Far-Right Dutch Political Party Leader Appears on Steve Bannon’s Podcast to Push “Great Reset” Conspiracy Theory

Illus­trat­ing the grow­ing net­work­ing among the glob­al far-right, the leader of the far-right pop­ulist polit­i­cal par­ty, the Forum for Democ­ra­cy Inter­na­tion­al (FvD), was fea­tured on a pod­cast with US right-wing extrem­ist Steve Ban­non. Accord­ing to the FvD tweet, Thier­ry Baudet used the occa­sion to pro­mote a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry also being pro­mot­ed by Russ­ian influ­ence operations:

Octo­ber 4, 2022 Our par­ty leader, @thierrybaudet, appeared on Steve Ban­non’s War Room, talk­ing about the suc­cess of Euro­pean pop­ulists and his new book on the World Eco­nom­ic Forum and the Great Reset.

An Insti­tute for Strate­gic Dia­logue (ISD) report  describes the “Great Reset” con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry as follows:

Feb­ru­ary 2021 The Great Reset is the name of an ini­tia­tive launched by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF) in June 2020 that called for “fair­er out­comes” and a rethink­ing of glob­al invest­ment and gov­ern­ment expen­di­ture in order to revive the world’s econ­o­my in light of the cat­a­stroph­ic eco­nom­ic effects of the pan­dem­ic. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists believe this ini­tia­tive is in fact a plot to destroy cap­i­tal­ism and enact a one world gov­ern­ment under the cov­er of COVID-19.

Read the rest here.

In Feb­ru­ary 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) pub­lished a report on the grow­ing Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance and its poten­tial as a vehi­cle for Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions. That report not­ed Baude­t’s appear­ance at a Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive con­fer­ence and his pro-Russ­ian and pro-Putin posi­tions. An ear­li­er GIOR inves­ti­ga­tion revealed in August 2021 that Rus­sia had launched a dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign spread­ing “the Great Reset” con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in the West.

The GIOR report­ed just yes­ter­day that john Laugh­land, the direc­tor of the Forum for Democ­ra­cy Inter­na­tion­al, pub­lished an arti­cle titled “The Amer­i­cans Did It,” attempt­ing to cast doubt that the Rus­sians were like­ly behind the recent sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage of the Nord­stream 2 gas pipelines and redi­rect blame onto the Unit­ed States. The report was pub­lished on the web­site of the Ron Paul Insti­tute for Peace and Pros­per­i­ty, described in a US media report as a new ‘insti­tute’ for ‘peace’ com­prised of anti-Semi­tes, 9/11 truthers, and dic­ta­tor lovers. The GIOR report­ed ear­li­er that Laugh­land is a British nation­al and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist with close ties to Rus­sia and recent­ly spoke at a Hun­gar­i­an edu­ca­tion facil­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with the gov­ern­ment of Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán, Rus­si­a’s clos­est part­ner in the EU. We also have report­ed that Forum for Democ­ra­cy Inter­na­tion­al had post­ed “a peti­tion for afford­able ener­gy in the EU” seek­ing an end to EU sanc­tions on Rus­sia for its inva­sion of Ukraine. The FvD is wide­ly described as a nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive party.

Stephen Kevin Ban­non is an Amer­i­can media exec­u­tive, polit­i­cal strate­gist, and for­mer invest­ment banker who served as the White House­’s chief strate­gist US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion dur­ing the first sev­en months of Trump’s term. He is also a for­mer exec­u­tive chair­man of Bre­it­bart News, an Amer­i­can far-right syn­di­cat­ed news, opin­ion, and com­men­tary web­site found­ed in mid-2007 by Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Andrew Bre­it­bart. In April 2020, the GIOR report­ed that Ban­non’s pod­cast was one of the con­ser­v­a­tive pod­casts sup­port­ing the US bioweapons con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, claim­ing the US had secret bioweapons lab­o­ra­to­ries in Ukraine. We have also exten­sive­ly report­ed on the strange anti-Chi­na net­work found­ed by Ban­non and exiled Chi­nese busi­ness­man Guo Wen­gui. Ear­li­er this month, Ban­non and the orga­ni­za­tion WeBuildThe­Wall were indict­ed in New York state court Thurs­day for mon­ey laun­der­ing, con­spir­a­cy, and attempt­ing to defraud in con­nec­tion with his alleged role in a bor­der wall fundrais­ing scheme.