Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how “conspiracy-minded” freedom movement activists in the UK perceive of an unfolding “Great Reset” experientially, in the form of tangible impediments to daily life. It asks what activists consider the “Great Reset” to be, and the identity of those believed to be behind it.

Paper long abstract:

Reflecting on fieldwork conducted around the UK and via the social media platform Telegram, I consider how “conspiracy-minded” conceptions of an unfolding “Great Reset” motivate activism within the UK freedom movement. While initially emerging in opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccination measures in 2020, the freedom movement has since morphed into a sustained network of campaign groups, political parties and nascent “off-grid” communities. I argue that these groups share a sense that the “Great Reset” – supposedly, a secretive plot to abolish national democracies and establish a world government, instigated by a “global elite” – can be experienced affectively, in the form of tangible impediments to daily life. Within this paradigm, traffic zoning measures such as Low Emission Zones or “15-Minute City” schemes, as well as proposed “Central Bank Digital Currencies” become visceral forms of incarceration, administered via mass surveillance and geographic “lockdown”.

This paper aims to engage two questions, with reference to activist responses to traffic zoning measures. Firstly, how do freedom movement activists conceive of their key antagonists – the “globalists and technocrats” said to be driving and administering the “Great Reset” polycrisis – whether as fully-realised subjects (identifiable, “real people”), or as semi-anonymous arbiters of a hidden political project? Secondly, to what extent do activists consider the “Great Reset” to be a coherent political agenda? I suggest that the “Great Reset” might alternatively be described as a ‘blank banner’ (Ardener 2016) or ‘empty concept’ (Boyer 1986); an oppositional staging post from which populist alterities can be elaborated.