program, not its unintended consequences.
But you don’t need to take my word for it—and you shouldn’t. There is a seemingly endless sea of downright disturbing quotes from those involved in the Great Reset that clearly articulate their plans for the future of America. Throughout the remainder of the book, you’re going to encounter many of these quotes, which are occasionally quite long and sometimes featured more than once. This is by de‐ sign. I want you to hear what the Great Reset is directly from the globalist horse’s mouth, so that the next time someone says, “The Great Reset is nothing but a right-wing conspiracy theory,” you’ll know with certainty who is telling the truth and who is looking to make big banks and corporations happy.
UNMASKING THE RESET
The Great Reset is a proposal that is breathtaking in its scope. Its backers support altering nearly every part of society, from the cars we drive to the food we eat to the news reports we watch on television. Its core foundation was shaped almost entirely by a small, extremely wealthy and well-connected group of people, one that includes highly influential business leaders, environmentalists, government officials, and bankers.
The goal of the Great Reset is both shocking and wildly ambitious: to transform the global economy, eliminate free markets, impose a new, more easily controllable and malleable economic system, and change the way people think about private property and corporations. The reset part of the Great Reset is an allusion to “pushing the reset button” on the global economy—and boy, do they want to push that sucker hard.
Who is behind this radical plan? In early June 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF), a large nonprofit based in Switzerland, held a virtual meeting featuring many of the most powerful people on the face of the planet. The purpose of the meeting was to launch a new campaign for a Great Reset of the global economy, using the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change as justifications for their pro‐ posed reforms to society.
Although you may not realize it, you have almost certainly heard about the World Economic Forum in media reports, likely in news or opinion stories about WEF’s annual meeting. Gathering in the posh resort mountain town of Davos, international elites pamper themselves in luxurious hotels and enjoy extravagant meals between high-level meetings among titans of industry, finance, and government.
The Davos crowd often gets a bad rap for hosting lavish parties after spending long days lamenting about the plight of the common man, but I think we should give them a break. After all, scheming about the best ways to lord over the entire world in between ski trips is hard work.
In an article published on the World Economic Forum’s website, WEF executive chairman and co‐ founder Klaus Schwab explained in detail some the most important goals of the Reset. “COVID-19 lock‐ downs may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying,” Schwab wrote.
“To achieve a better outcome,” Schwab wrote later in the article, “the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. . . . Every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”
Changing “all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts”—what could possibly go wrong?
Schwab and Prince Charles were joined by a long list of important figures in business, economics, and a variety of powerful organizations calling for a Great Reset, including António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general; Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International; Gita Gopinath, the lead economist at the International Monetary Fund; and Bernard Looney, CEO of BP.
In a speech, Greenpeace’s Jennifer Morgan explained that the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to reshape the world in a way that is reminiscent of the “new world order” established after World War II ended.
“We set up a new world order after World War II,” Morgan said. “We’re now in a different world than we were then. We need to ask, what can we be doing differently? The World Economic Forum has a big responsibility in that as well—to be pushing the reset button and looking at how to create well-being for people and for the Earth.”
Sharan Burrow, the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, explained during an interview about the Great Reset that one of those things we can be doing differently is “de‐ sign a better world” based on “solidarity” and “sharing.”
“Solidarity and sharing and deciding on how you protect people—both within nations and globally —is absolutely critical at the moment,” she added.
“We need to design policies to align with investment in people and the environment. But above all, the longer-term perspective is about rebalancing economies,” Burrow later said.
One of the ways in which Great Reset supporters like Burrow want to design a better world is by engaging in massive wealth redistribution schemes, ones that would promote economic “equality,” not only among citizens within individual nations but also between countries.
Influential CEOs and presidents from major U.S. corporations have also participated in WEF meetings about the Great Reset, including Ajay Banga, the chief executive officer of Mastercard, and Bradford Smith, president of Microsoft. 20 (I think even the Monopoly guy and Scrooge McDuck threw in their support for the plan, but my research staff is still waiting for confirmation from McDuck’s communications director.)
Additionally, several establishment American political figures promoted the Great Reset in the weeks following the June 2020 meeting. The king of climate change himself, Al Gore, called for the Great Reset in a June 19 interview with NBC’s TODAY television show.
“So, I think this is a time for a ‘Great Reset,’” Gore said, after arguing that electric cars and renew‐ able energy sources like wind and solar can provide lucrative economic benefits. “We’ve got to fix a lot of these problems that have been allowed to fester for way too long. And the climate crisis is an opportunity to create tens of millions of new jobs, clean up the air, and reduce the death rate from pandemics, by the way, because the air pollution from burning fossil fuels heightens the death rates from coronavirus.”
John Kerry also promoted the Great Reset in a lengthy June 2020 interview with the World Economic Forum, during which he reportedly said, “This is a big moment. The World Economic Forum —the CEO capacity of the Forum—is really going to have to play a front and center role in refining the Great Reset to deal with climate change and inequity—all of which is being laid bare as a consequence of COVID-19.”
Kerry, in particular, has positioned himself as one of the leading voices in the U.S. government for the Great Reset, thanks almost entirely to his close relationship with President Biden.
In the wake of the November 2020 election, Biden announced that Kerry would serve as his administration’s special climate envoy—a cabinet-level position, if you can believe it. In that role, Kerry has been given a tremendous amount of authority over one of the most important parts of the Great Reset plan in the United States, the climate and energy policies of the Biden-Harris administration.
Speaking of President Biden, he, too, is a staunch supporter of the Reset and fully committed to enacting its agenda, both in the United States and around the world. President Biden’s role in this movement cannot be understated. The moment he became president, the U.S. government’s unofficial plat‐ form immediately and dramatically shifted from President Trump’s “America First” agenda to the globalist Great Reset. But you will have to wait until chapter 6 to see the ironclad evidence that my research team and I have gathered uncovering the fact—not opinion—that President Biden is working toward implementing this far-reaching reset of the global economy. (You didn’t think I’d let you in on every‐ thing in the first chapter, did you?)
For now, it is vital that you keep in mind that the plan for a Great Reset is not some far-off, leftwing European fantasy that has little or nothing to do with America. Many of the most important figures tied to the Great Reset are, in fact, American. And most of the large corporations, banks, and financial institutions that have backed the plan are also from the United States or have significant financial ties to the country.
Everything we have discussed to this point about the Great Reset is just the tip of the iceberg. The Great Reset is so much more than utopian promises from ruling-class elites and scary quotes about re‐ setting the global economy. And the World Economic Forum and its allies have made it clear that they are planning to expand the Great Reset agenda—which they are now trying to rebrand—at key meetings in the years to come, so it is possible that as spectacularly radical as the movement looks today, it could get even worse.
I can hear the skeptics already: “There goes that nutjob Glenn Beck again! What’s next, Glenn? You going to tell us the earth is really flat and that ancient aliens built the pyramids?”
Look, I get it. When I first heard about the Great Reset, it sounded like a poorly written movie plot some struggling thirtysomething in Los Angeles cooked up in his mom’s basement between shifts at the Cheesecake Factory. But then I started to dig into the details about the Great Reset and what its most passionate supporters were saying, not just in private but publicly, on the record. And the more I learned, the more obvious it became that although the Great Reset is indeed a wild, crazy, completely out-there conspiracy, it is a very real one—and it has the potential to dramatically alter our world forever.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY FASCISM
I’ll discuss much more in chapter 5 about the Great Reset and the specific policies its adherents want to impose. But fully grasping the extent of the Great Reset and the impact it would have on the global economy will require rethinking numerous ideas about society and the roles technology and emerging economic theories have had on our world, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Great Reset’s biggest advocates never use the words fascism or authoritarianism to describe the Reset or their agenda. They have worked very hard to integrate capitalistic language like markets and investments into their plans, and many have even tried to frame the Great Reset’s provisions as creating a new kind of capitalism—so-called stakeholder capitalism—while simultaneously talking about ending many of the world’s markets.
Do not be fooled into thinking that the Great Reset’s use of capitalist-sounding language is any‐ thing other than a smartly designed marketing trick. The Reset would create a system that is, in nearly every way, a complete rejection of market economics. And this would happen not just in a handful of European or African countries either but virtually everywhere.
As the head of WEF wrote in a June 2020 article promoting the Great Reset, “Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”
Before moving on, take note of the important and overtly fascistic use of the word must in the WEF leader’s statement. It is not enough to say that the global economy could, should, or ought to change. No, it must change. And “every country . . . must participate” and “every industry . . . must be trans‐ formed.” (Don’t you just love being told what to do by people who spend more money on suits than you earn in a year?)
The mechanisms that Great Reset world leaders would use to create their brave new world are, by design, complex and in some cases require concepts and strategies most people around the world have never heard of, like “modern monetary theory” and “environmental, social, and governance standards.” On the surface, many of these ideas can seem agonizingly tedious and even downright boring, especially when you look at them on their own. But once you realize that each of these ideas is a puzzle piece that connects to form a much larger, more transformative and radical scheme, it is easy to see why powerful people around the world are pushing so hard to promote the Great Reset, and why I’m working so hard to fight against it.
Unlike many other troubling plans promoted in the past by elites in government and business, the Great Reset is not dangerous because it could lead to soft authoritarianism or a form of fascism at some distant moment in the future. It is dangerous because it is soft authoritarianism, and it is a new kind of fascism. It has merely been carefully rebranded as a variation of capitalism, an “inclusive capitalism,” in order to fool well-meaning people—on the political left and right—who otherwise would never want the United States to adopt Great Reset ideas.
It is true that the Great Reset does not look identical to many of the authoritarian movements of the past, and there are some important differences that we will need to dive into later in this book, but I believe that if fascism is ever to take hold in the United States, the Great Reset—or some similar, re‐ named version of it—is the way in which it will happen.
The Great Reset will not necessarily require the mass imprisonment of dissenters, nationwide confiscation of businesses, or a bloody revolution. It can achieve authoritarian goals without jackbooted storm troopers or gulags, and it includes just enough elements of cronyism and payouts to global elites to make the system palatable to the world’s wealthiest and most well-connected people. It is a kind of authoritarian, international, socialistic fascism, yes, but it’s not Marx’s socialism or the fascistic models embraced by Benito Mussolini. It is authoritarianism for our brand-new technology-rich, corrupt era. It is twenty-first century fascism.
In the twentieth century, communist, fascist, and Marxist revolutions—whether they occurred through democratic reforms, as they did in Sweden, or through bloody revolutions, as they did in the Soviet Union and China—ultimately proved to be wildly unsuccessful. (That is the understatement of the century, I know.) But this long track record of failure has not been enough to convince many people, including millions of Americans, that authoritarian schemes do not work, only that previous methods and models for imposing authoritarianism were unsuccessful. So instead of giving up on literally some of the worst ideas human beings have ever come up with, elites and their political allies continuously work to find new ways to promote policies that have failed for centuries.
That is where the Great Reset comes in. The Great Reset does not reflect an expectation for a global revolution of the working class, contrary to the views of Karl Marx. It also is not attempting to usher in that Marxist revolution using all of Lenin’s blood-soaked tactics. The Great Reset’s supporters are not interested in mandating the same kind of mass migrations of people we saw under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or Stalin in Russia. And perhaps most surprisingly, the Great Reset does not demonize large private businesses and corporations in the same way that others have in the past, including leftists like Bernie Sanders (much more on this in chapter 5).
Under a twenty-first century fascist model, there will likely be, at least at first, much less violence and property confiscation than what the world has witnessed under previous versions of authoritarianism. Instead, the Great Reset program is designed to move the world toward collectivism and soft authoritarianism through a combination of new monetary policies, tax regimes designed to punish “un‐ desirable” industries, huge new “green” infrastructure plans, and sweeping social programs that seek to make the vast majority of people, including many in the middle class, dependent on collective institutions and government programs. And rather than confiscate businesses on behalf of the collective or mandate that they become socialist enterprises, the Great Reset’s twenty-first century fascist policies would use the power of money printing to coerce and control the world’s most influential and powerful businesses, allowing governments to manipulate society and economic activity in unprecedented ways.
DEFINING THE GREAT RESET
The more I have learned about the Great Reset, the harder it has become to define it. The Great Reset is not socialism, even though it does include some socialistic government programs. It isn’t free market economics, because elites, governments, and central banks control and even micromanage economic decision making. The Great Reset is full of corporatism, but it is so much more than big bailouts and sweetheart deals between businesses and corrupt politicians. Technology is a huge part of the Reset but calling it a technocracy fails to capture the full weight of the Reset’s transformation of economic and societal activity. The Great Reset is highly fascistic but not violent or nationalistic, like many of the fascist systems of Europe in the twentieth century.
The reason the Great Reset is so hard to define is because nothing quite like it has ever been tried before, at least not on this scale. The most accurate name for the Reset is probably something like “mod‐ ern corporate cronyist techno socialistic international fascism,” but that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. So after much consideration and debate, I have decided to call it twenty-first century fascism— in large part because of the plan’s similarities to Nazi-era controls on businesses in Germany.
However, you will probably notice throughout this book the Great Reset’s parallels to the Chinese “capitalist” economic model, which has for decades attempted to blend corruption, technology, despotism, and corporatism together into a soft-authoritarian smoothie that tastes a lot like the delectable poison being peddled under the Great Reset brand today.
This is not a coincidence. For many years, elites in the West have watched with deep admiration the Chinese government achieve an economic transformation at breakneck speed. And on more than several hundred occasions, they have openly remarked with amazement about China’s ability to get the job done, while also quietly muttering concerns about China’s record of abusing human rights.
The Great Reset is, in a very real sense, Western elites’ attempt at improving upon the China model, which probably explains why the World Economic Forum—which, remember, is one of the key players in the promotion of the Great Reset—has numerous close ties with important figures in China, including Chinese leaders who have served on WEF’s board of trustees.
Now, some who read this book might be tempted to think that the grand promises of “equality” and “ending poverty” promoted by advocates of the Great Reset sound pretty good. But before you consume one too many drinks at the bar and jump into bed with Davos Man, please take some time to care‐ fully investigate every aspect of the Great Reset—not just the smiley face stuff they put in the brochures.
The Great Reset is not really about helping the poor or saving the planet. It is about making the rich richer and expanding the power of the ruling class—goals that many elites have shared across cultures, historical eras, and geographies.
It is tempting to fall into the trap of seeing controversy over the Great Reset as yet another left-versus-right debate. And yes, undoubtedly there are included in the Reset some progressive and even socialistic elements that I believe would be exceptionally harmful to American families—an issue I’ll deal with throughout this book. But for the most part, these elements are merely distractions from the Great Reset’s most important and transformative components, the ones that would hand over unprecedented amounts of authority to a small collection of elites and their friends.
And as strange as it might sound to some readers, I, along with many in my audience, could soon find myself fighting alongside supporters of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, who have repeatedly signaled their skepticism of elite groups like those working at Davos to produce the Great Reset.
Those who support the Reset want Main Street Americans to be divided. They want us to spend all our time yelling at each other about Dr. Seuss book bans and COVID-19 mask mandates so we do not see the bigger, much more important forces at work.
The truth is, the fight against the Great Reset is not a struggle between liberals and conservatives; it is a fight between the ruling-class elites of Wall Street, Davos, and Washington, D.C. and everyone else. And if the American people lose sight of that vital point, there will be no stopping the grand alterations of society that Reset elites have long yearned for.
WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
The rest of this book will be dedicated to outlining exactly how the Great Reset would work, how global elites are planning to use it to solidify their power, what strategies are being employed to push the world toward this new fascistic model, and, finally, what those of us who support individual rights can do to stop it.
Fake news conspiracy theorists on the left and right are creating immense divisions that have the potential to rip apart this country, which I deeply love, so I am the last person you will find wearing a tinfoil hat and supporting crazy, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. (Also, tinfoil hats make my head look big.) But just because something sounds too crazy to be true does not mean it is false. Conspiracy facts are real, and the Great Reset might be the most important conspiracy fact in modern history. It’s something the ruling class has been putting into place for more than one hundred years, although their most recent attempt is, I believe, the most dangerous.
Over the past two decades, I have been trying to warn the American people about our country’s march toward authoritarianism and government control, and throughout those years, I and many of those people who stood up with me—some of whom are probably reading this book now—were continuously and unfairly labeled “crazy” or “right-wing extremists.” But anyone who fairly looks back on the mountain of work my team and I accomplished over those years would find that, on the vast majority of the important topics we covered, we were spot-on.
When we warned you about the radicalism of Far-Left groups like Antifa, we were right. When we told you that we were heading toward race riots fueled by socialists seeking to upend our society, we were right. When we showed you that the dangerous money printing policies of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations would only get worse and eventually push the country in the direction of even greater government control and economic calamity, we were correct again.
When we told you that the differences between the establishment wings of the Democratic and Republican Parties were rapidly shrinking and that neither group was truly interested in doing what was right for the country, we were right.
When we warned in 2010 about the threats posed by the Arab Spring, and how revolutionaries in the extremist wing of Islamism were attempting to usher in a new caliphate, we were right.
When we predicted that the tragic events of September 11, 2001, would be used to justify draconian restrictions on innocent Americans’ privacy rights, we were dead-on.
When we warned you years ago that Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon were working to stifle speech and that they would soon start erasing and revising American history and the writings of thinkers who oppose their views, we were right.
And when we showed you how movements like Occupy Wall Street and Agenda 21 were just the beginning stages of a larger, more spectacularly troublesome transformation of our society, we were, as you will see throughout the rest of this book, way ahead of the curve.
As much as it pains certain unnamed, dishonest critics of mine, I have been right a lot over the years. But there is one threat that I have repeatedly missed, dismissed, and even mocked at times, and now it is coming back to haunt me—and not in a fun, Casper the Friendly Ghost kind of way. We are talking a full-blown nightmare straight out of e Shining. Throughout my career, I have never taken the danger to liberty posed by powerful, crony, corrupt corporations as seriously as I should have.
In my 2020 book Arguing with Socialists, I wrote, “What’s the worst Jeff Bezos can do to you, anyway? Cancel your Amazon Prime subscription?”
Boy, that joke did not age well. What’s the worst thing Jeff Bezos can do? How about destroying Parlor, a rapidly growing social media company, on a whim, silencing more than ten million people at the drop of a hat? How about banning books from the world’s largest book marketplace, Amazon.com? How about greatly influencing election outcomes through his ownership of the Washington Post? It turns out, corporate elites like Jeff Bezos can do a whole lot more damage than I thought, and they are just getting warmed up.
The centralization of power is almost never a good thing. In the long run, too much power breeds corruption, tyranny, and, in our modern world, radical corporatism. Conservatives like myself have long recognized the inherent danger of centralizing political, military, and societal power in the hands of government officials. However, we have woefully neglected how many large corporations have used corrupt elements in government to seize unprecedented amounts of influence for themselves too.
Not all, but many—perhaps even most—of the biggest players on Wall Street and in the halls of power in the nation’s capital are not friends of the pro-liberty movement or even of democratic principles, properly understood. Instead, they are primarily interested in expanding their own influence and authority. In some cases, I am sure that lust for power is fueled by an altruistic savior complex. In other instances, it is nothing more than a desire to get filthy, stinking, swim-in-a-pool-full-of-gold-coins rich. Whatever their motivation, the result is the same: you end up with no power to control your own life, chart your own destiny, or pursue your dreams—unless, of course, that dream involves working as a cog in the Great Reset machine.
Look, I hope I am wrong about the Great Reset—and I really do mean that. Because if I am right, it means fundamental, damaging, and radical changes to the United States are not just on the horizon; they are here now.
The Great Reset is the culmination of all that globalist elites—not your average Joe and Jane Liberal —have been striving to achieve over the past century, going all the way back to America’s Progressive Era and the internationalism of racist, power-hungry men like Woodrow Wilson.
If supporters of this proposal achieve even half of what they are setting out to accomplish, the United States, and indeed the whole world, will never be the same. The Great Reset is not just about re‐ vamping the economy; it is also about totally transforming the American way of life. It is an attack on virtually every part of our society, including the basic freedoms generation after generation of men and women in the United States have fought so hard to protect.
The ending of the story is not set in stone, however. Once again, it is up to us—to you, me, and other defenders of freedom—to rise up against the forces of tyranny so that our children and grandchildren can inherit the promise of liberty. The battle is going to be ugly. You will be called radical, racist, bigoted, hateful, ignorant, and greedy, among many other horrible things. Your way of life will be at‐ tacked at every turn. You might lose access to financial opportunities and be silenced on social media. You could lose friends. Some of your family members might refuse to talk to you. It is not going to be an easy fight. It never has been. But it is a fight we must endure, and one we must win.
I know there is going to be a lot of material in this book that is going to sound at first, well, crazy. And I know much of what I present here will make you want to ask a lot of questions. Good. As I encouraged you in this book’s preface, ask questions with boldness and do your own homework. Do not take anything I say as gospel truth. If you make that effort, I am confident America will once again beat back those forces that would have our country abandon liberty in the pursuit of empty promises from the world’s ruling class.
If we fail, the bright light of freedom emanating from America’s shores, a light that has long illuminated the rest of the world, especially in its darkest moments, will be extinguished. So the stakes could not be higher. We must rise to the challenge of this moment or risk losing our nation and freedom—perhaps forever.
NEVER LET A GLOBAL PANDEMIC GO TO WASTE
You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. —RAHM EMANUEL, SPEAKING AT A CONFERENCE HOSTED BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, NOVEMBER 19, 2008
YEAH, I KNOW, YOU HAVE HEARD THIS INFAMOUS “NEVER LET a crisis go to waste” quote from Rahm Emanuel before, and if you are a conservative, you’ve probably heard it a lot over the years from Republican politicians, writers, and others trying to illustrate how establishment politicians like Emanuel—the former chief of staff for President Barack Obama and former mayor of Chicago—try to use disasters as opportunities to achieve liberal, progressive, or socialist goals.
I know I have talked about the quote dozens of times on the air, and I have heard other conservatives and politicians do the same more times than I can count—which is a lot, by the way; I’m a pretty good counter. However, rarely have I taken the time to read the full quote during my radio or television shows.
When I sat down to write this chapter, I went back through my notes, read the Emanuel quote in its entirety, and realized that not only have many conservatives slightly changed the quote over the years, but they have also been neglecting a key detail, one that makes Emanuel’s statement more relevant and powerful today than ever before.
Emanuel made the “crisis” comment way back in November 2008, just after Barack Obama won the presidential election. The United States was still in the midst of what was at that time the most significant economic crash in modern American history—although, by today’s chaotic standards, it seems like your average Wednesday. Speaking at a conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal, Emanuel said,
- You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. I think America as a whole in 1973 and 1974, and not just my view but obviously the administration’s, missed the opportunity to deal with the energy crisis that was before us. For a long time our entire energy policy came down to cheap oil. This is an opportunity, what used to be long-term problems, be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area, things that we have postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity, for us, as I would say, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before. The good news, I suppose, if you want to see a silver lining, is the problems are big enough that they lend themselves to ideas from both par‐ ties for the solution.
You might not have picked up on it, but there are a few important parts of Emanuel’s statement that often get overlooked. First, Emanuel does not say, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” He says, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” That might seem like a small difference, but the “serious” part of the statement is important. Small crises happen all the time. That is how most of the news industry makes it money. But it is the serious crises that present real opportunities for radical change.
Emanuel reiterates this point later in his statement, when he says, “The good news, I suppose, if you want to see a silver lining, is the problems are big enough that they lend themselves to ideas from both parties for the solution.” See, Emanuel’s argument is not that any small problem can be trans‐ formed into a larger issue that leads to change but rather that big alterations to our existing system— the kinds of radical things Barack Obama and Emanuel wanted to achieve—are not normally possible without serious crises.
There is also another important part of the statement worth thinking about more carefully. Emanuel does not say that the 2008 financial crisis provided Democrats with a chance to enact their own reforms, but rather he says that the crisis allowed both parties to provide the solution. Now, you might be tempted to dismiss that part of his statement as pandering, but if the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that many Republicans are just as eager to find ways to expand the power of government and their corporate friends as their more left-wing rivals on the other side of the aisle.
The only difference between many Republicans and Democrats in Congress is no longer whether government should be intricately involved in economic and societal decision making but rather the extent to which this should occur. A party deeply devoted to many traditionally conservative ideas—including “crazy” policies like “don’t spend more money than you take in”—no longer exists in Washington, D.C.
Although millions of Americans have been complaining about the gradual shift toward soft authoritarianism that has occurred in both major U.S. political parties over the past couple of decades, the problem has never been more serious than it is now. Those of us who believe in free markets and individual liberty have few champions in government, and the problem appears to be getting worse. It seems that just about everyone in Washington is now looking for ways to use “serious crises” to expand their power and make American families increasingly dependent on government—just as Rahm Emanuel suggested.
This destructive tendency has been perfectly illustrated by governments’ reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, which will play a central role in how supporters of the Great Reset plan to implement their radical reforms over the next decade and beyond. Understanding how policymakers have reacted to COVID-19 and taken advantage of this important “opportunity” for creating change provide a vital road map we must understand if we are going to fight back against the Great Reset and other attempts to centralize power in the hands of the ruling class.
TYRANNY GOES VIRAL
When most of the mainstream media and political establishment heard about the possibility of a COVID-19 pandemic, they did not take it seriously. Many mocked people like me for sounding the alarm. I guess stories of Chinese government officials locking people in their own homes by installing bars on their windows, and reports of fearful villagers armed with spears tearing up roads so travelers from Wuhan couldn’t infect their families, were not enough to grab the attention of the press. 30 Reporters were still too busy drooling uncontrollably over the now mostly forgotten Ukraine-related Trump impeachment hearings.
As late as February 2020, some pundits and even global health organizations were heavily criticizing the Trump administration for limiting travel from China to the United States. Many suggested it was racist and xenophobic, even though the stated purpose of the travel limitations was clearly to pre‐ vent the spread of COVID-19, not to restrict immigration.
Politico warned, “Coronavirus Quarantine, Travel Ban Could Backfire, Experts Fear.” 31 The New York Times published an article titled “Who Says It’s Not Safe to Travel to China?” in which the author, Rosie Spinks, referred to the “political moment” as having been “dominated by xenophobic rhetoric and the building of walls.”
Incredibly, the World Health Organization, in an attempt to shield China from criticism, advised that countries like the United States avoid imposing travel bans. “Although travel restrictions may intuitively seem like the right thing to do, this is not something that WHO usually recommends,” WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said. “This is because of the social disruption they cause, and the intensive use of resources required.”
But by March 2020, everything had changed. Instead of mocking President Trump over his decision to reduce travel from China to slow the spread of COVID-19, conservative and liberal pundits alike were demanding that politicians begin to shut down state economies across the country in line with federal government guidelines, even in places where the presence of the virus was virtually nonexistent. And unsurprisingly, most government officials were happy to comply.
The lockdown orders that followed became so draconian, it inspired me to launch the first-ever Chairman Mao Corona Dictator Awards show, complete with Oscars-style Mao’y statuettes for those engaging in the most tyrannical behavior. (And in case you were wondering, no, I’m not joking. I take the Mao’y Awards very seriously.) My staff and I selected nominees based on viewer-submitted news stories and then sent Mao’y Awards to the winners. I wonder if any of them display the award on their mantel. If not, they should. It’s a really nice-looking award.
At the first (and hopefully last) Mao’y Awards, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio took home the Mao’y for Best Achievement in Mayoral Power-Tripping, for his government’s decision to restrict church services. Churches that refused to stop worshiping in person were warned that they could be permanently shut down if they disobeyed his decree.
Of course, de Blasio was not the only one on a power trip. Oregon governor Kate Brown issued a stay-at-home order that closed most businesses in the state and threatened to punish violators with a $1,250 fine or up to thirty days in jail.
Washington governor Jay Inslee, fresh off his failed campaign to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, also closed most businesses in his state and banned nearly all social and recreational gatherings, including funerals and weddings.
From March to April 2020, California state and county officials closed much of the Golden State’s economy, mandated stay-at-home orders, released more than thirty-five hundred California state prison inmates, and reduced bail to zero dollars for those charged with misdemeanors and some lower level felonies—all in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Mao’y winner in the category of Best Gubernatorial Beatdown, is‐ sued arguably the most extensive lockdown orders. Whitmer’s executive order not only shut down eco‐ nomic activity across Michigan and outlawed religious gatherings—which sounds like a pretty obvious violation of the whole First Amendment ban on “prohibiting the free exercise of religion” thing—but also imposed thousand-dollar fines on violators and promised to put those who refused to comply with the order in jail for as many as three months.
A close runner-up in the same category, former Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo, who now serves as commerce secretary in the Biden White House, called in the state’s National Guard to conduct a door-to-door search looking for New Yorkers who crossed Rhode Island’s southern border without a government permission slip. Any New Yorkers found were warned about the state’s requirement to quarantine for fourteen days.
By the end of April, more than forty states, most of which were led by Republicans, had enacted partial or total shutdowns, with many imposing stay-at-home orders with harsh penalties for those who chose not to follow state or local mandates. Then, in a supreme twist of irony, some of the same critics who had previously attacked Trump for issuing his supposedly racist and unnecessary travel ban endlessly criticized the president for seeming too eager to move the country back toward reopening throughout the remainder of the spring and summer.
At first, the shutdowns were supposed to last for only two weeks, and Americans were told that the primary purpose was to limit spikes in coronavirus cases, commonly called “flattening the curve” so that hospitals throughout the country would not be overflowing with patients. Numerous health experts, relying on models predicting a million deaths or more, feared that if the virus were to get out of control, there would not be enough hospital beds and essential medical equipment like ventilator machines to handle the increased demand.
