In fact, the logo for the meeting of the World Economic Forum in the luxury hotel “The Athenee” in Bangkok comes in two versions: one dense, with lots of flowers, and one more in the shape of a clear cross. The second version of the symbol for the “APEC CEO Summit Thailand 2022” is now enraging WEF critics on the web: They see an “inverted swastika” in it and insult the founder of the WEF, the German Klaus Martin Schwab (84).
The numerous conspiracy theories that now exist about the World Economic Forum could now be fired up again with this logo, which may have been used inconsiderately. As Wall Street user Silver writes, “If you have to start with explanations that your logo isn’t a Nazi symbol, then maybe you should change it.”
In any case, the flower logo connected to the cross is causing an emotional debate about the World Economic Forum, whose founder also recently appeared at the G20 summit in Bali. In addition to the globally recognized achievements of the WEF, the criticism of this forum from numerous media should also be mentioned. The Süddeutsche Zeitung said that the WEF had “degenerated into a money-printing machine run like a family business”. And the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the WEF’s financial reports were not very transparent.
At the WEF, a typical member company has a turnover of more than 5 billion euros. Most of these member companies are among the most important companies in their industry and their country and play an important role in shaping the future of their industry and region.
Since 2005, each member company has paid a basic annual membership fee of 44,000 euros and a fee of 18,000 euros for their president to attend the annual meeting in Davos. Industrial and strategic partners each pay 254,000 to 510,000 euros to be able to participate in the initiatives of the WEF. According to the news agency Bloomberg, a total of 436 listed companies attended the annual meeting of the WEF in Davos in 2019.
Thailand is nominally a Buddhist country, where the swastika (not the hakenkreuz of the Nazi party) has a long and honourable history. However, its orientation should be ‘square’ rather than ‘diamond’…weird.