No, Klaus Schwab's daughter Nicole hasn't endorsed 'permanent lockdown'

By: Rahul Adhikari
August 3 2023

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Context

A screenshot of a news article claiming that Nicole Schwab, the daughter of World Economic Forum (WEF) chairman Klaus Schwab, has endorsed permanent "climate lockdowns" is circulating on social media. Nicole is a member of the Executive Committee at the WEF. The post has gained widespread attention on the platform X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook. The headline seen in the viral screenshot reads, "Klaus Schwab's daughter: 'Permanent climate lockdowns are coming – whether you like it or not.'" One such post on X has received 2.9 million views and 23,300 likes. An archived version of the post can be found here.

However, the claim is false. Nicole Schwab was misquoted in a fabricated news article.

In fact

The viral news article was originally published by a portal named The People's Voice, formerly known as Newspunch, infamous for writing fabricated and misleading reports and publishing unverified information. The report is based on a video featuring Nicole. The 50-second video shows her speaking at a panel about the COVID-19 crisis and how rapidly things can change in an emergency. In the video, she says, “I see it as a tremendous opportunity to really have this Great Reset and to use this huge flow of money — to use the increased levers that policymakers have today — in a way that was not possible before to create a change that is not incremental but that we can look back and we can say this is the moment where we really started to position nature at the core of the economy.” 

We found an extended version of the video that was originally recorded and published in June 2020. The People’s Voice article carries several quotes by Nicole from the panel, all of which we found in the video. However, at no point does she mention anything about a "climate lockdown." This claim, as stated in the headline of the article, is not substantiated anywhere later.

The People’s Voice article also references a story published by a portal named Slaynews to claim that "the WEF has been pushing the idea of 'climate lockdowns' since COVID first emerged." We found that the Slaynews story, and the People’s Voice story, in turn, refer to an article published on WEF’s blog platform Agenda to claim that the lobbying body plans to impose further restrictions on the public by using fear tactics such as climate change. However, as Logically Facts has debunked before, the article My Carbon: An Approach for Inclusive and Sustainable Cities was an opinion piece published not by the WEF but by two guest contributors and did not reflect the opinions of the body. Further, the piece on Agenda did not advocate for lockdowns or harsh measures in order for the public to adopt carbon allowance measures.

Logically Facts has previously published several fact-checks debunking similar claims about the WEF and other misinformation claims made by The People's Voice.

The verdict

The claim that Nicole Schwab endorsed permanent "climate lockdowns" is false and has no evidence. A viral news article by The People's Voice fabricated a quote and attributed it to her. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.