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For The Record  

FTR #726 The Kochtopus: The Tea Party Movement Manifests Classical Fascism

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Intro­duc­tion: The Tea Par­ty move­ment has gar­nered tremen­dous media atten­tion, most of which has focused on superficiality–images of “the angry vot­er,” false or mis­lead­ing state­ments about Oba­ma, and the assump­tion that some­how “they” are respon­si­ble for the dis­com­fort felt by the adher­ents to the Par­ty.

What has not received much pub­lic­i­ty until recent­ly is the fact that what appears to be a broad-based, “pop­ulist”, “grass-roots” move­ment is actu­al­ly dri­ven in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by insti­tu­tions financed by the very wealthy and ded­i­cat­ed to advanc­ing the inter­ests of that ele­ment of soci­ety. That advance is at the con­sid­er­able expense of Tea Par­ty adher­ents, many of whom will suc­cumb to the out­growths of the phi­los­o­phy they have embraced.

Label­ing Oba­ma alter­nate­ly “a Mus­lim” and/or “a Marx­ist” (fail­ing to under­stand the con­tra­dic­tion), attack­ing him for rais­ing tax­es (85% of Amer­i­cans are pay­ing low­er tax­es under Oba­ma) and for “try­ing to take away” their guns (he signed into law a bill allow­ing the car­ry­ing of loaded firearms on pub­lic park lands), the Tea Par­ty rank and file are mov­ing in the direc­tion of “inten­si­fy­ing pol­i­tics of free-mar­ket fun­da­men­tal­ism at the very his­tor­i­cal moment that proves the fail­ure of such an ide­ol­o­gy.”

Epit­o­miz­ing the polit­i­cal dual­ism embod­ied in the Tea Par­ty move­ment is the polit­i­cal machine put togeth­er by the bil­lion­aire Koch broth­ers, David Koch in par­tic­u­lar. (David Koch is pic­tured above, at right.) Son of one of the prime movers of the John Birch Soci­ety, David Koch was a dri­ving force behind the gen­e­sis of the Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty in the ear­ly 1980’s, run­ning for Vice-Pres­i­dent in 1980 against Ronald Rea­gan and George H.W. Bush.

The for­mi­da­ble array of think tanks and NGO’s, jour­nal­ists and polit­i­cal pun­dits who owe their careers to the broth­ers and their insti­tu­tions, togeth­er con­sti­tute the machine termed “The Kochto­pus.”

The foun­da­tion of the Kochs polit­i­cal philosophy–embodied in the polit­i­cal real­i­ties under­ly­ing the Tea Party–is one of “cor­po­ratism” or “the Cor­po­rate State” as Mus­soli­ni put it. Indeed, Birch Soci­ety king­pin Fred Koch open­ly admired Mus­solin­i’s sup­posed “sup­pres­sion” of the com­mu­nists. (In fact, com­mu­nism was already wan­ing in Italy when Mus­soli­ni took over. See Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M42.)

In this con­text, one should nev­er for­get the inclu­sion of Nazis and fas­cists in the Repub­li­can Par­ty at a fun­da­men­tal lev­el.

Indeed, Charles Koch has opined that Amer­i­ca could be on the verge of “the great­est loss of lib­er­ty and pros­per­i­ty since the 1930s.” The ref­er­ence is, of course, to the New Deal. Many of this coun­try’s top indus­tri­al­ists and financiers attempt­ed to over­throw Roo­sevelt in 1934, hop­ing to set up a dic­ta­tor­ship like Mus­solin­i’s. The Bush fam­i­ly appear to have been involved with the plot­ting of the ’34 coup.

This trans­la­tion of Cor­po­ratism into a broad-based polit­i­cal move­ment is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of clas­si­cal fas­cism. Even for­mer close friends and asso­ciates of the Kochs admit that the broth­ers have con­fused “free­dom” with what will max­i­mize their cor­po­rate prof­its.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Koch broth­ers’ found­ing of the Mer­ca­tus Center–an arche­typ­al Kochto­pus ele­ment; the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter’s pro­found influ­ence on Bush (II) admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy; the Koch broth­ers manip­u­la­tion of envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions; the effect of that manip­u­la­tion on reg­u­la­tion of formaldehyde–a car­cino­gen pro­duced by Koch Indus­tries; David Koch’s role in financ­ing can­cer research–one of a num­ber of roles that places him in a posi­tion of con­flict of inter­est.

1. Despite their attempts at cul­ti­vat­ing the image of patrons of the arts and bene­fac­tors to soci­ety, the Kochs are, in fact, at the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Oba­ma move­ment. The broth­ers main com­mer­cial under­tak­ing is Koch Indus­tries, a con­glom­er­ate with major par­tic­i­pa­tion in the fos­sil-fuels and chem­i­cal indus­tries, in par­tic­u­lar.

. . . In Wash­ing­ton, Koch is best known as part of a fam­i­ly that has repeat­ed­ly fund­ed stealth attacks on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and on the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion in par­tic­u­lar.

With his broth­er Charles, who is sev­en­ty-four, David Koch owns vir­tu­al­ly all of Koch Indus­tries, a con­glom­er­ate, head­quar­tered in Wichi­ta, Kansas, whose annu­al rev­enues are esti­mat­ed to be a hun­dred bil­lion dol­lars. The com­pa­ny has grown spec­tac­u­lar­ly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the broth­ers took charge. The Kochs oper­ate oil refiner­ies in Alas­ka, Texas, and Min­neso­ta, and con­trol some four thou­sand miles of pipeline. Koch Indus­tries owns Brawny paper tow­els, Dix­ie cups, Geor­gia-Pacif­ic lum­ber, Stain­mas­ter car­pet, and Lycra, among oth­er prod­ucts. Forbes ranks it as the sec­ond-largest pri­vate com­pa­ny in the coun­try, after Cargill, and its con­sis­tent prof­itabil­i­ty has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two oth­er brothers—among the rich­est men in Amer­i­ca. Their com­bined for­tune of thir­ty-five bil­lion dol­lars is exceed­ed only by those of Bill Gates and War­ren Buf­fett. . . .

“Covert Oper­a­tions” by Jane May­er; The New York­er; 8/30/2010.

2. As major pol­luters and mem­bers of the ultra-rich, the Kochs stand to ben­fit from a frus­tra­tion of the Oba­ma polit­i­cal agen­da.

. . . The Kochs are long­time lib­er­tar­i­ans who believe in dras­ti­cal­ly low­er per­son­al and cor­po­rate tax­es, min­i­mal social ser­vices for the needy, and much less over­sight of industry—especially envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tion. These views dove­tail with the broth­ers’ cor­po­rate inter­ests. In a study released this spring, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts at Amherst’s Polit­i­cal Econ­o­my Research Insti­tute named Koch Indus­tries one of the top ten air pol­luters in the Unit­ed States. And Green­peace issued a report iden­ti­fy­ing the com­pa­ny as a “king­pin of cli­mate sci­ence denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vast­ly out­did Exxon­Mo­bil in giv­ing mon­ey to orga­ni­za­tions fight­ing leg­is­la­tion relat­ed to cli­mate change, under­writ­ing a huge net­work of foun­da­tions, think tanks, and polit­i­cal front groups. Indeed, the broth­ers have fund­ed oppo­si­tion cam­paigns against so many Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion policies—from health-care reform to the eco­nom­ic-stim­u­lus program—that, in polit­i­cal cir­cles, their ide­o­log­i­cal net­work is known as the Kochto­pus.

In a state­ment, Koch Indus­tries said that the Green­peace report “dis­torts the envi­ron­men­tal record of our com­pa­nies.” And David Koch, in a recent, admir­ing arti­cle about him in New York, protest­ed that the “rad­i­cal press” had turned his fam­i­ly into “whip­ping boys,” and had exag­ger­at­ed its influ­ence on Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. But Charles Lewis, the founder of the Cen­ter for Pub­lic Integri­ty, a non­par­ti­san watch­dog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole dif­fer­ent lev­el. There’s no one else who has spent this much mon­ey. The sheer dimen­sion of it is what sets them apart. They have a pat­tern of law­break­ing, polit­i­cal manip­u­la­tion, and obfus­ca­tion. I’ve been in Wash­ing­ton since Water­gate, and I’ve nev­er seen any­thing like it. They are the Stan­dard Oil of our times.” . . .

Ibid.

3. As indi­cat­ed above, the broth­ers learned their polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy from their father Fred Koch, a sem­i­nal mem­ber of the John Birch Soci­ety.

. . . . In 1958, Fred Koch became one of the orig­i­nal mem­bers of the John Birch Soci­ety, the arch-con­ser­v­a­tive group known, in part, for a high­ly skep­ti­cal view of gov­er­nance and for spread­ing fears of a Com­mu­nist takeover. Mem­bers con­sid­ered Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­how­er to be a Com­mu­nist agent. In a self-pub­lished broad­side, Koch claimed that “the Com­mu­nists have infil­trat­ed both the Demo­c­rat and Repub­li­can Par­ties.” He wrote admir­ing­ly of Ben­i­to Mussolini’s sup­pres­sion of Com­mu­nists in Italy, and dis­parag­ing­ly of the Amer­i­can civ­il-rights move­ment. “The col­ored man looms large in the Com­mu­nist plan to take over Amer­i­ca,” he warned. Wel­fare was a secret plot to attract rur­al blacks to cities, where they would foment “a vicious race war.” In a 1963 speech that pre­fig­ures the Tea Party’s talk of a secret social­ist plot, Koch pre­dict­ed that Com­mu­nists would “infil­trate the high­est offices of gov­ern­ment in the U.S. until the Pres­i­dent is a Com­mu­nist, unknown to the rest of us.”. . .

Ibid.

4. Dis­claimers to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing, the Tea Par­ty move­ment is deeply involved with the Kochto­pus.

A few weeks after the Lin­coln Cen­ter gala, the advo­ca­cy wing of the Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foundation—an orga­ni­za­tion that David Koch start­ed, in 2004—held a dif­fer­ent kind of gath­er­ing. Over the July 4th week­end, a sum­mit called Texas Defend­ing the Amer­i­can Dream took place in a chilly hotel ball­room in Austin. Though Koch freely pro­motes his phil­an­thropic ven­tures, he did not attend the sum­mit, and his name was not in evi­dence. And on this occa­sion the audi­ence was roused not by a dance per­for­mance but by a series of speak­ers denounc­ing Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma. Peg­gy Ven­able, the orga­niz­er of the sum­mit, warned that Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials “have a social­ist vision for this coun­try.”

Five hun­dred peo­ple attend­ed the sum­mit, which served, in part, as a train­ing ses­sion for Tea Par­ty activists in Texas. An adver­tise­ment cast the event as a pop­ulist upris­ing against vest­ed cor­po­rate pow­er. “Today, the voic­es of aver­age Amer­i­cans are being drowned out by lob­by­ists and spe­cial inter­ests,” it said. “But you can do some­thing about it.” The pitch made no men­tion of its cor­po­rate fun­ders. The White House has expressed frus­tra­tion that such spon­sors have large­ly elud­ed pub­lic notice. David Axel­rod, Obama’s senior advis­er, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grass­roots cit­i­zens’ move­ment brought to you by a bunch of oil bil­lion­aires.”

In April, 2009, Melis­sa Cohlmia, a com­pa­ny spokesper­son, denied that the Kochs had direct links to the Tea Par­ty, say­ing that Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty is “an inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tion and Koch com­pa­nies do not in any way direct their activ­i­ties.” Lat­er, she issued a state­ment: “No fund­ing has been pro­vid­ed by Koch com­pa­nies, the Koch foun­da­tions, or Charles Koch or David Koch specif­i­cal­ly to sup­port the tea par­ties.” David Koch told New York, “I’ve nev­er been to a tea-par­ty event. No one rep­re­sent­ing the tea par­ty has ever even approached me.”

At the lectern in Austin, how­ev­er, Venable—a long­time polit­i­cal oper­a­tive who draws a salary from Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty, and who has worked for Koch-fund­ed polit­i­cal groups since 1994—spoke less war­i­ly. “We love what the Tea Par­ties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back Amer­i­ca!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a sub­se­quent inter­view, she described her­self as an ear­ly mem­ber of the move­ment, jok­ing, “I was part of the Tea Par­ty before it was cool!” She explained that the role of Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty was to help “edu­cate” Tea Par­ty activists on pol­i­cy details, and to give them “next-step train­ing” after their ral­lies, so that their polit­i­cal ener­gy could be chan­neled “more effec­tive­ly.” And she not­ed that Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty had pro­vid­ed Tea Par­ty activists with lists of elect­ed offi­cials to tar­get. She said of the Kochs, “They’re cer­tain­ly our peo­ple. David’s the chair­man of our board. I’ve cer­tain­ly met with them, and I’m very appre­cia­tive of what they do.”

Ven­able hon­ored sev­er­al Tea Par­ty “cit­i­zen lead­ers” at the sum­mit. The Texas branch of Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty gave its Blog­ger of the Year Award to a young woman named Sibyl West. On June 14th, West, writ­ing on her site, described Oba­ma as the “coke­head in chief.” In an online thread, West spec­u­lat­ed that the Pres­i­dent was exhibit­ing symp­toms of “demon­ic pos­ses­sion (aka schiz­o­phre­nia, etc.).” The sum­mit fea­tured sev­er­al paid speak­ers, includ­ing Janine Turn­er, the actress best known for her role on the tele­vi­sion series “North­ern Expo­sure.” She declared, “They don’t want our chil­dren to know about their rights. They don’t want our chil­dren to know about a God!”

Dur­ing a catered lunch, Ven­able intro­duced Ted Cruz, a for­mer solic­i­tor gen­er­al of Texas, who told the crowd that Oba­ma was “the most rad­i­cal Pres­i­dent ever to occu­py the Oval Office,” and had hid­den from vot­ers a secret agenda—“the gov­ern­ment tak­ing over our econ­o­my and our lives.” Coun­ter­ing Oba­ma, Cruz pro­claimed, was “the epic fight of our gen­er­a­tion!” As the crowd rose to its feet and cheered, he quot­ed the defi­ant words of a Tex­an at the Alamo: “Vic­to­ry, or death!”

Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty has worked close­ly with the Tea Par­ty since the movement’s incep­tion. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty host­ed a Web site offer­ing sup­port­ers “Tea Par­ty Talk­ing Points.” The Ari­zona branch urged peo­ple to send tea bags to Oba­ma; the Mis­souri branch urged mem­bers to sign up for “Tax­pay­er Tea Par­ty Reg­is­tra­tion” and pro­vid­ed direc­tions to nine protests. The group con­tin­ues to stoke the rebel­lion. The North Car­oli­na branch recent­ly launched a “Tea Par­ty Find­er” Web site, adver­tised as “a hub for all the Tea Par­ties in North Car­oli­na.”

Ibid.

5. Epit­o­miz­ing the con­struct of the Kochs’ polit­i­cal appa­ra­tus is the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter, estab­lished at a pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty in Vir­ginia. It has assert­ed tremen­dous influ­ence on pol­i­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush, for whose elec­tion the Kochs worked very hard.

. . . In the mid-eight­ies, the Kochs pro­vid­ed mil­lions of dol­lars to George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, in Arling­ton, Vir­ginia, to set up anoth­er think tank. Now known as the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter, it pro­motes itself as “the world’s pre­mier uni­ver­si­ty source for mar­ket-ori­ent­ed ideas—bridging the gap between aca­d­e­m­ic ideas and real-world prob­lems.” Finan­cial records show that the Koch fam­i­ly foun­da­tions have con­tributed more than thir­ty mil­lion dol­lars to George Mason, much of which has gone to the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion. “It’s ground zero for dereg­u­la­tion pol­i­cy in Wash­ing­ton,” Rob Stein, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gist, said. It is an unusu­al arrange­ment. “George Mason is a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty, and receives pub­lic funds,” Stein not­ed. “Vir­ginia is host­ing an insti­tu­tion that the Kochs prac­ti­cal­ly con­trol.”

The founder of the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter is Richard Fink, for­mer­ly an econ­o­mist. Fink heads Koch Indus­tries’ lob­by­ing oper­a­tion in Wash­ing­ton. In addi­tion, he is the pres­i­dent of the Charles G. Koch Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion, the pres­i­dent of the Claude R. Lambe Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion, a direc­tor of the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foun­da­tion, and a direc­tor and co-founder, with David Koch, of the Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty Foun­da­tion.

Fink, with his many titles, has become the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem of the Kochto­pus. He appears to have sup­plant­ed Ed Crane, the head of the Cato Insti­tute, as the broth­ers’ main polit­i­cal lieu­tenant. Though David remains on the board at Cato, Charles Koch has fall­en out with Crane. Asso­ciates sug­gest­ed to me that Crane had been insuf­fi­cient­ly respect­ful of Charles’s man­age­ment phi­los­o­phy, which he dis­tilled into a book called “The Sci­ence of Suc­cess,” and trade­marked under the name Mar­ket-Based Man­age­ment, or M.B.M. In the book, Charles rec­om­mends instill­ing a company’s cor­po­rate cul­ture with the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the mar­ket­place. Koch describes M.B.M. as a “holis­tic sys­tem” con­tain­ing “five dimen­sions: vision, virtue and tal­ents, knowl­edge process­es, deci­sion rights and incen­tives.” A top Cato Insti­tute offi­cial told me that Charles “thinks he’s a genius. He’s the emper­or, and he’s con­vinced he’s wear­ing clothes.” Fink, by con­trast, has been far more embrac­ing of Charles’s ideas. (Fink, like the Kochs, declined to be inter­viewed.)

At a 1995 con­fer­ence for phil­an­thropists, Fink adopt­ed the lan­guage of eco­nom­ics when speak­ing about the Mer­ca­tus Center’s pur­pose. He said that grant-mak­ers should use think tanks and polit­i­cal-action groups to con­vert intel­lec­tu­al raw mate­ri­als into pol­i­cy “prod­ucts.”

The Wall Street Jour­nal has called the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter “the most impor­tant think tank you’ve nev­er heard of,” and not­ed that four­teen of the twen­ty-three reg­u­la­tions that Pres­i­dent George W. Bush placed on a “hit list” had been sug­gest­ed first by Mer­ca­tus schol­ars. Fink told the paper that the Kochs have “oth­er means of fight­ing [their] bat­tles,” and that the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter does not active­ly pro­mote the company’s pri­vate inter­ests. But Thomas McGar­i­ty, a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, who spe­cial­izes in envi­ron­men­tal issues, told me that “Koch has been con­stant­ly in trou­ble with the E.P.A., and Mer­ca­tus has con­stant­ly ham­mered on the agency.” An envi­ron­men­tal lawyer who has clashed with the Mer­ca­tus Cen­ter called it “a means of laun­der­ing eco­nom­ic aims.” The lawyer explained the strat­e­gy: “You take cor­po­rate mon­ey and give it to a neu­tral-sound­ing think tank,” which “hires peo­ple with pedi­grees and aca­d­e­m­ic degrees who put out cred­i­ble-seem­ing stud­ies. But they all coin­cide per­fect­ly with the eco­nom­ic inter­ests of their fun­ders.” . . .

Ibid.

6. David Koch has spent mil­lions to fund can­cer research. With his indus­tri­al con­cerns pro­duc­ing known car­cino­gens, such as formalde­hyde, this con­sti­tutes a con­flict of interest–a type of con­flict that often results in res­o­lu­tions that sat­is­fy the major donors.

. . . And he became a patron of can­cer research, focus­ing on prostate can­cer. In addi­tion to his gifts to Sloan-Ket­ter­ing, he gave fif­teen mil­lion dol­lars to New York-Pres­by­ter­ian Hos­pi­tal, a hun­dred and twen­ty-five mil­lion to M.I.T. for can­cer research, twen­ty mil­lion to Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, and twen­ty-five mil­lion to the M. D. Ander­son Can­cer Cen­ter, in Hous­ton. In response to his gen­eros­i­ty, Sloan-Ket­ter­ing gave Koch its Excel­lence in Cor­po­rate Lead­er­ship Award. In 2004, Pres­i­dent Bush named him to the Nation­al Can­cer Advi­so­ry Board, which guides the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute.

Koch’s cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal roles, how­ev­er, may pose con­flicts of inter­est. For exam­ple, at the same time that David Koch has been cast­ing him­self as a cham­pi­on in the fight against can­cer, Koch Indus­tries has been lob­by­ing to pre­vent the E.P.A. from clas­si­fy­ing formalde­hyde, which the com­pa­ny pro­duces in great quan­ti­ties, as a “known car­cino­gen” in humans.

Sci­en­tists have long known that formalde­hyde caus­es can­cer in rats, and sev­er­al major sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies have con­clud­ed that formalde­hyde caus­es can­cer in human beings—including one pub­lished last year by the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute, on whose advi­so­ry board Koch sits. The study tracked twen­ty-five thou­sand patients for an aver­age of forty years; sub­jects exposed to high­er amounts of formalde­hyde had sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rates of leukemia. These results helped lead an expert pan­el with­in the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health to con­clude that formalde­hyde should be cat­e­go­rized as a known car­cino­gen, and be strict­ly con­trolled by the gov­ern­ment. Cor­po­ra­tions have resist­ed reg­u­la­tions on formalde­hyde for decades, how­ev­er, and Koch Indus­tries has been a large fun­der of mem­bers of Con­gress who have stymied the E.P.A., requir­ing it to defer new reg­u­la­tions until more stud­ies are com­plet­ed.

Koch Indus­tries became a major pro­duc­er of the chem­i­cal in 2005, after it bought Geor­gia-Pacif­ic, the paper and wood-prod­ucts com­pa­ny, for twen­ty-one bil­lion dol­lars. Geor­gia-Pacif­ic man­u­fac­tures formalde­hyde in its chem­i­cal divi­sion, and uses it to pro­duce var­i­ous wood prod­ucts, such as ply­wood and lam­i­nates. Its annu­al pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty for formalde­hyde is 2.2 bil­lion pounds. Last Decem­ber, Tray­lor Cham­pi­on, Georgia-Pacific’s vice-pres­i­dent of envi­ron­men­tal affairs, sent a for­mal let­ter of protest to fed­er­al health author­i­ties. He wrote that the com­pa­ny “strong­ly dis­agrees” with the N.I.H. panel’s con­clu­sion that formalde­hyde should be treat­ed as a known human car­cino­gen. David Koch did not recuse him­self from the Nation­al Can­cer Advi­so­ry Board, or divest him­self of com­pa­ny stock, while his com­pa­ny was direct­ly lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ment to keep formalde­hyde on the mar­ket. (A board spokesper­son said that the issue of formalde­hyde had not come up.)

James Huff, an asso­ciate direc­tor at the Nation­al Insti­tute for Envi­ron­men­tal Health Sci­ences, a divi­sion of the N.I.H., told me that it was “dis­gust­ing” for Koch to be serv­ing on the Nation­al Can­cer Advi­so­ry Board: “It’s just not good for pub­lic health. Vest­ed inter­ests should not be on the board.” He went on, “Those boards are very impor­tant. They’re very influ­en­tial as to whether N.C.I. goes into formalde­hyde or not. Bil­lions of dol­lars are involved in formalde­hyde.” . . .

Ibid.

7. When cit­i­zens have become sick­ened by pol­lu­tants pro­duced by the Koch broth­ers and their ilk, they will have less chance of receiv­ing ade­quate treat­ment if the Kochto­pus has its way. The broth­ers have been implaca­ble oppo­nents of health care reform.

. . . Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty also cre­at­ed an off­shoot, Patients Unit­ed Now, which orga­nized what Phillips has esti­mat­ed to be more than three hun­dred ral­lies against health-care reform. At one ral­ly, an effi­gy of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­man was hung; at anoth­er, pro­test­ers unfurled a ban­ner depict­ing corpses from Dachau. The group also helped orga­nize the “Kill the Bill” protests out­side the Capi­tol, in March, where Demo­c­ra­t­ic sup­port­ers of health-care reform alleged that they were spat on and cursed at. Phillips was a fea­tured speak­er.

Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty has held at least eighty events tar­get­ing cap-and-trade leg­is­la­tion, which is aimed at mak­ing indus­tries pay for the air pol­lu­tion that they cre­ate. Speak­ers for the group claimed, with exag­ger­a­tion, that even back-yard bar­be­cues and kitchen stoves would be taxed. The group was also involved in the attacks on Obama’s “green jobs” czar, Van Jones, and waged a cru­sade against inter­na­tion­al cli­mate talks. Cast­ing his group as a cham­pi­on of ordi­nary work­ers who would be hurt by envi­ron­men­tal­ists, Phillips went to Copen­hagen last year and staged a protest out­side the Unit­ed Nations con­fer­ence on cli­mate change, declar­ing, “We’re a grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion. . . . I think it’s unfor­tu­nate when wealthy chil­dren of wealthy fam­i­lies . . . want to send unem­ploy­ment rates in the Unit­ed States up to twen­ty per cent.”

Grover Norquist, who holds a week­ly meet­ing for con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty, told me that last summer’s rau­cous ral­lies were piv­otal in under­min­ing Obama’s agen­da. The Repub­li­can lead­er­ship in Con­gress, he said, “couldn’t have done it with­out August, when peo­ple went out on the streets. It dis­cour­aged deal-makers”—Republicans who might oth­er­wise have worked con­struc­tive­ly with Oba­ma. More­over, the appear­ance of grow­ing pub­lic oppo­si­tion to Oba­ma affect­ed cor­po­rate donors on K Street. “K Street is a three-bil­lion-dol­lar weath­er­vane,” Norquist said. “When Oba­ma was strong, the Cham­ber of Com­merce said, ‘We can work with the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion.’ But that changed when thou­sands of peo­ple went into the street and ‘ter­ror­ized’ con­gress­men. August is what changed it. Now that Oba­ma is weak, peo­ple are get­ting tough.”

As the first anniver­sary of Obama’s elec­tion approached, David Koch came to the Wash­ing­ton area to attend a tri­umphant Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty gath­er­ing. Obama’s poll num­bers were falling fast. Not a sin­gle Repub­li­can sen­a­tor was work­ing with the Admin­is­tra­tion on health care, or much else. Pun­dits were writ­ing about Obama’s polit­i­cal inep­ti­tude, and Tea Par­ty groups were accus­ing the Pres­i­dent of ini­ti­at­ing “a gov­ern­ment takeover.” In a speech, Koch said, “Days like today bring to real­i­ty the vision of our board of direc­tors when we start­ed this orga­ni­za­tion, five years ago.” He went on, “We envi­sioned a mass move­ment, a state-based one, but nation­al in scope, of hun­dreds of thou­sands of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens from all walks of life stand­ing up and fight­ing for the eco­nom­ic free­doms that made our nation the most pros­per­ous soci­ety in his­to­ry. . . . Thank­ful­ly, the stir­rings from Cal­i­for­nia to Vir­ginia, and from Texas to Michi­gan, show that more and more of our fel­low-cit­i­zens are begin­ning to see the same truths as we do.”

While Koch didn’t explic­it­ly embrace the Tea Par­ty move­ment that day, more recent­ly he has come close to doing so, prais­ing it for demon­strat­ing the “pow­er­ful vis­cer­al hos­til­i­ty in the body politic against the mas­sive increase in gov­ern­ment pow­er, the mas­sive efforts to social­ize this coun­try.” Charles Koch, in a newslet­ter sent to his sev­en­ty thou­sand employ­ees, com­pared the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion to the regime of the Venezue­lan strong­man Hugo Chávez. The Kochs’ sense of imper­il­ment is some­what puz­zling. Income inequal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca is greater than it has been since the nine­teen-twen­ties, and since the sev­en­ties the tax rates of the wealth­i­est have fall­en more than those of the mid­dle class. Yet the broth­ers’ mes­sage has evi­dent­ly res­onat­ed with vot­ers: a recent poll found that fifty-five per cent of Amer­i­cans agreed that Oba­ma is a social­ist. . . .

Ibid.

Discussion

53 comments for “FTR #726 The Kochtopus: The Tea Party Movement Manifests Classical Fascism”

  1. House­keep­ing Note: Com­ments 1–50 avail­able here.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 27, 2017, 4:02 pm
  2. Well, they did it: The Koch broth­ers pumped $650 mil­lion into Mered­ith Cor­po­ra­tion’s buy­out of Time Inc, the pub­lish­er of Time, Sports Illus­trat­ed, Peo­ple, For­tune and Enter­tain­ment Week­ly.

    But we are assured not to wor­ry about Koch edi­to­r­i­al med­dling because the Kochs “will not have a seat on the Mered­ith board and will have no influ­ence on Meredith’s edi­to­r­i­al or man­age­r­i­al oper­a­tions,” accord­ing to Merideth. Instead, we are told that the Kochs are pure­ly inter­est­ed in this ven­ture from an invest­ment stand­point. And that’s a rather remark­able claim from an invest­ment stand­point if true since, as the arti­cle notes at the end, the final price Merideth and Koch paid for Time Inc includ­ed a 46 per­cent pre­mi­um on top above price Time Inc. shares cost when this buy­out pro­pos­al was first announced. Yep, the Kochs are buy­ing big media for the invest­ment poten­tial and that alone. And they’re so opti­mistic about the prof­it poten­tial of this merg­er that they were hap­py to pay a 46 per­cent pre­mi­um for the pur­chase (and def­i­nite­ly did­n’t buy it to influ­ence the con­tent of these pub­li­ca­tions *wink*):

    The Guardian

    Con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aire Koch broth­ers give $650m to help Mered­ith buy Time

    Tex­ans will not get a say in edi­to­r­i­al deci­sions, says Mered­ith, as it hails ‘trans­for­ma­tive’ deal to merge mag­a­zine sta­bles

    Dominic Rushe, Mar­tin Far­rer and agen­cies
    Mon­day 27 Novem­ber 2017 01.42 EST

    Time Inc, strug­gling own­er of some of the world’s most famous mag­a­zine brands, was sold on Sun­day to rival Mered­ith Cor­po­ra­tion in a “trans­for­ma­tive” $1.8bn deal that was backed by the rightwing bil­lion­aire Koch broth­ers.

    Mered­ith, which owns a port­fo­lio includ­ing Bet­ter Homes & Gar­dens, Fam­i­ly Cir­cle, all­recipes and Shape, will fund the deal with the help of $650m from the Koch broth­ers, who have said they will take no role at the merged media com­pa­ny.

    But for­mer Time employ­ees have expressed grave con­cerns about their involve­ment.

    ...

    Their involve­ment in the deal to buy the pub­lish­er of Time, Sports Illus­trat­ed, Peo­ple, For­tune and Enter­tain­ment Week­ly has raised ques­tions about whether their inter­est is polit­i­cal.

    Charles Alexan­der, a for­mer Time edi­tor, said last week that the pur­chase was like see­ing his “life’s work go down the drain”. Writ­ing in the Nation, Alexan­der said the prob­lem was not that the Koch broth­ers are “con­ser­v­a­tive”. Hen­ry Luce, who co-found­ed Time in 1923, was con­ser­v­a­tive too.

    The issue, he wrote, was that for decades the Kochs have “financed a cam­paign of dis­in­for­ma­tion designed to con­vince the pub­lic and politi­cians that cli­mate change is noth­ing to wor­ry about. In fact, any rep­utable cli­mate sci­en­tist will tell you that glob­al warm­ing is the sec­ond-great­est dan­ger to the human race, trail­ing only nuclear weapons”.

    Mered­ith moved to play down the impor­tance of the fund­ing by say­ing on Sun­day night that Koch Equi­ty Devel­op­ment, the broth­ers’ invest­ment vehi­cle pro­vid­ing the fund­ing, will not have a seat on the board of the new­ly merged group and will not influ­ence edi­to­r­i­al deci­sions.

    “[Koch Equi­ty Devel­op­ment] will not have a seat on the Mered­ith board and will have no influ­ence on Meredith’s edi­to­r­i­al or man­age­r­i­al oper­a­tions,” Mered­ith said in a state­ment. “KED’s non-con­trol­ling, pre­ferred equi­ty invest­ment under­scores a strong belief in Meredith’s strength as a busi­ness oper­a­tor, its strate­gies and its abil­i­ty to unlock sig­nif­i­cant val­ue from the Time acqui­si­tion.”

    Jeff Jarvis, a for­mer Time Inc edi­tor and now direc­tor of the Tow-Knight Cen­ter for Entre­pre­neur­ial Jour­nal­ism at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York, said he found the Kochs’ involve­ment “very wor­ry­ing”.

    Time, once one of the world’s most influ­en­tial mag­a­zines, lost its clout decades ago, he said. “Mag­a­zines are over. Only Don­ald Trump cares about Time now,” he said. “In oth­er cir­cum­stances I would be glad that the mag­a­zines had found a backer. There is a need for respon­si­ble, fact-based con­ser­v­a­tive news. But the Kochs are not just con­ser­v­a­tive, they are the fun­ders of pro­pa­gan­da,” said Jarvis.

    David Folken­flik, media cor­re­spon­dent for Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, said the size of the Kochs’ invest­ment raised ques­tions about their moti­va­tion. “There have got to be bet­ter invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties,” he said. Folken­flik point­ed out that the promis­es of oth­er media investors – most notably Rupert Mur­doch – not to inter­fere with a publication’s edi­to­r­i­al poli­cies have proved hol­low.

    The Kochs “have gone after jour­nal­ists they find over­ly crit­i­cal”, he said. “To have pro­pri­etors who are so hos­tile to the endeav­ors of jour­nal­ism gives you great pause.”

    The deal, which was unan­i­mous­ly approved by both boards, is a coup for Mered­ith, which held unsuc­cess­ful talks to buy Time ear­li­er this year and in 2013.

    It will give news, busi­ness and sports brands to add to the Iowa-based publisher’s lifestyle titles. Ana­lysts have said that bulk­ing up on pub­lish­ing assets could give Mered­ith the scale required to spin off its broad­cast­ing arm into a stand­alone com­pa­ny. Com­bined, the Mered­ith and Time brands will have a read­er­ship of 135 mil­lion peo­ple and paid cir­cu­la­tion of near­ly 60m.

    Com­bined, the com­pa­nies post­ed $4.8bn in rev­enue last year. Mered­ith expects it will save up to $500m in costs in the first two years of oper­a­tion and plans to “aggres­sive­ly pay down” debt by 2020.

    John Fahey, Time chair­man, said the sale was in the best inter­ests of the com­pa­ny and its share­hold­ers, not­ing the price rep­re­sent­ed a 46% pre­mi­um to the clos­ing price of shares on 15 Novem­ber, the day pri­or to media reports about the deal.

    ———-

    “Con­ser­v­a­tive bil­lion­aire Koch broth­ers give $650m to help Mered­ith buy Time” by Dominic Rushe, Mar­tin Far­rer and agen­cies; The Guardian; 11/27/2017

    “John Fahey, Time chair­man, said the sale was in the best inter­ests of the com­pa­ny and its share­hold­ers, not­ing the price rep­re­sent­ed a 46% pre­mi­um to the clos­ing price of shares on 15 Novem­ber, the day pri­or to media reports about the deal

    A 46 per­cent pre­mi­um for a media com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in mag­a­zines. As media indus­try observers not, it’s a rather odd invest­ment from a prof­it-max­i­miza­tion stand­point. And it’s a rather incred­u­lous pledge that Kochs won’t exert sway over con­tent giv­en the his­to­ry of peo­ple like Rupert Mur­doch make, and break­ing, that same pledge and the his­to­ry of the Kochs them­selves going after jour­nal­ists:

    ...
    Jeff Jarvis, a for­mer Time Inc edi­tor and now direc­tor of the Tow-Knight Cen­ter for Entre­pre­neur­ial Jour­nal­ism at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York, said he found the Kochs’ involve­ment “very wor­ry­ing”.

    Time, once one of the world’s most influ­en­tial mag­a­zines, lost its clout decades ago, he said. “Mag­a­zines are over. Only Don­ald Trump cares about Time now,” he said. “In oth­er cir­cum­stances I would be glad that the mag­a­zines had found a backer. There is a need for respon­si­ble, fact-based con­ser­v­a­tive news. But the Kochs are not just con­ser­v­a­tive, they are the fun­ders of pro­pa­gan­da,” said Jarvis.

    David Folken­flik, media cor­re­spon­dent for Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, said the size of the Kochs’ invest­ment raised ques­tions about their moti­va­tion. “There have got to be bet­ter invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties,” he said. Folken­flik point­ed out that the promis­es of oth­er media investors – most notably Rupert Mur­doch – not to inter­fere with a publication’s edi­to­r­i­al poli­cies have proved hol­low.

    The Kochs “have gone after jour­nal­ists they find over­ly crit­i­cal”, he said. “To have pro­pri­etors who are so hos­tile to the endeav­ors of jour­nal­ism gives you great pause.”
    ...

    And yet Merideth assures us that the Kochs will have no sway over the con­tent and they are just real­ly con­fi­dent that this merg­er will “unlock sig­nif­i­cant val­ue”:

    ...
    Mered­ith moved to play down the impor­tance of the fund­ing by say­ing on Sun­day night that Koch Equi­ty Devel­op­ment, the broth­ers’ invest­ment vehi­cle pro­vid­ing the fund­ing, will not have a seat on the board of the new­ly merged group and will not influ­ence edi­to­r­i­al deci­sions.

    “[Koch Equi­ty Devel­op­ment] will not have a seat on the Mered­ith board and will have no influ­ence on Meredith’s edi­to­r­i­al or man­age­r­i­al oper­a­tions,” Mered­ith said in a state­ment. “KED’s non-con­trol­ling, pre­ferred equi­ty invest­ment under­scores a strong belief in Meredith’s strength as a busi­ness oper­a­tor, its strate­gies and its abil­i­ty to unlock sig­nif­i­cant val­ue from the Time acqui­si­tion.”
    ...

    “KED’s non-con­trol­ling, pre­ferred equi­ty invest­ment under­scores a strong belief in Meredith’s strength as a busi­ness oper­a­tor, its strate­gies and its abil­i­ty to unlock sig­nif­i­cant val­ue from the Time acqui­si­tion.”

    What sort of sig­nif­i­cant val­ue will Merideth and the Kochs man­age to unlock from this acqui­si­tion? That remains to be seen, although giv­en the state­ments from Merideth about how they plan to “aggres­sive­ly pay down” debt by 2020, the unlocked val­ue is pre­sum­ably going to involve lay­ing off a bunch of jour­nal­ists.

    On the plus side, at least now when­ev­er Don­ald Trump isn’t made Time’s “Man of the Year” it’s prob­a­bly going to start some sort of oli­garch war between Trump and the Kochs due to Trump’s hurt feel­ings. So that should be kind of fun to watch.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 27, 2017, 4:04 pm
  3. One of the grim­ly inter­est­ing things to watch as oli­garchs like Charles Koch lurch clos­er and clos­er to grave with each pass­ing year is whether or not they even­tu­al­ly try to pull an end-of-life bet­ter-late-than-nev­er mea cul­pa for being such abhor­rent jerks over the course of their lives. You should­n’t expect such a mea cul­pa, but it’s not unheard of. So when Charles Koch — who has now out-lived his younger broth­er David — gave an inter­view with the Wall Street Jour­nal last Novem­ber where he expressed regret over the divi­sive­ness and par­ti­san­ship is bil­lions of dol­lars financed over the decades, cul­mi­nat­ing in the dis­as­trous pres­i­den­cy of Don­ald Trump, it looked for a moment like we might be on the verge of see­ing Charles Koch tran­si­tion to the ‘clean­ing up all my bad kar­ma’ phase of the oli­garch’s life­cy­cle. Of course, these words were a lit­tle hard to swal­low all things con­sid­ered, espe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that the chief non-prof­it vehi­cle used by the Koch mega-donor net­work, Donors Trust, had just been used by some­one in 2019 to anony­mous­ly donate $1.5 mil­lion to the white nation­al­ist VDare orga­ni­za­tion for the pur­chase of a his­toric cas­tle near DC. But the inter­view nonethe­less sig­naled that was could be see­ing a new, final pub­lic image cam­paign by Charles to leave a less odi­ous lega­cy. That’s all part of the con­text of the fol­low­ing report in the Nation by Jas­mine Banks of Unkoch My Cam­pus, whose orga­ni­za­tion just released a report on the insti­tu­tion­al orga­niz­ing behind the nation­wide surge in right-wing hys­ter­ics over “Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry” being taught in US pub­lic schools. And as their report found it was Koch financed insti­tu­tions, net­work behind it. As Unkoch My Cam­pus found after review­ing the pub­lished mate­ri­als of 28 con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks and polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions with known ties to the Koch net­work from June 2020 to June 2021, it was only in Feb­ru­ary of this year — after Trump’s mul­ti­ple attempts to reverse the elec­tion results ulti­mate failed — that the rel­a­tive trick­le of arti­cles on the top­ic turned into a tor­rent. It was like some­one flipped a switch and sud­den­ly CRT was the top­ic on the Right. Oh, and it turns out the Koch net­work’s ulti­mate solu­tion for deal­ing with the per­ils of Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry is mass school pri­va­ti­za­tions. Sur­prise! So when Charles Koch gave that inter­view last fall lament­ing the divi­sion he cause over the course of his life­time, keep in mind that inter­view was pub­lished a few months before the Koch net­work unleashed a nation­wide ‘Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry’ gaslight­ing cam­paign:

    The Nation

    The Rad­i­cal Cap­i­tal­ist Behind the Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry Furor
    How a dark-mon­ey mogul bankrolled an astro­turf back­lash.

    By Jas­mine Banks
    August 13, 2021

    Once again, the forces of cap­i­tal­ism are har­ness­ing racism to do their dirty work.

    More than 25 states have intro­duced leg­is­la­tion or tak­en oth­er action that, back­ers claim, is aimed at ban­ning “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” (CRT) from schools and gov­ern­ment pro­grams. Sev­er­al states have already passed these bills, and dis­cus­sion on this top­ic leads Fox News every night.

    The com­mon sto­ry about this surge of action is that this is a new “Tea Par­ty” moment—a gen­uine upris­ing by grass­roots Amer­i­cans who are furi­ous about CRT and demand­ing action from their state leg­is­la­tures. But that sto­ry ignores the clear influ­ence of a care­ful­ly built cam­paign by the net­work of rad­i­cal free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ist think tanks and action groups sup­port­ed by bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man Charles Koch and his late broth­er David.

    At least to some extent, Koch-fund­ed enti­ties have man­u­fac­tured this cycle of out­rage, and it is dan­ger­ous to ignore the role they are play­ing and their moti­va­tions. This is not just a guess. UnKoch My Cam­pus did the research, and we know it’s true. State politi­cians were almost entire­ly silent on the top­ic until the Koch net­work start­ed push­ing the issue ear­li­er this year, months after it was first raised by Fox News com­men­ta­tors.

    When the right wing talks about “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry,” it is real­ly hijack­ing an obscure aca­d­e­m­ic con­cept to attack any approach to edu­ca­tion or pol­i­cy that acknowl­edges the exis­tence of his­toric and struc­tur­al racism in this coun­try. The pop­u­lar story—heard not just on Fox News but repeat­ed by the The New York Times, The New York­er, and the The Atlantic—is that CRT became a nation­al issue when a sin­gle con­ser­v­a­tive activist, Chris Rufo, appeared on Tuck­er Carl­son in Sep­tem­ber 2020. Pres­i­dent Trump, an avid Carl­son fan, quick­ly respond­ed with an exec­u­tive order ban­ning fed­er­al con­trac­tors for any diver­si­ty train­ing that exam­ined sys­temic racism. Since then, the sto­ry goes, the grass­roots rage at CRT has boiled over.

    Such a nar­ra­tive is pow­er­ful, when true, because it gives an air of pop­ulist legit­i­ma­cy to the cause. But that sto­ry doesn’t fit the facts.

    Because after that brief moment in Sep­tem­ber, the debate around “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” went dor­mant for months. Almost no leg­is­la­tion was intro­duced at the state lev­el in this peri­od, accord­ing to Edu­ca­tion Week. Fox News stopped talk­ing about it, accord­ing to an analy­sis by Media Mat­ters. Then, as the Biden admin­is­tra­tion took over, some­thing hap­pened. Men­tions of CRT sky­rock­et­ed on Fox News. At the same time, state leg­is­la­tors start­ed intro­duc­ing bills. What was behind the surge, months after Rufo’s appear­ance?

    Our research makes the answer clear: It was the Koch net­work.

    As the head of UnKoch My Cam­pus, I have spent years work­ing to research and expose the insid­i­ous nation­wide net­work of think tanks, action groups, and aca­d­e­mics fund­ed by the Kochs. While the net­work is often dif­fuse and hard to track, all of its branch­es pur­port to be ded­i­cat­ed to sup­port­ing free mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism.

    But I have always known, as a Black woman, that the Koch broth­ers’ brand of rad­i­cal cap­i­tal­ism relies on main­tain­ing a sys­tem of white suprema­cy. That real­i­ty has rarely been as clear as now, when the Koch net­work is essen­tial­ly work­ing to man­u­fac­ture a cri­sis to prove its case for pri­va­tiz­ing edu­ca­tion.

    Unkoch My Cam­pus reviewed the pub­lished mate­ri­als of 28 con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks and polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions with known ties to the Koch net­work from June 2020 to June 2021 and found that they had col­lec­tive­ly pub­lished 79 arti­cles, pod­casts, reports or videos about Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry.

    These arti­cles came out in a trick­le last year, but then sud­den­ly became a flood start­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2021, as Pres­i­dent Biden took office and the threat to cor­po­rate prof­its became real. An aver­age of five pieces per week dropped from late March to June 30, 2021. The pace of pro­pa­gan­da surged in both late May and late June—coinciding with the surge in action by state politi­cians.

    Both the high­ly influ­en­tial Her­itage Foun­da­tion and the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil, which has known ties to the Kochs and a long his­to­ry of dri­ving con­ser­v­a­tive state leg­is­la­tion, held webi­na­rs devot­ed to attack­ing CRT. The Man­hat­tan Insti­tute for Pol­i­cy Research alone devot­ed 43 sep­a­rate arti­cles or videos to the top­ic.

    Why is the Koch net­work so ded­i­cat­ed to this cause? It is a prime exam­ple of how the net­work has built up an alliance between the three pil­lars of the right wing: the Repub­li­can Par­ty, rich cor­po­rate elites, and con­ser­v­a­tive white and evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers opposed to racial progress.

    The CRT fight helps all three. Repub­li­cans get a man­u­fac­tured con­tro­ver­sy that moti­vates their base to keep them in pow­er, and they get the finan­cial sup­port of the Kochs and their cor­po­rate friends. The Kochs and oth­er rad­i­cal cap­i­tal­ists get a false pan­ic around the state of pub­lic edu­ca­tion, which helps their ongo­ing cam­paign to pri­va­tize schools, and they gain allies who will push the eco­nom­ic agen­da that keeps them at the top. The over­whelm­ing­ly white Repub­li­can base is reward­ed with a sto­ry that is eas­i­er for them to accept than the true one—a sto­ry where they are both the heroes of Amer­i­can his­to­ry and the true vic­tims of the Amer­i­can present, oppressed by “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.”

    As my orga­ni­za­tion wrote in our expan­sive report, “Advanc­ing White Suprema­cy,” the Koch net­work has pur­pose­ful­ly exploit­ed this rela­tion­ship for years. The net­work has long-stand­ing ties to white nation­al­ist schol­ars and has used their research to dri­ve poli­cies that serve its eco­nom­ic goals at the expense of peo­ple of col­or, includ­ing efforts to reseg­re­gate our nation’s schools, dis­man­tle vot­ing rights, and expand the prison-indus­tri­al com­plex.

    You can see this play out in how the Koch think tanks we stud­ied pro­pose “solv­ing” the CRT prob­lems. They pro­pose solu­tions like dereg­u­lat­ing teacher licens­ing and relax­ing restric­tions on which pub­lic schools par­ents can send their kids to, both long-stand­ing goals of the orga­ni­za­tion. This dra­mat­ic mis­match between sup­pos­ed­ly exis­ten­tial stakes on the one hand and tech­no­crat­ic fix­es on the oth­er expos­es their true inten­tions. They are incit­ing out­rages against racial jus­tice, and then using that out­rage as a Tro­jan horse for entrench­ing rad­i­cal free mar­ket ide­ol­o­gy in every insti­tu­tion pos­si­ble.

    ...

    ————-

    “The Rad­i­cal Cap­i­tal­ist Behind the Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry Furor” by Jas­mine Banks; The Nation; 08/13/2021

    “The com­mon sto­ry about this surge of action is that this is a new “Tea Par­ty” moment—a gen­uine upris­ing by grass­roots Amer­i­cans who are furi­ous about CRT and demand­ing action from their state leg­is­la­tures. But that sto­ry ignores the clear influ­ence of a care­ful­ly built cam­paign by the net­work of rad­i­cal free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ist think tanks and action groups sup­port­ed by bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man Charles Koch and his late broth­er David.

    A man­u­fac­tured cri­sis designed to bring about the pri­va­ti­za­tion of schools. That’s the kind of ‘lead­er­ship’ we can clear­ly con­tin­ue to expect from Charles Koch dur­ing his final years. Sure, he’ll give the mea cul­pas too. It’ll just be the gaslight­ing kind of mea cul­pa. And real­ly, what choice do you have when you’re an anar­chic oli­garch who set out to con­quer the world near the end of your life? You exact­ly can’t be hon­est with the pub­lic you set out to con­quer. Of course you’re going to gaslight. Just as you have all along. Whip­ping up a fake reverse racism cri­sis that hap­pens to help you cap­ture the pub­lic school sys­tem is exact­ly what we should have expect­ed from Charles Koch in his 80s. For Charles, it’s going to be gaslight­ing to the grave:

    ...
    As the head of UnKoch My Cam­pus, I have spent years work­ing to research and expose the insid­i­ous nation­wide net­work of think tanks, action groups, and aca­d­e­mics fund­ed by the Kochs. While the net­work is often dif­fuse and hard to track, all of its branch­es pur­port to be ded­i­cat­ed to sup­port­ing free mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism.

    But I have always known, as a Black woman, that the Koch broth­ers’ brand of rad­i­cal cap­i­tal­ism relies on main­tain­ing a sys­tem of white suprema­cy. That real­i­ty has rarely been as clear as now, when the Koch net­work is essen­tial­ly work­ing to man­u­fac­ture a cri­sis to prove its case for pri­va­tiz­ing edu­ca­tion.

    ...

    As my orga­ni­za­tion wrote in our expan­sive report, “Advanc­ing White Suprema­cy,” the Koch net­work has pur­pose­ful­ly exploit­ed this rela­tion­ship for years. The net­work has long-stand­ing ties to white nation­al­ist schol­ars and has used their research to dri­ve poli­cies that serve its eco­nom­ic goals at the expense of peo­ple of col­or, includ­ing efforts to reseg­re­gate our nation’s schools, dis­man­tle vot­ing rights, and expand the prison-indus­tri­al com­plex.

    You can see this play out in how the Koch think tanks we stud­ied pro­pose “solv­ing” the CRT prob­lems. They pro­pose solu­tions like dereg­u­lat­ing teacher licens­ing and relax­ing restric­tions on which pub­lic schools par­ents can send their kids to, both long-stand­ing goals of the orga­ni­za­tion. This dra­mat­ic mis­match between sup­pos­ed­ly exis­ten­tial stakes on the one hand and tech­no­crat­ic fix­es on the oth­er expos­es their true inten­tions. They are incit­ing out­rages against racial jus­tice, and then using that out­rage as a Tro­jan horse for entrench­ing rad­i­cal free mar­ket ide­ol­o­gy in every insti­tu­tion pos­si­ble.
    ...

    But let’s also not fall under the delu­sion that Charles Koch’s inter­est in whip­ping up pan­ic of Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry is pure­ly dri­ven by crass polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions or inter­ests in school pri­va­ti­za­tions. As the fol­low­ing piece reminds us, the Kochs have been at the fore­front of oppos­ing civ­il rights in Amer­i­ca for decades. And while it’s long been known that Charles’s dad Fred was involved with John Birch Soci­ety from its very incep­tion, it’s had­n’t always been appre­ci­at­ed just how deeply com­mit­ted a John Bircher Charles was at the time. From 1961–1968 he was­n’t just a mem­ber but an avid pro­mot­er and fund-rais­er for the group. His home town of Wichi­ta was even hailed as the “pilot” town for the group’s ambi­tions. It was only in 1968, after years of the worst kind of anti-civ­il rights gaslight­ing by the group, that Charles resigned from the group. Why? Because the John Birch Soci­ety sup­port­ed the war in Viet­nam and Charles opposed the war...purely based on finan­cial costs and the risks that tax­es would be hiked and price con­trols imposed to pay for the war. That was where he broke with the John Birch Soci­ety. So when we find Charles’s net­work cre­at­ing a Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry nation­al hoax in 2021, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind he’s oper­at­ing from a play­book he and his father helped to write almost six decades ago:

    The Pro­gres­sive Mag­a­zine

    Like His Dad, Charles Koch Was a Bircher (New Doc­u­ments)

    by Lisa Graves
    July 8, 2014; 6:45 AM

    Today, as announced on Amy Good­man’s Democ­ra­cyNow!, the Pro­gres­sive Inc. and the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy are pub­lish­ing new infor­ma­tion and analy­sis doc­u­ment­ing that bil­lion­aire oil indus­tri­al­ist Charles Koch was an active mem­ber of the con­tro­ver­sial right-wing John Birch Soci­ety dur­ing its active cam­paigns against the civ­il rights move­ment.

    Many com­men­ta­tors have not­ed that the father of the con­tro­ver­sial Koch Broth­ers, Fred Koch, was a leader of the John Birch Soci­ety from its found­ing in 1958 until his death in 1967. But, in fact, Charles Koch fol­lowed his father’s foot­steps into the John Birch Soci­ety for years in Wichi­ta, Kansas, a hub city for the orga­ni­za­tion in that decade of tremen­dous soci­etal unrest as civ­il rights activists chal­lenged racial seg­re­ga­tion.

    Charles Koch was not sim­ply a rank and file mem­ber of the John Birch Soci­ety in name only who paid nom­i­nal dues. He pur­chased and held a “life­time mem­ber­ship” until he resigned in 1968. He also lent his name and his wealth to the oper­a­tions of the John Birch Soci­ety in Wichi­ta, aid­ing its “Amer­i­can Opin­ion” book­store — which was stocked with attacks on the civ­il rights move­ment, Mar­tin Luther King, and Earl War­ren as ele­ments of the com­mu­nist con­spir­a­cy. He fund­ed the John Birch Soci­ety’s pro­mo­tion­al cam­paigns, bought adver­tis­ing in its mag­a­zine, and sup­port­ed its dis­tri­b­u­tion of right-wing radio shows.

    The reac­tionary ideas learned from his father and stoked by his ide­o­log­i­cal ally in Wichi­ta, Bob Love of the Love Box Com­pa­ny, were not sim­ply pass­ing fan­cies of the young scion of an oil for­tune. The tools of the trade he absorbed in his late twen­ties and ear­ly thir­ties appear to con­tin­ue to ani­mate some of his actions decades lat­er, as with his 2014 op-ed in the Wall Street Jour­nal claim­ing those who crit­i­cize him are “col­lec­tivists.” The echoes of his past role rever­ber­ate along with the mil­lions he and his broth­er David Koch have spent fuel­ing a John Birch Soci­ety-like “Tea Par­ty” peo­pled with right-wingers like Birchers of decades past who con­tend against all rea­son­ing that the pres­i­dent is a com­mu­nist. David Koch him­self has claimed Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is a scary “social­ist.” These roots run deep in the Kochs.

    In many ways, the play­book deployed by the Kochs today through myr­i­ad orga­ni­za­tions resem­bles a more sophis­ti­cat­ed (and expen­sive) play­book of the John Birch Soci­ety back then. Even the recent announce­ment of the Kochs to give a $25 mil­lion gift to the Unit­ed Negro Col­lege Fund (with strings attached requir­ing the recruit­ment of free mar­ket African Amer­i­can col­lege stu­dents) echoes that past. In 1964, in the face of crit­i­cism for its assault on the civ­il rights move­ment, the John Birch Soci­ety also fund­ed a schol­ar­ship pro­gram to give col­lege funds to African Amer­i­cans who were not active in the civ­il rights move­ment, accord­ing to doc­u­ments the Progressive.org/Center for Media and Democ­ra­cy has obtained.

    Below is an excerpt of a new sto­ry just pub­lished by The Pro­gres­sive mag­a­zine in its new­ly redesigned sum­mer issue, sum­ma­riz­ing some of the long-term research of the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy, which is now part of the Pro­gres­sive Inc. The com­plete ver­sion of that sto­ry, which sheds new light on the polit­i­cal activ­i­ties and envi­ron­men­tal record of the Kochs, is avail­able in the digi­tial edi­tion of the mag­a­zine.

    Below the excerpt are some key quotes from the John Birch Soci­ety’s attacks on the civ­il rights move­ment and its out­landish claims about the cir­cum­stances faced by African Amer­i­cans in the 1960s. When Charles Koch resigned from the John Birch Soci­ety in 1968, he did so along with run­ning a full-page ad tak­ing the oppo­site posi­tion of the John Birch Soci­ety on the Viet­nam War. But, he made no sim­i­lar ges­ture express­ing any oppo­si­tion to its long-stand­ing, high pri­or­i­ty anti-civ­il rights agen­da, which his finan­cial sup­port made pos­si­ble.

    In leav­ing the John Birch Soci­ety, Charles Koch had become enam­ored with a more anar­chi­cal expres­sion of his attach­ment to unreg­u­lat­ed cap­i­tal­ism that at its root oppos­es gov­ern­ment action oth­er than that which is nec­es­sary to pro­tect prop­er­ty and free­dom of con­tract, two the­o­ret­i­cal “ideals” at odds with the very kind of anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws, labor laws, and social pro­grams that the John Birch Soci­ety attacked. Since the 1960s, Charles Koch and his broth­er David have spent untold mil­lions to move these relat­ed the­o­ries into the main­stream. And, like the John Birch Soci­ety spear­head­ed in recruit­ing their father, they too have done so by recruit­ing oth­er indus­tri­al­ists, as with their bil­lion­aire “Free­dom Part­ners,” to join them in fund­ing efforts to dra­mat­i­cal­ly change this coun­try by try­ing to takeover Con­gress and the states and rewrite the laws to suit their own inter­ests.

    —-

    From The Pro­gres­sive mag­a­zine July-August 2014:

    In 1961, at the age of twen­ty-six, Charles moved home to Wichi­ta, Kansas, to work for Rock Island Oil and Refin­ing Com­pa­ny, which was led by his father, Fred Koch, who was on the nation­al coun­cil of the John Birch Soci­ety. Charles sub­se­quent­ly opened a John Birch Soci­ety book­store in Wichi­ta with a friend of his father, Bob Love, the own­er of the Love Box Com­pa­ny in Wichi­ta, accord­ing to Dan Schulman’s Sons of Wichi­ta.

    The John Birch Society’s “Amer­i­can Opin­ion Book­stores” were stocked with mate­r­i­al oppos­ing the civ­il rights move­ment

    Birchers had put up bill­boards in Kansas and else­where call­ing for the impeach­ment of Earl War­ren, the Chief Jus­tice of the U.S. Supreme Court who had ordered the deseg­re­ga­tion of the pub­lic schools in Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion of Tope­ka, Kansas.

    There’s no indi­ca­tion that Fred or Charles object­ed to the Birch cam­paign to impeach War­ren.

    There is no indi­ca­tion they object­ed when it ran ads in Dal­las in 1963 with Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy’s head depict­ed like two mug shot pho­tos, with the word “Trea­son” below, short­ly before the assas­si­na­tion of the Pres­i­dent ...

    Or when it opposed the pas­sage of the land­mark Civ­il Rights Act of 1964, based on the Bircher claim that the move­ment was cre­at­ed as a forty-year front for the com­mu­nists.

    Or when it sup­port­ed bill­boards call­ing Mar­tin Luther King a com­mu­nist.

    None of these things was cit­ed by Charles Koch and Bob Love in their res­ig­na­tion from the John Birch Soci­ety in 1968, accord­ing to cor­re­spon­dence with Robert Welch, who had launched the orga­ni­za­tion a decade ear­li­er with Fred and a few oth­er busi­ness­men.

    Odd­ly, it was Welch’s “Win the War” strat­e­gy of sign­ing up peo­ple to sup­port the Viet­nam War that caused the breakup between Charles Koch and the John Birch Soci­ety.

    In 1968, Charles Koch bought a full-page ad, “Let’s Get Out of Viet­nam Now,” based on the iso­la­tion­ism of a com­pet­ing flank of the far right move­ment....

    Charles also gave pub­lic speech­es espous­ing the view that government’s only prop­er role was to police the inter­fer­ence with the free market—an ide­ol­o­gy that inher­ent­ly rejects child labor laws, min­i­mum wages or safe­ty rules, the pro­tec­tion of union rights, and more....

    Find out more about what hap­pened next (like Charles Koch’s call for a Sec­ond Amer­i­can rev­o­lu­tion and the Sen­ate inves­ti­ga­tion of a pre-cur­sor to the Kochs’ Free­dom Part­ners oper­a­tion) in the dig­i­tal edi­tion of the mag­a­zine. Or keep read­ing below to learn more details about the kind of claims the John Birch Soci­ety made that did not pro­voke a counter-ad by Charles Koch, like the out­ra­geous claim that pho­tos of civ­il rights pro­tes­tors attacked by dogs were shams. Select research doc­u­ments have also been post­ed below, although more are avail­able. Addi­tion­al new sto­ries about the Koch empire and activ­i­ties will be gath­ered in a new resource for con­cerned cit­i­zens called KochExposed.org.

    TIMELINE OF EXCERPTS: The Koch Fam­i­ly, the John Birch Soci­ety, and Civ­il Rights

    1958

    Fred Koch attend­ed the ini­tial meet­ing of right-wing busi­ness­men called by Robert Welch, who pro­pos­es cre­at­ing the John Birch Soci­ety to fight the spread of com­mu­nism in the U.S., after the igno­min­ious death of Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy, who was cen­sured. Fred joins the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, which met month­ly to plan Birch Soci­ety strat­e­gy.

    1961

    Charles Koch moved home to Wichi­ta to work for his dad and joins the John Birch Soci­ety, which his father, Fred, co-found­ed. (Accord­ing to Sons of Wichi­ta, Charles joined the Birch Soci­ety when he moved home.)

    That year, Fred Koch pub­lished and cir­cu­lat­ed his pam­phlet, “A Busi­ness­man Looks at Com­mu­nism,” which claimed the U.S. Supreme Court was pro-com­mu­nist, that Pres­i­dent Dwight Eisen­how­er (the for­mer allied com­man­der in WWII) was soft on com­mu­nism, that the pub­lic schools used many com­mu­nist books, and that many teach­ers were com­mies.

    Also that year, David Koch – a stu­dent at MIT –helps incite an anti-com­mu­nist, anti-Cas­tro protest that turns into a riot where stu­dents are arrest­ed.

    Also that year, African Amer­i­can and white “Free­dom Rid­ers” began trav­el­ing between the South­ern states to test the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Boy­ton v. Vir­ginia that the Equal Pro­tec­tion clause of the Four­teenth Amend­ment barred laws requir­ing seg­re­gat­ed trav­el inter­state. The bus­es were attacked by white mobs and the Ku Klux Klan.

    The John Birch Soci­ety announced that its top pri­or­i­ty that year was the launch of its “Move­ment to Impeach Earl War­ren,” the Chief Jus­tice of the U.S. Supreme Court, appoint­ed by Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er; War­ren was pre­vi­ous­ly a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor.

    One of the core doc­u­ments pro­mot­ed that year and for years after­ward was by the founder of the John Birch Soci­ety, Robert Hen­ry Win­borne Welch (of the Junior Mints/Sugar Babies can­dy for­tune). That doc­u­ment was titled “A Let­ter to the South on Seg­re­ga­tion” (1956). It claimed that the “easy-going col­ored man” of the South will be “eas­i­ly mis­led by agi­ta­tors,” that the phrase “civ­il rights” is a com­mu­nist slo­gan, and that the push for racial inte­gra­tion “embar­rassed” good African Amer­i­cans.

    The John Birch Society’s Move­ment to Impeach Earl War­ren also pro­mot­ed Ros­alie Gordon’s defense of seg­re­gat­ed pub­lic schools “Nine Men Against Amer­i­ca” and the right-wing Reg­n­ery pub­lish­ing house’s book by James Kil­patrick (“The Sov­er­eign States”) defend­ing the South­ern States’ “right” “to believe that they were pro­ceed­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly in erect­ing and main­tain­ing a sys­tem of racial­ly sep­a­rate schools.” The Birch Soci­ety also pro­mot­ed the extrem­ist and seg­re­ga­tion­ist “Dan Smoot Report.”

    In 1961, James Mered­ith, who had served in the U.S. Air Force, asked Medgar Evers for help after he was denied admis­sion to Ole Miss, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi. Evers asked Thur­good Mar­shall to take Meredith’s case and the NAACP filed a fed­er­al law­suit.

    Accord­ing­ly to a Time mag­a­zine pro­file that year, the John Birch Soci­ety launched read­ing rooms and book stores “manned … by local mem­bers of our orga­ni­za­tion” pro­mot­ing the 100 books approved by the Soci­ety to be sold, along with mem­ber­ship, posters, pam­phlets, and Birch mag­a­zines. The approved mate­r­i­al includ­ed the Bircher month­ly mag­a­zine, “Amer­i­can Opin­ion,” and “Dan Smoot’s Report,” which ran numer­ous pieces attack­ing the inte­gra­tion of schools. The John Birch Soci­ety also pushed many right-wing radio shows.

    Accord­ing to Time magazine’s pro­file, Wichi­ta was des­ig­nat­ed a “pilot” town for the John Birch Soci­ety and it men­tioned Fred Koch’s lead­er­ship of the orga­ni­za­tion. Pro­fes­sors at the city col­lege, Wichi­ta Uni­ver­si­ty, report­ed being harassed by Birchers for their books and what they taught. At a major Birch event there, Fred Koch intro­duced the John Birch Soci­ety founder, Bob Welch, at a town hall meet­ing of 2,000 peo­ple. Friend of the Koch fam­i­ly and fel­low Bircher, Bob Love of the Love Box Com­pa­ny shut down a news film­ing of the speech in which Welch was tape record­ed claim­ing “The Protes­tant min­istry is more heav­i­ly infil­trat­ed by Com­mu­nists than any oth­er pro­fes­sion in Amer­i­ca.” The Wichi­ta Eagle-Bea­con edi­to­ri­al­ized that “Welch is sell­ing snake oil, and that a lot of peo­ple are buy­ing it.”

    1962

    In 1962, based on the rea­son­ing in the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion, a fed­er­al appeals court ordered that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi (Ole Miss) admit African Amer­i­can stu­dent James Mered­ith. Mississippi’s seg­re­ga­tion­ist gov­er­nor, Ross Bar­nett, respond­ed by try­ing to stop the inte­gra­tion of the state col­lege.

    When James Mered­ith sought to enroll in Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Gov­er­nor Bar­nett per­son­al­ly blocked his entrance and was joined by World War II vet­er­an Major Gen­er­al Edwin Walk­er, who issued this state­ment: “I am in Mis­sis­sip­pi beside Gov­er­nor Ross Bar­nett. I call for a nation­al protest against the con­spir­a­cy from with­in. Ral­ly to the cause of free­dom in right­eous indig­na­tion, vio­lent vocal protest, and bit­ter silence under the flag of Mis­sis­sip­pi at the use of Fed­er­al troops….” Riots ensued and two peo­ple were killed. Only Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy’s exec­u­tive order for the Nation­al Guard to escort Mered­ith allowed him to enroll in the state uni­ver­si­ty and he had to have ongo­ing pro­tec­tion from fed­er­al agents.

    The John Birch Soci­ety hailed Gen­er­al Walk­er as a hero for stand­ing up in Oxford to what it described as the com­mu­nist cre­ation of the civ­il rights move­ment. The Dan Smoot Report pro­mot­ed by the John Birch Soci­ety claimed the deseg­re­ga­tion order was ille­gal and equat­ed the whites protest­ing Meredith’s admis­sion to the stu­dents protest­ing in Hun­gary in 1956. It also defend­ed Gen­er­al Walk­er as stand­ing up to Amer­i­can “tyran­ny.”

    The John Birch Soci­ety pro­mot­ed a pam­phlet by Alan Stang called “It’s Very Sim­ple” attack­ing the civ­il rights move­ment. Among oth­er things, Stang called Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., a com­mu­nist and claimed that his goal was to pres­sure Con­gress “to install more col­lec­tivism.” Stang, in John Birch Soci­ety pub­li­ca­tions, claimed Rosa Parks was trained by com­mu­nists before she refused to move to the back of the bus in Mont­gomery in 1955.

    ...

    1963

    Mar­tin Luther King helped orga­nize demon­stra­tions in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma, was arrest­ed, and wrote on non-vio­lence and injus­tice in “Let­ter from a Birm­ing­ham Jail” (which was pub­lished by The Pro­gres­sive along with oth­er of his writ­ings).

    The John Birch Soci­ety claimed that its “detailed study of ‘the life and lies’ of Mar­tin Luther King … will con­vince any rea­son­able Amer­i­can that this man is not work­ing for, but against, the real wel­fare and best inter­ests of either the Negroes in the Unit­ed States, or of the Unit­ed States as a whole.” (Robert Welch, “Two Rev­o­lu­tions at Once” pub­lished in 1965) In its pub­li­ca­tions of Alan Stang’s writ­ings the John Birch Soci­ety claimed Mar­tin Luther King was the “biggest” “liar in the coun­try” and what “he real­ly wants is to be a black plan­ta­tion boss giv­ing orders to ‘his peo­ple.”’

    Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s Mis­sis­sip­pi field staffer, is assas­si­nat­ed at his home.

    Bull Con­nor direct­ed Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma, police to use attack dogs and high-pres­sure fire hoses on civ­il rights marchers, includ­ing chil­dren.

    The John Birch Soci­ety claimed that “The truth is that the infa­mous pic­ture of a dog attack­ing a Negro, while the dog was held in leash by a Birm­ing­ham police offi­cer, was so care­ful­ly rehearsed until the ‘civ­il rights’ agi­ta­tors got exact­ly the pic­ture they want­ed, that the leg of the Negro victim’s trousers had even been cut with a razor in advance, so that it would fall apart more read­i­ly at the first touch by the dog. Yet this pic­ture was shown on the front pages of news­pa­pers all over the Unit­ed States – most of which did not know it was a con­trived pho­ny – and became an extreme­ly impor­tant part of the Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da about ‘civ­il rights.’” (Robert Welch, “Two Rev­o­lu­tions at Once” pub­lished in 1965)

    In July 1963, the John Birch Soci­ety launched the “Sup­port Your Local Police” Move­ment pro­vid­ing bumper stick­ers, win­dow stick­ers, and fly­ers through its book­store and by mail. The posters often appeared with “Impeach Earl War­ren” bill­boards and tout­ed the need for “law and order” in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma, and oth­er cities.

    Thou­sands trav­el to Wash­ing­ton, DC, for the March on Wash­ing­ton for Jobs where Rev­erend King deliv­ers his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al.

    As seg­re­ga­tion­ist Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond spoke out against civ­il rights and the “col­lec­tivist” men­ace on the Sen­ate floor, the John Birch Soci­ety invites him to join its coun­cil, but he declines to retain his “inde­pen­dence.”

    Four lit­tle girls are mur­dered in a bomb­ing at the Six­teenth Street Bap­tist Church in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma.

    A John Birch Soci­ety front group runs adver­tise­ments in Dal­las before Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s arrival, depict­ing his head in mug shots with the word “TREASON” below, along with claims that Kennedy is guilty of trea­son for pur­port­ed­ly being soft on com­mu­nism.

    Pres­i­dent Kennedy was assas­si­nat­ed in Dal­las, Texas.

    Fred Koch then helped spear­head a nation­al adver­tise­ment in the New York Times blam­ing Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion on the com­mu­nists.

    1964

    John Birch Soci­ety ads blam­ing com­mu­nists for the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy run nation­al­ly. The Soci­ety also pro­motes mate­r­i­al called “Marx­man­ship in Dal­las.”

    ...

    Con­gress passed the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964 over the objec­tions of South Car­oli­na Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond and oth­er racists.

    That year, the Supreme Court also issued its rul­ing in Reynolds v. Simms, which is famous for its prin­ci­ple of “one per­son, one vote.”

    The John Birch Soci­ety cre­at­ed a “schol­ar­ship” fund for anti-com­mu­nist/­cap­i­tal­ist African Amer­i­can stu­dents, and its first recip­i­ent received $1000 in Sep­tem­ber 1964.

    1965

    The John Birch Soci­ety touts that 26 mil­lion Amer­i­cans vot­ed for a con­ser­v­a­tive, Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter, even though Gold­wa­ter crit­i­cized the Soci­ety.

    Jim­my Lee Jack­son, an unarmed African Amer­i­can who was protest­ing the arrest of civ­il rights work­er James Edward Orange, was killed by police. Hun­dreds of SNCC activists, includ­ing John Lewis, marched from Sel­ma to Mont­gomery in protest, and were stopped on the bridge by police wield­ing fire hoses, clubs, and tear gas. Mar­tin Luther King joins them.

    The John Birch Society’s main pub­li­ca­tion claims that “the march from Sel­ma to Mont­gomery led by Mar­tin Luther King” was a “sham and farce.”

    Con­gress pass­es the Vot­ing Rights Act of 1965.

    The John Birch Soci­ety claimed that the few “hand­i­caps to Negro vot­ing” “could be and were being cor­rect­ed” with­out fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion and that “To tear a whole great nation to pieces, and to try to plunge a large part of it into civ­il war, over the few such injus­tices as do exist, is on a par with sink­ing a mighty ship in order to get a rat out of the scup­per.” (Robert Welch, “Two Rev­o­lu­tions at Once” in Amer­i­can Opin­ion and then pub­lished as a stand-alone John Birch Soci­ety pam­phlet in 1966.)

    Among oth­er things in 1965, Charles Koch helped pro­mote the John Birch Soci­ety book­store in Wichi­ta, which was man­aged by Bob Love. The book­store ped­dled John Birch Soci­ety pam­phlets like Earl Lively’s “The Inva­sion of Mis­sis­sip­pi,” which claims the racial inte­gra­tion of Ole Miss was unlaw­ful and sides with the white racist pro­tes­tors. Oth­er titles includ­ed Robert Welch’s pam­phlet, “A Let­ter to the South on Seg­re­ga­tion” and a tract titled “Is the Supreme Court Pro-Com­mu­nist.” It also offered “Sup­port Your Local Police” stick­ers from the cam­paign begun in 1963.

    Charles Koch’s con­fi­dante and assis­tant George Pear­son joined the John Birch Soci­ety and began vol­un­teer­ing at the Amer­i­can Opin­ion Book­store in Wichi­ta, too.

    The John Birch Soci­ety also pro­mot­ed its new “What’s Wrong with Civ­il Rights” cam­paign in its book­stores and news­pa­pers. The cam­paign claimed African Amer­i­cans are bet­ter off in the U.S. than in oth­er coun­tries and have per­son­al secu­ri­ty on par with whites:

    “The aver­age Amer­i­can Negro has a tremen­dous­ly high­er mate­r­i­al stan­dard of liv­ing than Negroes any­where else; and far high­er, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth’s pop­u­la­tion of all races com­bined.”

    “The aver­age Amer­i­can Negro not only has a far high­er stan­dard of lit­er­a­cy, and bet­ter edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties, than Negroes any­where else; but a high­er lev­el of lit­er­a­cy, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth’s pop­u­la­tion of all races com­bined.”

    “The aver­age Amer­i­can Negro has com­plete free­dom of reli­gion, free­dom of move­ment, and free­dom to run his own life as he pleas­es.”

    “His secu­ri­ty of per­son, and assur­ance of hon­or­able treat­ment by his fel­low cit­i­zens in all of the util­i­tar­i­an rela­tion­ships of the liv­ing, have been exact­ly on par with those of his white neigh­bors.”

    “[T]he agi­ta­tors behind the civ­il rights move­ment demand com­plete and absolute dis­re­gard for those dif­fer­ences [‘in the eco­nom­ic, lit­er­ate, and social lev­el of the two races” and “the nat­ur­al or human-nat­ur­al results of these dif­fer­ences”], and a pre­tense that they do not exist, must be forced by fed­er­al law upon the total pop­u­la­tion every­where, and with respect to every activ­i­ty of human life.”

    “[T]he civ­il rights move­ment in the Unit­ed States, with all of its grow­ing agi­ta­tion and riots and bit­ter­ness, and insid­i­ous steps towards the appear­ance of a civ­il war, has not been infil­trat­ed by the Com­mu­nists, as you fre­quent­ly hear. It has been delib­er­ate­ly and almost whol­ly cre­at­ed by the Com­mu­nists …”

    “[T]he Amer­i­can Negroes as a whole did not plan this, have not want­ed any part of it, and are no big­ger dupes on yield­ing to the pro­pa­gan­da and coer­cion of the com­symps among them, than are the white peo­ple of the Unit­ed States in swal­low­ing por­tions of that pro­pa­gan­da labeled ide­al­ism.”

    Also, in 1965, the riots in Watts in Los Ange­les over the treat­ment of an African Amer­i­can and his fam­i­ly by a police offi­cer result­ed in more than 30 deaths, pri­mar­i­ly of African Amer­i­cans.

    1966

    James Mered­ith is shot dur­ing the “March against Fear” to reg­is­ter African Amer­i­can vot­ers.

    The John Birch Soci­ety con­tin­ued its cam­paign to Impeach Earl War­ren and also pushed to raise $12 mil­lion to take over Con­gress through launch­ing polit­i­cal action in 325 dis­tricts.

    Charles Koch sent out a fundrais­ing let­ter with Bob Love to raise mon­ey for the John Birch Soci­ety. They said they had con­tributed $3500 toward the goal of $5000 (the aver­age annu­al wages of an Amer­i­can work­er that year).

    The John Birch Soci­ety also pro­mot­ed its “Lib­er­ty Amend­ment,” oppos­ing grad­u­at­ed income tax­es as a marx­ist plot to impose col­lec­tivism. It also took out “Sup­port Police” ads and opposed “Civil­ian Review Boards” that would impose cit­i­zen over­sight against police bru­tal­i­ty.

    That year, with his father ill, Charles Koch took on the lead­er­ship of the fam­i­ly cor­po­ra­tion that would become Koch Indus­tries.

    1967

    The Supreme Court struck down laws against inter-racial mar­riage in Lov­ing v. Vir­ginia.

    Thur­good Mar­shall was appoint­ed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son.

    Mar­tin Luther King begins the “Poor People’s Cam­paign.”

    The John Birch Soci­ety calls Pres­i­dent Johnson’s “War on Pover­ty” a scam to pro­mote col­lec­tivism and pro­mot­ed Dan Smoot’s claim that it would cre­ate a social­ist dic­ta­tor­ship.

    Fred Koch died on Novem­ber 17, 1967. Dona­tions in trib­ute were request­ed by the fam­i­ly in his name for Wichita’s John Birch Soci­ety Amer­i­can Opin­ion Book­store.

    Charles Koch became Chair­man of the fam­i­ly busi­ness.

    1968

    Mar­tin Luther King came to speak dur­ing the Mem­phis san­i­ta­tion work­ers strike, and he was assas­si­nat­ed.

    April 11, 1968, Con­gress passed the Civ­il Rights Act of 1968 bar­ring dis­crim­i­na­tion in hous­ing.

    The John Birch Soci­ety pro­mot­ed oppo­si­tion to anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion leg­is­la­tion, with pub­li­ca­tions like “Open Occu­pan­cy v. Forced Hous­ing,” which extolled “free­dom of choice” and prop­er­ty rights.

    On May 19, 1968, Charles Koch and Bob Love ran a full-page ad in the Wichi­ta Eagle head­lined “Let’s Get Out of Viet­nam Now,” call­ing for an uncon­di­tion­al pull­out because it was too expen­sive. Love also stat­ed that pulling out nec­es­sary to pre­vent the U.S. from adapt­ing to com­mu­nism philo­soph­i­cal­ly through wage and price con­trols and tax­es to pay for the war: “This coun­try will sure­ly vote for a dic­ta­tor, if the chaos and con­fu­sion of infla­tion con­tin­ue to mount.”

    Charles Koch resigned his “life mem­ber­ship” in the John Birch Soci­ety and also with­drew his adver­tis­ing from the John Birch Society’s “Amer­i­can Opin­ion” month­ly mag­a­zine and from sup­port­ing its radio pro­grams. Robert Welch wrote to ask him to recon­sid­er, but he did not do so.

    Charles Koch announced he was renam­ing the fam­i­ly com­pa­ny “Koch Indus­tries.”

    ———–

    “Like His Dad, Charles Koch Was a Bircher (New Doc­u­ments)” by Lisa Graves; The Pro­gres­sive Mag­a­zine; 07/08/2014

    “Many com­men­ta­tors have not­ed that the father of the con­tro­ver­sial Koch Broth­ers, Fred Koch, was a leader of the John Birch Soci­ety from its found­ing in 1958 until his death in 1967. But, in fact, Charles Koch fol­lowed his father’s foot­steps into the John Birch Soci­ety for years in Wichi­ta, Kansas, a hub city for the orga­ni­za­tion in that decade of tremen­dous soci­etal unrest as civ­il rights activists chal­lenged racial seg­re­ga­tion.

    It was­n’t just dad­dy Fred. Charles was an avid John Bircher activist from 1961 until his res­ig­na­tion in 1968. Foment­ing against civ­il rights was a core mes­sage of the group the entire time. And as we saw, when Charles did final­ly leave in 1968, it was­n’t in oppo­si­tion to the John Birch Soci­ety’s anti-civ­il rights plat­form. The group sim­ply was­n’t anar­chic and anti-gov­ern­ment enough for Charles Koch:

    ...
    The reac­tionary ideas learned from his father and stoked by his ide­o­log­i­cal ally in Wichi­ta, Bob Love of the Love Box Com­pa­ny, were not sim­ply pass­ing fan­cies of the young scion of an oil for­tune. The tools of the trade he absorbed in his late twen­ties and ear­ly thir­ties appear to con­tin­ue to ani­mate some of his actions decades lat­er, as with his 2014 op-ed in the Wall Street Jour­nal claim­ing those who crit­i­cize him are “col­lec­tivists.” The echoes of his past role rever­ber­ate along with the mil­lions he and his broth­er David Koch have spent fuel­ing a John Birch Soci­ety-like “Tea Par­ty” peo­pled with right-wingers like Birchers of decades past who con­tend against all rea­son­ing that the pres­i­dent is a com­mu­nist. David Koch him­self has claimed Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is a scary “social­ist.” These roots run deep in the Kochs.

    In many ways, the play­book deployed by the Kochs today through myr­i­ad orga­ni­za­tions resem­bles a more sophis­ti­cat­ed (and expen­sive) play­book of the John Birch Soci­ety back then. Even the recent announce­ment of the Kochs to give a $25 mil­lion gift to the Unit­ed Negro Col­lege Fund (with strings attached requir­ing the recruit­ment of free mar­ket African Amer­i­can col­lege stu­dents) echoes that past. In 1964, in the face of crit­i­cism for its assault on the civ­il rights move­ment, the John Birch Soci­ety also fund­ed a schol­ar­ship pro­gram to give col­lege funds to African Amer­i­cans who were not active in the civ­il rights move­ment, accord­ing to doc­u­ments the Progressive.org/Center for Media and Democ­ra­cy has obtained.

    ...

    Below the excerpt are some key quotes from the John Birch Soci­ety’s attacks on the civ­il rights move­ment and its out­landish claims about the cir­cum­stances faced by African Amer­i­cans in the 1960s. When Charles Koch resigned from the John Birch Soci­ety in 1968, he did so along with run­ning a full-page ad tak­ing the oppo­site posi­tion of the John Birch Soci­ety on the Viet­nam War. But, he made no sim­i­lar ges­ture express­ing any oppo­si­tion to its long-stand­ing, high pri­or­i­ty anti-civ­il rights agen­da, which his finan­cial sup­port made pos­si­ble.

    In leav­ing the John Birch Soci­ety, Charles Koch had become enam­ored with a more anar­chi­cal expres­sion of his attach­ment to unreg­u­lat­ed cap­i­tal­ism that at its root oppos­es gov­ern­ment action oth­er than that which is nec­es­sary to pro­tect prop­er­ty and free­dom of con­tract, two the­o­ret­i­cal “ideals” at odds with the very kind of anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws, labor laws, and social pro­grams that the John Birch Soci­ety attacked. Since the 1960s, Charles Koch and his broth­er David have spent untold mil­lions to move these relat­ed the­o­ries into the main­stream. And, like the John Birch Soci­ety spear­head­ed in recruit­ing their father, they too have done so by recruit­ing oth­er indus­tri­al­ists, as with their bil­lion­aire “Free­dom Part­ners,” to join them in fund­ing efforts to dra­mat­i­cal­ly change this coun­try by try­ing to takeover Con­gress and the states and rewrite the laws to suit their own inter­ests.

    ...

    The Kochs were so inte­gral to the John Birch Soci­ety’s oper­a­tions that Fred attend­ed the ini­tial meet­ing where the for­ma­tion of the group was announced and joined the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee. Wichi­ta was even con­sid­ered a “pilot” town for the group’s ambi­tions. The Kochs were like the liv­ing embod­i­ment of what the group stood for:

    ...
    1958

    Fred Koch attend­ed the ini­tial meet­ing of right-wing busi­ness­men called by Robert Welch, who pro­pos­es cre­at­ing the John Birch Soci­ety to fight the spread of com­mu­nism in the U.S., after the igno­min­ious death of Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy, who was cen­sured. Fred joins the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, which met month­ly to plan Birch Soci­ety strat­e­gy.

    1961

    Charles Koch moved home to Wichi­ta to work for his dad and joins the John Birch Soci­ety, which his father, Fred, co-found­ed. (Accord­ing to Sons of Wichi­ta, Charles joined the Birch Soci­ety when he moved home.)

    ...

    One of the core doc­u­ments pro­mot­ed that year and for years after­ward was by the founder of the John Birch Soci­ety, Robert Hen­ry Win­borne Welch (of the Junior Mints/Sugar Babies can­dy for­tune). That doc­u­ment was titled “A Let­ter to the South on Seg­re­ga­tion” (1956). It claimed that the “easy-going col­ored man” of the South will be “eas­i­ly mis­led by agi­ta­tors,” that the phrase “civ­il rights” is a com­mu­nist slo­gan, and that the push for racial inte­gra­tion “embar­rassed” good African Amer­i­cans.

    The John Birch Society’s Move­ment to Impeach Earl War­ren also pro­mot­ed Ros­alie Gordon’s defense of seg­re­gat­ed pub­lic schools “Nine Men Against Amer­i­ca” and the right-wing Reg­n­ery pub­lish­ing house’s book by James Kil­patrick (“The Sov­er­eign States”) defend­ing the South­ern States’ “right” “to believe that they were pro­ceed­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly in erect­ing and main­tain­ing a sys­tem of racial­ly sep­a­rate schools.” The Birch Soci­ety also pro­mot­ed the extrem­ist and seg­re­ga­tion­ist “Dan Smoot Report.”

    ...

    Accord­ing to Time magazine’s pro­file, Wichi­ta was des­ig­nat­ed a “pilot” town for the John Birch Soci­ety and it men­tioned Fred Koch’s lead­er­ship of the orga­ni­za­tion. Pro­fes­sors at the city col­lege, Wichi­ta Uni­ver­si­ty, report­ed being harassed by Birchers for their books and what they taught. At a major Birch event there, Fred Koch intro­duced the John Birch Soci­ety founder, Bob Welch, at a town hall meet­ing of 2,000 peo­ple. Friend of the Koch fam­i­ly and fel­low Bircher, Bob Love of the Love Box Com­pa­ny shut down a news film­ing of the speech in which Welch was tape record­ed claim­ing “The Protes­tant min­istry is more heav­i­ly infil­trat­ed by Com­mu­nists than any oth­er pro­fes­sion in Amer­i­ca.” The Wichi­ta Eagle-Bea­con edi­to­ri­al­ized that “Welch is sell­ing snake oil, and that a lot of peo­ple are buy­ing it.”
    ...

    The gaslight­ing was on full dis­play in 1963, when the group claimed black pro­tes­tors attacked by police dogs had actu­al­ly care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed the entire scene. It would­n’t be anoth­er five years before Charles left the group:

    ...
    1963

    Mar­tin Luther King helped orga­nize demon­stra­tions in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma, was arrest­ed, and wrote on non-vio­lence and injus­tice in “Let­ter from a Birm­ing­ham Jail” (which was pub­lished by The Pro­gres­sive along with oth­er of his writ­ings).

    The John Birch Soci­ety claimed that its “detailed study of ‘the life and lies’ of Mar­tin Luther King … will con­vince any rea­son­able Amer­i­can that this man is not work­ing for, but against, the real wel­fare and best inter­ests of either the Negroes in the Unit­ed States, or of the Unit­ed States as a whole.” (Robert Welch, “Two Rev­o­lu­tions at Once” pub­lished in 1965) In its pub­li­ca­tions of Alan Stang’s writ­ings the John Birch Soci­ety claimed Mar­tin Luther King was the “biggest” “liar in the coun­try” and what “he real­ly wants is to be a black plan­ta­tion boss giv­ing orders to ‘his peo­ple.”’

    Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s Mis­sis­sip­pi field staffer, is assas­si­nat­ed at his home.

    Bull Con­nor direct­ed Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma, police to use attack dogs and high-pres­sure fire hoses on civ­il rights marchers, includ­ing chil­dren.

    The John Birch Soci­ety claimed that “The truth is that the infa­mous pic­ture of a dog attack­ing a Negro, while the dog was held in leash by a Birm­ing­ham police offi­cer, was so care­ful­ly rehearsed until the ‘civ­il rights’ agi­ta­tors got exact­ly the pic­ture they want­ed, that the leg of the Negro victim’s trousers had even been cut with a razor in advance, so that it would fall apart more read­i­ly at the first touch by the dog. Yet this pic­ture was shown on the front pages of news­pa­pers all over the Unit­ed States – most of which did not know it was a con­trived pho­ny – and became an extreme­ly impor­tant part of the Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da about ‘civ­il rights.’” (Robert Welch, “Two Rev­o­lu­tions at Once” pub­lished in 1965)

    ...

    And when Charles final­ly left the group in 1968, it had absolute­ly noth­ing to do with the ongo­ing oppo­si­tion to civ­il rights. Charles opposed the Viet­nam War...on the basis of finan­cial cost of the war alone. This was his break­ing point: hav­ing to pay the finan­cial costs of war:

    ...
    1968

    Mar­tin Luther King came to speak dur­ing the Mem­phis san­i­ta­tion work­ers strike, and he was assas­si­nat­ed.

    April 11, 1968, Con­gress passed the Civ­il Rights Act of 1968 bar­ring dis­crim­i­na­tion in hous­ing.

    The John Birch Soci­ety pro­mot­ed oppo­si­tion to anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion leg­is­la­tion, with pub­li­ca­tions like “Open Occu­pan­cy v. Forced Hous­ing,” which extolled “free­dom of choice” and prop­er­ty rights.

    On May 19, 1968, Charles Koch and Bob Love ran a full-page ad in the Wichi­ta Eagle head­lined “Let’s Get Out of Viet­nam Now,” call­ing for an uncon­di­tion­al pull­out because it was too expen­sive. Love also stat­ed that pulling out nec­es­sary to pre­vent the U.S. from adapt­ing to com­mu­nism philo­soph­i­cal­ly through wage and price con­trols and tax­es to pay for the war: “This coun­try will sure­ly vote for a dic­ta­tor, if the chaos and con­fu­sion of infla­tion con­tin­ue to mount.”

    Charles Koch resigned his “life mem­ber­ship” in the John Birch Soci­ety and also with­drew his adver­tis­ing from the John Birch Society’s “Amer­i­can Opin­ion” month­ly mag­a­zine and from sup­port­ing its radio pro­grams. Robert Welch wrote to ask him to recon­sid­er, but he did not do so.

    Charles Koch announced he was renam­ing the fam­i­ly com­pa­ny “Koch Indus­tries.”
    ...

    So the next time you hear about the lat­est exam­ple of some­one on Fox News mak­ing anoth­er bad-faithed claim about ‘Cul­tur­al Marx­ism’ being taught in US schools and chil­dren being taught to hate white peo­ple, don’t for­get that some of the wealth­i­est peo­ple on in the US were behind the John Birch Soci­ety’s anti-civ­il rights cam­paign in the 1960s and their unre­pen­tant chil­dren went on to build the con­tem­po­rary Repub­li­can Par­ty and con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. His­to­ry is echo­ing at us. Or cyn­i­cal­ly gaslight­ing us, as the case may be.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 30, 2021, 3:11 pm

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