Davos 2025 doesn't even bother to pretend that their members aren't antidemocratic.
Davos is where the oppression of humanity by wealth is normalised, every January. It is an oligarchs' coven or old home week for billionaire tax avoiders, who are intent on creating a dictatorship of the 1%. Frighteningly, the genocide in Gaza, Russia's war in Ukraine and an endemic housing as well as affordability crisis in the West in 2024 accelerated our lurch towards totalitarianism.
Democracy became a quaint anachronism at Davos because no billionaire rebuked Donald Trump's dictatorial virtual address to the conference. During it, Trump spewed American Manifest Destiny 2.0 and his brand of Kleptocracy to an enraptured audience of plutocratic buccaneers.
The skinny on Trump's speech is that he will make Canada and Mexico pay for his domestic tax cuts with high tariffs on the goods they sell to America. There is a logical madness to all of this. Donald Trump wants to use them same methods as all fascists who become Nazis, plunder another countries wealth to feed the consumer demands of your own citizens. It works just as long as you can keep conquering nations to steal from.
Trump assured his audience that Canada, a G7 nation, could end its future economic armageddon if it became America's 51st State. Trump's expressions of territorial expansion are his sense of humour the corporate news media assures us.
Hitler made similar jokes about Austria, pre-Anschlus. Dictators are always at their funniest before they sign your death warrant.
Trump, during his Davos address, also demanded NATO members pay more in defence spending. This demand is what an emperor does to vassal states because it is a form of tribute given to the empire.
NATO is purposely reliant on US arms manufacturers to keep their armies well stocked with the expensive weapons of war. Increasing spending by NATO members ensures that American defence contractors will rake in billions of dollars.
A handsome portion of those increased profits will go to pundits and politicians in the form of legal lobbying bribes. More money for armies means less money will be available for these nations to invest in social programs from childcare to healthcare, further radicalising populations ravaged by an eternal cost of living crisis.
Davos, in years past, attempted to gild the lily of neoliberalism. They conned the plebian world that the rich were committed to sustaining economies that were beneficial to everyone. However, now that Donald Trump is President of the USA for the second time, they don't need to pretend extreme wealth is benevolent wisdom. Greed is good again and fascism isn’t so bad either.
In 2025, we arrived at our destination of strong-man politics, which is murdering what little remains of democratic institutions because neoliberalism was democracy’s uber ride to this anti democratic hell.
The 1% of Davos suffocated democracy across the planet. 2025 will inevitably be one horrendous year of repression, death and wars without end. We may even look on 2024 as the good old days.
Trump is too old to be a dictator for long. But even when his national nightmare ends, another one will begin because there is a Hitler in the shadows waiting their turn. It is up to every one of us to decide what must be done to combat the growing authoritarianism. Despotism can't be wished away and dictators once in power, never allow for free and fair elections to remove them from governing. They die in office, are forced into exile through violent insurrection or are put to the gallows after a rebellion by the people or their generals.
As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts. I really need your help to keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith and his Last Stand alive, in the public eye and relevant. Your subscriptions to this newsletter do that and also keep my housed which has become a precarious thing thanks to getting cancer, interstial lung disease and some other co- morbidities during these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. There is also a tip jar for those inclined. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John
There is widespread, bipartisan dislike of the 1%...rapidly hardening into hatred.
As long as Trump and his sock-puppet GOP politicians are viewed as separate from the 1%, chaos and cruelty will continue.
Should that change, (and Musk's penchant for self-immolation may be the origin point), the backlash will be brutal.
Still, I'd never bet against the stupidity of the American people.
I want to spread this message far and wide! Well done!