John Fund

To understand why Western leaders all sound the same, you need to understand how a system that has captured its own institutions keeps producing elites aligned on the worst possible line. In 2004, Klaus Schwab created the Forum of Young Global Leaders. Every year, the WEF selects a few hundred people under 40. You don't apply. You get nominated by people already inside and vetted by people already inside. Then come the annual summits, Davos, and a two-week executive program at Harvard Kennedy School built around global governance, climate, global health and "21st century leadership." Emmanuel Macron: class of 2016, the same year he launched his presidential campaign. Gabriel Attal: listed by the WEF itself among its notable members. In 2017, at Harvard, Schwab bragged that his network "penetrates the cabinets" of governments. His words, not mine. Now here's the mistake most critics make. They imagine a brainwashing camp. Two weeks at Harvard don't rewire anyone. The YGL program doesn't create the mindset. It certifies it. The capture happened upstream. The formatting starts at 18. Sciences Po, ENA, Harvard, Columbia, Yale Law. Ten years of being graded by people who already hold the consensus. You learn fast that the reward doesn't go to whoever is right, but to whoever restates the room's beliefs most elegantly. Every essay, every oral exam, every internship in a ministry or a consulting firm teaches the same lesson: the frame is given, your job is to optimize inside it. Obama never went through YGL. He didn't need to. Columbia, Harvard Law, president of the Law Review. Same factory, American edition. So by the time the WEF calls, the product is finished. The program just adds the final layer: flattery. You're told you're one of the few people under 40 who will shape the world. You spend your summers with ministers, CEOs, royals and Nobel laureates who all agree with each other. Imagine what that does to a 35-year-old ego. That's the profile it produces. Very high verbal intelligence, very low dissent. Brilliant at defending the frame, never trained to question it. And a narcissism fed by a network that confirms, year after year, that you belong to the elect. Combine the two and you get leaders who are never punished for being wrong, as long as they're wrong together. Immigration is the perfect test case. Obama, Macron, Attal can tighten a law, announce deportation numbers, harden their tone before an election. Obama deported more people than any president before him. But listen to how they talk about it. For them, immigration is never a civilizational question. It's a flow to manage, a labor shortage to fill, a demographic curve to correct, a moral duty to perform. Whether a nation has the right to remain itself never even enters the frame. Not because they've answered the question. Because their education taught them it isn't a legitimate one. That's why the voter who says "my town has changed and I'm worried" gets a lecture instead of an answer. The leader isn't even lying to him. It's worse: he genuinely cannot see what the voter sees. Twenty years of formatting taught him that this perception is a bias to correct, not a reality to address. That's the real problem with captured institutions. Not a secret plot. A monoculture. Same schools, same summits, same Davos panels, same vocabulary from Paris to Ottawa to Washington. When every leader is selected by the consensus and rewarded by the consensus, the consensus stops being tested against reality. And a ruling class that never gets confronted with reality ends up governing a country that only exists in its own slide decks. Before you vote, ask one question about every candidate: who formatted them, and who do they still need to impress?