The Oslo Freedom Forum: A Davos For Revolutionaries
From The Over To The Youth Archive
This article was originally published for
on May 23rd, 2023. It is re-published here for your reading pleasure.
This article was chiefly inspired by this New Atlas video from last year, which is still worth a watch and covers much of the same ground that this article does. A huge credit to them for being the ones to lead me down this rabbit-hole and providing the building blocks for what I hope is a timely article.
Between June 13th and June 15th 2023, the Oslo Freedom Forum, or OFF, will be meeting to “brainstorm ways to expand freedom and unleash human potential across the globe”. This is a forum funded by Google founder Sergey Brin – whose company received initial funding from the NSA and who can be seen speaking at Davos about brain implant technology – and Peter Thiel – a major investor of Facebook and creator of the data harvesting company Palantir, which has numerous government contracts. The OFF gets its funding from a number of sources, with some notable names including Twitter, Amazon, the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, in previous years, the Freedom Fund, which itself receives funding from both the UK and US Governments.
In 2010, The Economist described the OFF as being “on its way to becoming a human right equivalent of the Davos economic forum”, and a 2012 Guardian article described it as “a Davos for revolutionaries.” And just like the WEF, they seem to be just as open about their intents, as seen in this BBC Newsnight coverage from a few years ago:
There is a question to be asked here; what really is the Oslo Freedom Forum about? Is it something the truth and freedom movement needs to be concerned about?
To answer that, let us use Thailand as a case study for glimpsing the impact of the OFF.
Thailand and the Global Agenda
signs that things are starting to change. They lifted their jab requirements earlier than many other nations and, more notably, the country has worked with Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi to help nullify their Pfizer contract, following the Thai princess falling into a coma post-jab. Outside of Covid, their monarchy, which acts in a very different manner to the likes of the UK, promotes a culture of self-sufficiency for Thailand and its people – something expressly at odds with a globalist perspective of geopolitics. This translates culturally and politically into things like a law that prevents non-governmental organisations from infringing on individual liberties of Thai citizens and from undermining the government, including requirements on transparency of foreign investments in to NGOs. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that Thailand has found itself as a target of US intervention; the country was one of 13 named by Henry Kissinger in 1974 as a target in combatting “population growth”.
Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Thailand has turned to China in looking for a partner that doesn’t mean handing over sovereignty to a technocratic oligarchy. I hope to do a full piece on China soon, and why I believe much of what we are led to believe about China is Western propaganda designed to make us believe China is an enemy worth going to war against. For now, I think it is sufficient to say that a war with China stands to massively benefit Western-based technocrats and their military deep-state, because China is a threat to their plan for total world domination. This does not make China and some of its policies immune from criticism, but I get the feeling more and more that the Western oligarchy is a far bigger threat to the people of the West than China is.
I get the impression Thailand seems to have sensed this too. We see Thailand supporting the “One China” policy and holding joint miltary exercises with Beijing. Thailand is China’s largest trade partner, infrastructure partner, investor and source of tourism. All these things would make Thailand a suitable target if Western nations wanted to economically hinder China. I believe there is evidence that they know this, and that they could well be preparing to turn Thailand into the next Ukraine in order to accomplish this.
The Thai "Pro-Democracy" Movement
The Oslo Freedom Forum has hosted a number of key figures in the Thai “Pro-Democracy” movement. One of these figures – Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit – has taken notable public stances against Thailand’s relationship with China, both individually and through his now-dissolved political party Future Forward. Thanatorn himself has been at the forefront of many of the Thai “pro-democracy” protests of the past few years, which have called for completely rewriting the country’s constitution and have turned violent on many occasions.
Interestingly, the Move Forward Party – the successor to the aforementioned Future Forward Party – rose to victory in the last round of elections. This is a political party receiving direct and indirect support from the US Government’s National Endownment for Democracy, which has been previously used as a means of advancing US foreign policy in other nations. The NED, amongst other programs from world governments, has also funded a suite of organisations and parties leading the 2019 Thai “pro-democracy” protests, including Thanathorn’s Future Forward Party, Prachatai and iLaw; all organisations calling for huge overhauls in the country’s constitution. I can’t help but think of the parallels in the US fuelling “pro-democracy” movements in Ukraine such as Maidan.
Just like with China, however, I would like to be clear that none of this means that we have to agree with everything that Thailand does. It certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t genuine supporters of this movement within the Thai population, and we have no right preventing such supporters from believing in the causes that the likes of Future Forward supports. But, in regards to these movements, the question needs to be asked of whose definition of democracy is being used. There might be very legitimate reasons to want more democratic freedoms in aspects of Thai society, but when these groups talk about “democracy”, do they actually just mean systems that allow foreign interference in Thailand’s affairs purely for the benefit of other nations? What’s more, if the majority of Thai people are satisfied with having a law like the Computer Crime Act in place, and that this decision has truly been made by the people, then should outsiders be able to undermine the processes that govern the country’s internal affairs?
The Purpose of The OFF
Now we know that the attendees of the OFF may be tied to Western-backed foreign policy interventions, let’s turn our attention to this year’s conference and speakers. There’s no way I can cover all the attendees in any great detail, and I would encourage others to do their own research on the attendees, but I’ll pick out a few illustrative examples.
For example, there is Yasmin Green, who leads a division in Google that specifically develops technology to counter “harmful misinformation” and “hate and harrassment”. If those things alone aren’t enough to raise suspicion, she is speaking on a panel looking at the protests in Iran around womens rights, which frames that the “progressive” approach advocated for by these protests is what is best for all women in Iran. However, as illustrated in this interview with Jerm Warfare, this is not necessarily the case.
And she is not the only Big Tech representative speaking; Cagatay Pekyorur, who works for Meta (formerly Facebook) will also be speaking on a panel which “will discuss the growing risk to human rights due to the increase in legislation restricting freedom of expression and other tactics of governments to shrink public discourse on social media platforms.” I don’t think I need to explain the irony at play here.
Elsewhere, the fact that there is a panel for “standardisation” of ESG systems, or Environmental Social Governance, across the world should alone speak to the intention of the OFF. And it’s speakers are just the kind of people we might expect to see: Marcos Buscaglia represents the Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which specifically advocates for ESGs. What kinds of systems would these be? How about restrictions to “combat climate change” for start? How about the systems of Agenda 2030 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals? How about promotion of population control measures, racial quotas on boards and all manner of “progressive” social policies? And of course, the likes of the WEF are very keen on ESGs. At least there is a strong pushback on this front from the truth and freedom community, including everyone from James Corbett to Vernon Coleman and even Jordan Peterson rallying against ESGs.
Back to the OFF, we can find names who have been instrumental in the escalation of conflicts elsewhere in the world. A very notable name here is Abdulrahman Almawwas, founder of the “White Helmets” in Syria. While legacy media institutions will promote the White Helmets as a humanitarian force for good, the likes of UK Column, Eva Bartlett and many others have extensively shown them to be a UK government-funded terrorist operation intent on destabilising Assad’s Syria – a Syria that rejects the technocratic one-world government desired by Western nations. Now, they can also be found in Ukraine.
explains quite succinctly in the clip below the ways in which the true nature of the White Helmet’s work is obscured:That said, speeches are not the only offering of the OFF; they also host a number of workshops for attendees, with this year including “Digital Security 101” and “Spyware Check with The Citizen Lab”. I highlight these two specifically because, as I explore in the Digital Sovereignty Series, much of the technology that is marketed as being “resistant to government censorship and surveillance” is actually funded by the likes of the US Government. I wonder if part of the reason for funding this technology is to be able to provide activists who may attend the likes of the OFF with tools that may help prevent detection from the regimes they are trying to overthrow, but that can still be monitored by the Western nations to keep tabs on how their interventions in rival nations are occurring. That is, however, speculation, partly as I don’t know the exact technologies that these workshops encourage activists to use. It would not surprise me however if that were to be the case.
So What Can Be Done?
It might seem outlandish to suggest that Western nations would perform revolutionary interventions in these countries for their own gain, knowing the dismay it would cause for the lives of ordinary citizens. But, time and time again, their actions show that they will stop at nothing to be in control of these nations, regardless of the cost to ordinary citizens. They will underhandedly divide a nation through colour revolutions. They will undermine the economies of countries through central banks to oust governments they do not like, even at the cost of economic crises for ordinary people. And once the countries become embroiled in war, they use weapons that decimate the health of generations to come. It strikes me that the OFF is just one part of this, training activists that will promote their agenda, not just in Thailand, but in Ukraine, the Middle East and many others.
So what can be done in the face of such evil? In my mind, there is only one thing that can be done; be the opposite. I can push back on what the likes of the OFF do when I know that I act in honour, don’t cause harm and treat others as I would want to be treated. I act as a sovereign being. I build communities around me based on shared values and goals that can resist any attempt of outside intervention for nefarious means. Because, at the end of the day, there is far more of us – honest, good people – than there are of the OFF, WEF or any such people in those institutions. And I think they’re scared because they know that.