Authored by Pepe Escobar,
Whatever the barbarians may be plotting, the fact that matters is that China is already deep into the next phase, where it is expected to replace the United States as the world’s primary consumer market.
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
Antonio Gramsci
Davos 2026 was a demented kaleidoscope. The only possible way to wallow through the mire was to put on the headphones and resort to the Band of Gypsys smashing sonic barriers, and drowning a frankly terrifying series of events, including a Palantir-BlackRock connection, Big Tech meets Big Finance; the “Master Plan” for Gaza; and the acute discombobulation in neo-Caligula’s rant, here in the 3-minute version.
Then there was what the fragmented West’s mainstream media erected as a visionary speech: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mini-opus magnum, complete with a – what else – Thucydides quote (“The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must”) to illustrate the “rupture” of the “rules-based international order”, which was already a Dead Man Not Walking at least for a year now.
And how not to laugh at the extremely rich notion of a letter by 400 “patriotic” millionaires and billionaires directed to heads of state in Davos claiming for more “social justice”. Translation: they are terrified – in Paranoia Paradise mode – by the “rupture”, actually the advanced collapse of the neoliberalism ethos that enriched them in the first place.
Carney’s speech was a wily, headline-grabbing device to – in thesis – bury the “rules-based international order”, actually the euphemism du jour, since the end of WWII, for total domination by the Anglo-American financial oligarchy. Carney now only recognizes a mere “rupture” – supposed to be sewn up by “middle powers”, mostly Canada and a few Europeans (no Global South).
And there’s the dead giveaway: the presumed antidote to “rupture” has absolutely nothing to do with sovereignty. It’s actually a controlled hedging, a sort of managed ersatz multipolarity – nothing to do with the BRICS drive – based on a fuzzy “values-based realism”, “coalition building” and “variable geometry” mish mash, destined to keep in place the same old monetarist scam.
Welcome to Lampedusa’s The Leopard, remixed: “Everything must change for everything to remain the same.”
And all that coming from a playbook liberal, a former Governor of the Bank of England. Such tigers never change their spots.
The true levers of power – exercised by the City of London and Wall Street – are totally immune to the “rupture” antidote.
The evolving, multi-layered Russia-China strategic partnership already invalidates Carney’s very sophisticated fraud, which fooled a lot of informed people. Same as BRICS – as it advances in the long and winding road of real multi-nodality.
Which brings us to the real message generated by Carney’s trademark limited hangout:
Canada and the European “middle powers” now find themselves not on the table, but on the menu, as neo-Caligula, the ruler of the world, can do to them what NATO has de facto been doing to the Global South over the past 30 years.
“Everything must change for everything to remain the same”
Many of those who now enshrine Carney as The New Messiah – and such a defender of international law – totally ignored or covered for the Zionist genocide of Gaza; demonized Russia to Kingdom Come and keep instigating a Forever War; and now beg on their knees for neo-Caligula to engage in a “dialogue” to solve his self-proclaimed Greenland land grab.
Elon Musk, incidentally, also showed up at Davos on short notice. He is a huge supporter of the Greenland land grab. Musk and other techno-feudalist stars cannot but be seduced by the project of turning that “piece of ice” (neo-Caligula terminology) into the prime hub for digital states, the successors of nation-states, supposed to be ruled by Techno-CEOs posing as Philosopher Kings.
Combine it with the Big Tech-Big Finance connection – at the Palantir-BlackRock table – and we have the Kings of AI leading the way, with financiers following.
The “piece of ice” of course was melting non-stop all across the Davos spectrum. When neo-Caligula announced that he would not do to Greenland what he did to Venezuela, the collective European relief really exploded the Champagne-O-Meter.
It was up to certified NATO poodle Tutti Frutti al Rutti, with that perpetual smile of a withered Dutch tulip, to convince “Daddy” to be lenient, proving once again that the EU is a Banana Republic, actually Union, without the bananas.
Neo-Caligula and withered tulip cobbled together a “framework” for the US to get some Greenland real estate for military base purposes and limited development of rare earth mining, plus the requisite ban on Russian and Chinese projects. Denmark and Greenland were not even in the room when this “deal” was reached.
Still, that may all change in a flash, or in a social media post. Because that’s not what neo-Caligula wants. He wants Greenland splashed in red-white-and blue on a US map.
Still, the most terrifying land grab plot highlighted in Davos had to be Gaza.
The presentation of the master plan for “the new Gaza” by that Zionist individual who lacks intelligence but is overshadowed by his wife Ivanka, who actually holds the brains in the family, is nothing short of a horror show. This plan entails mass slaughtering and extermination, followed by the seizing of what remains as rubble to create a high-security containment zone for a select few “approved” Palestinians, while prime beachfront real estate is handed over to Israeli settlers and real estate scammers. All of this is to be managed by a private company chaired by a neo-Caligula figure, who will oversee the annexation, occupation, and exploitation of Gaza with the full approval of the EU and other political leaders who are either too scared or simply looking out for their own interests.
In the midst of all this chaos, the real game-changer at Davos was not the proposed “rupture” or the land grab schemes, but rather the speech delivered by China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng. He made it clear that China is on a mission to become the world’s primary consumer market, focusing on boosting domestic demand as outlined in their upcoming Five-Year plan. This shift signals a significant move towards China replacing the United States as the global leader in consumption.
While the barbarians may be busy plotting their next move, the rise of China as a dominant player in the global economy is the true turning point to watch out for. The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s opinions and may not necessarily align with those of ZeroHedge.