Did Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, write a book entitled "COVID-19: The Great Reset" and did a page in that book discuss eliminating 4 billion "useless eaters" by 2050 via wars, disease and starvation? No, that's not true: While Schwab did write "COVID-19 The Great Reset," this is not a page from that book.
This text originated in a 1991 book, "Conspirator's Hierarchy: The Story of The Committee of 300" by Dr. John Coleman and shows up again, as lengthy excerpts, in a 1994 book by Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn titled "Focus of Demons: Real Gremlins in the Works." To complicate matters further, the highlighted passage from Coleman's book could be either an excerpt, an editorialised summary or an entirely false attribution to the 19th-century novelist and social commentator H.G. Wells.
The claim originated in late June 2021 with many memes that use a photo of a page in a book, falsely identifying Schwab as the author. One example is this Facebook post (archived here) from June 24, 2021. The post is captioned, "Klaus Schwab Confirmed Deagel And The Georgia Guidestones In His Book." The caption is:
For those who don't know, Klaus Schwab is chairman of the World Economic Forum and wrote the book 'Covid-19: The Great Reset'
This is not a conspiracy theory, It's completely real. Do your research!
A page from book Klaus Schwab
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Jun 25 17:03:11 2021 UTC)
The highlighted portion of text reads:
At least 4 billion 'useless eaters' shall be eliminated by the year 2050 by means of limited wars, organized epidemics of fatal rapid-acting diseases and starvation. Energy, food and water shall be kept at subsistence levels for the non-elite, starting with the White populations of Western Europe and North America and then spreading to other races. The population of Canada, Western Europe and the United States will be decimated more rapidly than on other continents, until the world's population reaches a manageable level of 1 billion, of which 500 million will consist of Chinese and Japanese races, selected because they are people who have been regimented for centuries and who are accustomed to obeying authority without question.
This text outlined in yellow highlighter is not from Schwab's book. A digital copy of the page where these words do appear, in this exact format, can be viewed on Google Books. See page 107 of Haton's "Focus of Demons: Real Gremlins in the Works."
Much of this book is a transcription from the 1991 John Coleman book. Digital copies of this page in Coleman's book can be seen on the Internet Archive (page 155) or at CIA.gov (page 105). The reason why Coleman's book is on the CIA website is because it was part of a large collection of documents seized in a May 2, 2011, raid on Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound in Pakistan.
In the PDF file on the CIA website, the text in question is set apart from the other text with italics. This italicized excerpt goes on for about four pages. The introduction to the excerpt is complicated -- it appears that Coleman is either presenting the excerpt as a direct quote of H.G. Wells' writing, or he is using his own words to summarize ideas he attributes to Wells. On page 103:
What then are we looking at? A loosely-knit gathering of people with weird ideas? Certainly not. In the Committee of 300, which has a 150-year history, we have some of the most brilliant intellects assembled to form a completely totalitarian, absolutely controlled 'new' society only it isn't new, having drawn most of its ideas from the Clubs of Cultus Diabolicus. It strives toward a One World Government rather well described by one of its late members, H. G. Wells, in his work commissioned by the Committee which Wells boldly called: 'THE OPEN CONSPIRACY-- PLANS FOR A WORLD REVOLUTION.'
It was a bold statement of intent, but not really so bold since nobody believed Wells except the Great Superior Ones, the Anenherbes and those who were what we would call 'insiders' today. Here is an extract of what Wells proposed:
'The Open Conspiracy will appear first, I believe as a conscious organization of intelligent, and in some cases wealthy men, as a movement having distinct social and political aims, confessedly ignoring most of the existing apparatus of political control, or using it only as an incidental implement in the stages, a mere movement of a number of people in a certain direction, who will presently discover, with a sort of a surprise, the common object toward which they are all moving. In all sorts of ways, they will be influencing and controlling the ostensible government.'Like George Orwell's 1984, Wells'account is a mass-appeal for a One World Government. Summarized, the intent and purpose of the Committee of 300 is to bring to pass the following conditions:
The italicized text, with some changes, was written by Wells, but it was not from the book Coleman cited. "The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution" (the title is not "Plans") was first published in 1928. Coleman's first excerpt came from Wells' 1902 book "Anticipations Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought" (archived here by Project Gutenberg Australia).
This is not an exact quote from the book. The paragraph did not begin with the words "The open conspiracy." In fact, Wells never uses that term in this book. He uses the word conspiracy three times: an inner conspiracy, a little conspiracy and an informal conspiracy, but never an open conspiracy. He also didn't write, "In all sorts of ways, they will be influencing and controlling the ostensible government." That is fabricated. The first half of Wells' paragraph was left out. The full original paragraph reads:
Now, the more one descends from the open uplands of wide generalization to the parallel jungle of particulars, the more dangerous does the road of prophesying become, yet nevertheless there may be some possibility of speculating how, in the case of the English-speaking synthesis at least, this effective New Republic may begin visibly to shape itself out and appear. It will appear first, I believe, as a conscious organization of intelligent and quite possibly in some cases wealthy men, as a movement having distinct social and political aims, confessedly ignoring most of the existing apparatus of political control, or using it only as an incidental implement in the attainment of these aims. It will be very loosely organized in its earlier stages, a mere movement of a number of people in a certain direction, who will presently discover with a sort of surprise the common object towards which they are all moving.
Wells revised his 1928 book at least twice. The 1931 revision (archived here) was titled, "What Are We To Do With Our Lives." The 1933 revised edition (archived here) returned to the title, "The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution." Neither of these later editions contain the phrase, "in some cases wealthy men ..." the fabricated sentence about the ostensible government or the Nazi eugenics term "useless eaters." It appears that the four pages of "excerpted" text, including the portion outlined in yellow in this meme photo are Coleman's own writing.
Lead Stories has reached out by email to a scholar of the works of H.G. Wells to find out if there is an explanation for these seemingly misattributed quotes and will update if appropriate if we receive a reply.
