In his poem “Prayer Before Birth”, the late Louis MacNeice wrote the following:

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

[…]

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.

This poem was written during the 1930s, when the prototypical despots Hitler and Stalin were, in their separate but equal ways, realizing the Totalitarian Dream. However, in their wildest imaginings they could never have conceived of the powers that the would-be globalist despots of the 21st century, exemplified by the World Economic Forum, plan to wield in their creation of the Brave New World. Secure in their omniscience, confident of their benignity, certain of their superior understanding, and absolutely convinced of their inerrancy, they intend to remake the world into their image of technologically-driven transhuman perfection.

None of this is hidden. It is all clearly and explicitly laid out in text and videos by those who would implement the New World Order, if only we care to pay attention. If, that is, we are willing to let our good night’s sleep be disturbed by an understanding of what lies ahead.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for his mammoth effort in translating this essay from Multipolar Magazin:

The abolition of the soul

In their publications, the World Economic Forum and its chairman Klaus Schwab state with astonishing frankness that they intend to intervene in human nature and in humans’ relationships with others using all the technical means at their disposal. People, animals and plants are to be completely redesigned. Human nature is at stake.

“The real goal of totalitarian ideology is not the transformation of the external conditions of human existence and not the revolutionary reorganization of the social order, but the transformation of human nature itself, which, as it is, constantly opposes the totalitarian process. … What is at stake in total domination is really the essence of man.” — Hannah Arendt, 1951

As one of the most influential institutions in the Western World^[1], the WEF has been putting its plans into practice with overwhelming speed since 2020, working title: The Great Reset, gateway: the Pandemic.^[2] It has often been pointed out that the World Economic Forum pursues totalitarian goals with its transhumanism. Despite this, a majority still seems to have faith that the global business elites are, by and large, acting for the good of humanity. This is a mistake — regardless of whether these elites themselves are convinced that they are doing good or not.

A fashionable term such as “transhumanism” may leave you fairly unmoved if you don’t shy away from considering what it means. Misleadingly, he suggests that the project it describes has anything to do with ‘humane’, humanity or humanism; it hasn’t. It would be more accurate to speak of anti-humanism — for the transhumanist, concern amounts to abolishing all living things altogether. In its presumptuousness, this project is certainly doomed to failure. But it could cause living garbage, misery and great suffering.

Therefore, the following should make it clear that the plans of the WEF are deeply totalitarian, and why. Klaus Schwab’s book The Fourth Industrial Revolution serves as the main source of information, because this WEF publication describes its plans particularly bluntly, and, although it was published in 2016, still agrees with the statements made by the extremely influential Davos Forum.^[3] Hannah Arendt’s famous work “Elements and Origins of Total Domination” serves as the background and standard for this assessment.^[4]

The totalitarian claim to power: rule people from within

In her analysis of the totalitarian systems of her time, Stalinism and National Socialism, Hannah Arendt discovered a striving for control that goes far beyond the power ambitions of dictators, despots and tyrants of all kinds:

“The real goal of totalitarian ideology is not the transformation of the external conditions of human existence and not the revolutionary reorganization of the social order, but the transformation of human nature itself, which, as it is, constantly opposes the totalitarian process. … What is at stake in total domination is really the essence of man.”^[5]

What unites the totalitarian elites is “…the conviction of man’s omnipotence. They first gave the moral nihilism of ‘anything goes’ its real basis through the much more radical nihilism of ‘everything is possible’… The hubris of really believing that everything can be done, that everything given is only temporary, is enough for them. The obstacle is that it can be overcome by superior organization.”^[6]

Substituting ‘superior engineering’ for ‘superior organization’ pretty much describes the beliefs of the World Economic Forum.

The transformation of human nature

Already in the first sentence of his book, Klaus Schwab says that the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which in his description “…entails nothing less than the transformation of mankind.”^[7] The technologies driving this revolution will be “…fundamentally changing our human identity.”^[8] They will change “…what it means to be human.”^[9] The Fourth Industrial Revolution “…changes who we are.”

These ideas are indeed revolutionary: If they were realized, humans — and other living beings as well — would finally become objects of industrial production. Nature would no longer be something given that as such has a right to exist and a dignity.

Biological organisms that do not occur in nature

According to Schwab, synthetic biology and neurotechnology make the profound changes in human nature possible. Synthetic biology “… will allow us to tailor organisms by writing DNA.”^[10] This, in turn, “… enables the creation of genetically modified plants or animals, as well as the modification of cells of adult organisms, including humans .”^[11] All living organisms and all organisms not yet born are now objects of design: “We are confronted with new questions about what it means to be human when it comes to changing the genetic codes of future generations.^[12]

Advances in medicine made possible by this are often mentioned, but the whole genome is clearly at stake: “…it’s much easier now to precisely manipulate the human genome in viable embryos… we will in the future probably see designer babies…”^[13] Wikipedia clarifies once again that synthetic biology is about “…creating biological systems that do not occur in nature.” And note: “These systems are subject to evolution.”^[14] The WEF not only welcomes these prospects, it also considers science capable of implementing them at any time:

“Imagine a world where we can create the bodies we want. In this world we can also design and redesign the plants and animals that live with us. We can change organisms and shape them the way we want them to be. … And this is not the world of tomorrow. You don’t need any imagination. This is the world of today.”^[15]

The whole human being becomes the object of technical design — and so are his relationships to other people and things.

Neurotechnology: Mind Control, Emotion Control, Relationship Control

Neurotechnology “…includes any process or device in which electronics interface with the nervous system to monitor or regulate neural activity.”^[16] The ways to do this are so varied, according to the World Economic Forum that they “transform the human body into a new technology platform.”^[17]

The WEF has no objection to that — we are entering “…the era of the ‘internet of bodies’: We collect our physical data through a range of devices that can be implanted, swallowed or worn. The result is a vast amount of health-related data that improves the well-being of people all over the world…”^[18] But not only that: “At the same time, the data from the ‘Internet of Bodies’ can be used to predict and to make inferences that may affect an individual’s or group’s access to resources such as health care, insurance and employment.”^[19]

Many citizens have already experienced that “influencing” can also mean “blocking”: Until recently, for example, we had no access to public facilities such as libraries, theaters or swimming pools without a vaccination certificate. During the trucker protests in Canada, Prime Minister and “Young Global Leader” of the WEF Justin Trudeau^[20] had the accounts of the 50,000 truckers and their supporters blocked without further ado. In view of such arbitrary encroachments on the simplest rights of unwelcome citizens, it is not surprising that many see it more as a threat: “If we do not like your behavior, we will block your access to vital resources.” But you don’t have to see everything so negatively, because:

“Neurofeedback—the ability to monitor brain activity in real time — offers countless opportunities to combat addiction, regulate eating behaviors, and improve performance from sports to school.”^[21]

That sounds good: no more fat people, no more addicts, and nothing but well-supervised school kids who never fidget, fall asleep from boredom, dream absent-mindedly while looking out the window, or engage in nonsense. No more Pippi Longstocking, no more Tom Sawyer, no more Alice in Wonderland. Pupils like Winston Churchill, who refused to learn, or Alexander von Humboldt, who is also said to have had poor comprehension as a child, would be made into inconspicuous, well-adjusted pupils by the WEF’s brain programmers (assuming that neurotechnology actually works). Such a monitoring system would inevitably find the pupil or student deviating from the “correct” learning behavior to be wrong and the teaching and learning system to be correct.

In general: It is not the workplace, not the schools, not our living conditions that need a general overhaul, but ourselves: “Imagine the many ways in which we could change the way we learn, work and live for the better.”^[22] And very topical, to get rid of any possible resistance: “Imagine how we could contribute to better equipping all our brains and minds for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”^[23]

Ideally, we will first be positively attuned to the Fourth Industrial Revolution by means of neurotechnology, and then we will experience what it means to be controlled from afar and — according to scientifically proven knowledge, of course — to be behaviorally optimized. It is consequently completely irrelevant what we ourselves want, think or feel:

“Our devices are becoming more and more a part of our personal ecosystem, they listen to us, anticipate our needs and help us when needed — even if we didn’t ask them to.”^[24]

Psychotic people often hear voices telling them what to do — would these unsolicited interferences feel similar? As something that is in me and yet not me? In any case, the “Internet of Bodies” is obviously also an “Internet of Souls” or an “Internet of Minds”. How could it be otherwise? Nothing is left to chance in this system; nothing is left uncontrolled: all people become well-functioning parts of a well-functioning system that is controlled by well-functioning control engineers and their rules. The question remains: What is the purpose of the large control machine made of living parts? One thing is clear: it is intended to make mankind more reasonable. But is pure rationality really the ultima ratio of life?

The Destruction of the Human Being in Hannah Arendt

Spontaneity and the joy of doing something for its own sake are elementary traits of human nature for Hannah Arendt, alongside the need for attachment.^[25] Spontaneity, for example, is the joy of playing, singing, dozing, being with other people; likes and dislikes are spontaneous, the urge to laugh, to cry, to rage, to flee; to solve problems is spontaneous — all free self-expressions are spontaneous. Ultimately, all feelings are spontaneous.

Individuality inevitably manifests itself in spontaneity; it shows “…the ability of people to start something new of their own accord in a manner that cannot be explained by reactions to the environment and events.”^[26] Therefore, spontaneity “in its unpredictability is the greatest obstacle to total domination over man”:

“People, insofar as they are more than reactive fulfillment of functions… are absolutely superfluous for totalitarian regimes… Total power can only be achieved and guaranteed when nothing else matters other than an absolutely controllable willingness to react, puppets completely robbed of all spontaneity.”^[27]

Last but not least, all occupations that people pursue for their own sake, with no higher purpose than the enjoyment of them, are not to be tolerated under totalitarian ambitions. Games and art, for example, cannot be tolerated, because in them “…the human being is completely absorbed by something and for that very reason cannot be completely controlled.”^[28] The playing human — in Arendt’s example the chess player — is also “…is still connected to his fellow human beings by the board that separates the opponents from each other and at the same time connects them to each other because it is a piece of a world they share. Only where this common world has been completely destroyed and a completely incoherent mass of society has come into being can total rule exercise its full power and assert itself unhindered.”^[29]

But even those who neither play nor create art, for example those who just sit around and chat with a neighbor, are useless under total domination: “What is suspect is friendship and any other human bond in general.”^[30]

The destruction of all human bonds

Obviously, people are the more manageable the less involved they are in social relationships. “Allein machen sie dich ein” (Alone, they can take you)^[31] was the title of a song by Ton Steine Scherben in the 70s — a reformulation of “togetherness makes you strong”. It is therefore obvious that totalitarian elites must disempower political groups such as classes, trade unions, associations or religious communities that jointly represent their interests vis-à-vis other groups and the state. But their claim goes further: They want to destroy all social structures, including the private ones.

The “atomization of society” in the sense of the destruction of all social relationships is therefore also a central concept in Hannah Arendt’s analysis: for her it is one of the most important conditions of total domination. The result is what she calls “mass society”^[32]: Instead of a society that consists of numerous large and small relationship structures of all kinds and draws its stability and resilience from them, their destruction creates a kind of social mush, whose fundamental nature consists of lonely, isolated individuals

The National Socialists found such conditions in a society that had been severely damaged in this sense, and in which new structures had to be formed again, after the First World War. On the other hand, according to Arendt, Stalin had before him a fairly well-structured society whose social groups he had yet to destroy. It began with the bloody liquidation of the classes — those of the peasants, the workers, the middle class, the administration. However, he only succeeded in destroying private relationships through the system of “guilt by association” in the purge processes. In this system of liaison guilt, everyone who had contact with the accused “…was transformed overnight into one of his most bitter and dangerous enemies, because just by denouncing him, they… fend for themselves.”^[33] Soviet citizens learned that “there was nothing at all so dangerous as having friends.”^[34] Thus a state arose in which everyone “depended in utter helplessness and abandonment on higher powers that could judge him at any time.”^[35]

The National Socialists tried to achieve the same result in the concentration camps. In them Arendt saw “the most consistent institution of total domination”^[36]: Laboratories in which one tried to determine experimentally “whether the fundamental claim of totalitarian systems that people are totally controllable is correct”:^[37]

“The camps were used not only for the extermination of man and the degradation of individuals, but also for the outrageous experiment of abolishing spontaneity as a human behavior under scientifically exact conditions and transforming humans into a thing that will always behave the same under the same conditions…”^[38]

Not punishment, not exploitation, not interest or expediency could explain what was happening in the camps, but only the goal of turning people into “identical reaction bundles”, into completely controllable puppets. This was achieved by the complete disenfranchisement upon entry into the camp, the destruction of human dignity through physical humiliation, the destruction of personality through abuse — but not least, the destruction of all interpersonal relationships or, as Arendt puts it, the destruction of the moral person. This was done by, among other means, turning victims into perpetrators: mothers were forced to decide which of their children should be shot; fellow prisoners were made camp administrators.

Painless totalitarianism?

The totalitarian Elites of the 20th century had to go to tremendous, murderous lengths to deprive their victims of so much human nature, that is, as much spontaneity as possible. In the meantime, the technical possibilities for intervening in the human genome and in this way controlling the human being from the inside have advanced dramatically.

Since this seems to be so easy to do, it also seems like an unspectacular process: you have a small jab, a small tattoo, a small implant injected under the skin — so what? You become more reasonable, calmer, more intelligent, you no longer have to decide everything yourself.

As long as we still believe in the dignity of human beings and their basic freedom of will, every neural or genetic intervention would be seen as an act of violence, unless it was preceded by comprehensive information and consent was given, all of which took place in absolute freedom^[39] — as with any medication and any medical intervention.

It should be known, however, that in the case of mass vaccinations with mRNA particles, which are also a genetic intervention, in most cases there can be no talk of comprehensive clarification — not only because their effects in the human body according to the applicable standards of the vaccine approval have not been researched over a long enough period; that is why there are only emergency registrations to this day. The government also recently issued a regulation that overrides numerous protective paragraphs of the Medicines Act specifically for Covid-19 vaccines; for example, Corona vaccines may be placed on the market without authorization; for stem cell preparations (!) the particularly high approval thresholds are lowered; there does not have to be a package leaflet for patients and no specialist information for doctors. Less enlightenment is therefore the direction taken by the legislature, one could also call it obscurantism.^[40]

The extensive research that the US Department of Defense is conducting in the areas of synthetic biology and neurotechnology is also not exactly reassuring. Their research department DARPA, for example, has a particularly large amount of funding for biotechnical and neurotechnical experiments.^[41] The US journalist Whitney Webb has meticulously researched what DARPA is working on: Among other things, they are investigating how brain implants, genetic modification and biological programming can be used to create super soldiers who no longer need sleep or eat regular meals. Also, as part of its bio-design program, DARPA is striving to produce synthetic organisms (non-robot, living organisms) that are immortal but programmed with a “kill switch” with which you can switch them off at any time.^[42]

Incidentally, DARPA has also generously funded Moderna’s mRNA research since 2013 with $25 million.^[43] And already in 2014, spurred on by Obama’s “Brain Initiative”, they researched the possible functions of graphene in the brain. Here, too, it was or is not just about understanding the processes in the central nervous system, but about controlling them from the outside: “This technology offers the possibility of regulating neuronal functions by using programmed current or light impulses for the temporary activation of neurons.”^[44]

Whitney Webb comes to this conclusion:

“…DARPA’s transhumanist vision for the military and humanity poses an unprecedented threat, not only to human liberty, but an existential threat to human existence and the building blocks of biology itself.”

Don’t be afraid of the World Economic Forum!

Interestingly enough, the totalitarian dangers of the new bio- and neuro-technologies are clearly stated in Davos itself. The bestselling historian and WEF advisor Yuval Harari was not afraid to say to the assembled WEF audience that the power and dangerousness these sciences confer today far dwarfs even those of the Gestapo and the KGB.^[45]

However, according to Harari, this power is not bad per se. But it could fall into the wrong hands: “…if that power falls into the hands of a 21st-century Stalin, the result will be the worst totalitarian regime in human history.” Fortunately, there is a geographical distribution of good and evil — evil, as so often happens, originates east of us, in Asia: “Imagine North Korea twenty years from now, when everyone has to wear a biometric bracelet that monitors blood pressure, heart rate and brain activity twenty-four hours a day. You hear a speech by the great leader on the radio and you know what you really feel. You can clap your hands and smile, but when you’re angry, you know tomorrow you’ll be in the gulag.”

In a small Swiss village in the middle of Europe, on the other hand, well-meaning people become victims: “And if we allow such total surveillance regimes to emerge, don’t think that the rich and powerful will be safe in places like Davos; just ask Jeff Bezos.”

The World Economic Forum as the victim, a small Asian state as the culprit — therefore, Harari concludes, sole control of the new technologies must lie with a single globally competent institution — the World Economic Forum. Because it only wants to make us healthier and happier. But even if that were true, wouldn’t the result be totalitarian?

The elites as executors of evolution and history

Totalitarian leaders, says Hannah Arendt, always justify their goals and actions by saying that they are merely executors of natural or historical laws that will happen anyway: Stalin saw himself as the executor of the immutable laws of history and class struggle. In their name he let entire classes “die off” that were intended for this by history anyway. The National Socialists referred to Darwin’s “Survival of the Fittest”: If you kill inferior peoples and races, you are only executing the will of nature, in which only the strongest have a right to survive.^[46]

It is striking that the totalitarian elites of the 20th century felt compelled to accelerate the laws of nature and history . According to Schwab, these laws are “enforced on the spot, without waiting for the slower and more uncertain process of annihilation by nature or history itself.”^[47] Accordingly, nature would only know how to execute its own laws with a certain lameness and clumsiness; human tutoring helps her to be more rational, faster and more efficient.

Technical development as higher regularity

Similar tendencies can be observed in the case of Klaus Schwab and the WEF: Here, too, the Elites only appear as prudent pioneers, as midwives during the turbulent birth of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In essence, however, this is only presented to us as the latest consequence of an automatic, technological-historical process that is coming over mankind, whether they want it or not:

“The great technological innovations are about to fundamentally change the world — and inevitably.^[48] …we are not yet prepared to confront the realities and consequences of the latest genetic engineering technologies, although they will come.”^[49]

The Fourth Industrial Revolution achieves the necessary grandeur over human will by being embedded in a supposed history of technology that began 10,000 years ago with the agricultural revolution, continued in a series of industrial revolutions and today culminates in the radical upheavals of the fourth. The revolution may be bumpy, Schwab said, because it generates resistance — such as mass unemployment riots — because of ethical concerns, because scientists are too conservative, and governments too incapable of implementation. But in the end all this appears only as rubble to be cleared away on the edge of the sweeping stream of new technologies from which we cannot escape.

Darwin squeezes wages

In addition to the transformation of Human Nature, which Klaus Schwab consistently sees as a benefit for every individual, the Fourth Industrial Revolution also has a few unpleasant side effects for the population: Schwab considers, among other things, the loss of jobs for almost half of the working (US) population^[50], the associated “significant decline in the share of wages in gross national product”^[51], i.e. further growing inequality, is inevitable, and the precaritization of work through a labor market in which there are only “jobs on demand” — which, for Schwab, has the positive result that employers no longer have to bother with employees and regulations^[52]. Anyone who doesn’t participate will fly out of the curve that the technical development is indicative of.

Here and there it is mentioned that “technology is not an exogenous force over which we have no control”^[54], but for Schwab the only thing that is up for discussion is how it is sold to us by means of “multi-stakeholder cooperation”, to persuade us to join in — not whether we even want them with their declaredly bad economic consequences for the majority. His sole concern is to “…create positive, shared and hopeful narratives that enable individuals and groups from all parts of the world to participate in and benefit from the ongoing changes”.^[55]

The stakeholders, the flimsy surrogate for democratic processes^[56], are destined to positively attune us to our fate as unemployed, impoverished, genetically engineered beings through hopeful narratives. In other words, it’s going to hurt, but wrapped in a nice narrative, it doesn’t feel so bad anymore.

A collateral gain of the Pandemic was also the spectacular gains in wealth of the already super-rich.^[57] Here, too, the historically supposedly inevitable process, the “Darwinian pressure”, is given a good start.

The end of four billion years of natural evolution

The mentioned Yuval Harari helps with this — he draws attention to the dangers, but also to the fact that we humans and life as we know it will unfortunately come to an end:

“This will be the biggest revolution in biology since life began four billion years ago. Science replaces evolution through natural selection with evolution through intelligent design… The whole idea that people have this soul or spirit and that they have free will and nobody knows what’s going on inside me — what I choose, whether it’s in the election or in the supermarket; that’s over!”^[58]

Four billion years of history of natural evolution come to an end here and now — because humans now have “godlike abilities”. The “conviction of the omnipotence of man” cannot be expressed more clearly.

No, new technologies don’t fall from heaven, and therefore they can also be sent to hell. All technologies are conceived by people and can also be thought over by them, and their development can in principle be politically intervened in — just as our politicians and global economic wise men also constantly intervene politically in order to ignore certain technologies and promote others and use them for their own purposes.

Do we seriously want techniques applied to us — more precisely: in us — that not only make half of us unemployed and superfluous, but with which our own being is declared to be completely transformed, i.e. to be abolished? What’s in it for us to become fully controlled parts of a fully controlled world? Who are we when others are constantly ruling us? What is “I” supposed to mean then?

Spontaneity, feelings and the joy of life

Industrial production strives to make all ongoing processes as controllable as possible. Everything that is natural, wild, playful, random, individual and spontaneous is wasteful and inefficient, disrupts and delays the process, impairs competitiveness, reduces profits. This attitude, which is characteristic of our production method, has long since spread to living beings in the animal factories. Taylorism and Fordism were already striving to make the “production factor” human, the “human resources”, as controllable as possible in the production process. And slavery and human trafficking stood at the cradle of capitalism. It is just another step in the logic of this system to deliberately want to produce man himself and all other life that seems useful, now, where you think you can control the stuff that all living things are made of like never before. The spiritual horizon of business thinking should now determine the fate of mankind and life on this planet.

The result of this striving, which Hannah Arendt has recognized as the core of totalitarianism, are “walking corpses”, as she puts it; with total control, all vitality inevitably disappears. But what only disturbs the capitalist production process is precisely what helps us to have our greatest joys and strongest feelings in life: namely what we do not know, do not expect, have never heard, seen, thought or felt before.^[59]

• Why are we curious, why thirsty for knowledge?
• Why do we laugh at a joke, why do we rejoice at a sudden idea?
• Why do people like to dance?
• Is dancing efficient or useful?
• Why do we like music and games, why stories about strange people and strange worlds?
• Why do we enjoy colors and shapes so much? Why do we like some people better than others and our children best?

All of these are things that we cannot calculate, that “make a fresh start”, as Hannah Arendt keeps saying, that have absolutely nothing to do with functioning properly. On the contrary: we are so happy about them because they have no purpose and no economic sense for us. Only with free time, free movement, free play, free thinking and feeling are we living human beings.

About the author: Julia Weiss, born in 1949, grew up in West Berlin, first studied fine arts in the late 1960s, then economics, and worked as an advertising copywriter.

Afterword from the translator:

I can tell you now, reading and translating this article made my blood pressure go through the roof, and if Klaus Schwab or any other WEF stooge had walked past my window at that moment, he or she or it would have made acquaintance with my war-hammer (I wouldn’t use a sword on something this dirty).

Notes