PhilPaine.com

Charles and David Koch are the mul­ti-mul­ti-bil­lion­aires who cur­rent­ly exer­cise strate­gic con­trol over the Repub­li­can Par­ty in the Unit­ed States, and, through a vast, labyrinthine net­work of foun­da­tions and dum­my cor­po­ra­tions (known to jour­nal­ists as the “Kochto­pus”), con­trol the Tea Par­ty move­ment, most of the key Con­ser­v­a­tive think tanks, and the pho­ny “Lib­er­tar­i­an” move­ment. Cana­di­ans have as much to fear from the Koch broth­ers as Amer­i­cans do. They have long been the prin­ci­pal con­sumers of Cana­di­an “dirty oil.” Their Pine Bend, Min­neso­ta facil­i­ties pipe it in to pro­duce pet­coke, a nasty pol­luter that is ille­gal in the Unit­ed States, then sell it to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty in Bei­jing. They have qui­et­ly acquired leas­es for 1.1 mil­lion acres of Alber­ta oil fields and have near­ly dou­ble the direct hold­ings that Exxon­Mo­bil has. In May, Koch Oil Sands Oper­a­tion of Cal­gary sought per­mits to embark on a mul­ti-bil­lion­-dol­lar tar sands extrac­tion oper­a­tion. [1]

David Koch

Alber­ta tar sands projects are tied to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty in Bei­jing through chan­nels oth­er than the Koch empire. The state oil com­pa­ny, PetroChi­na, bought out 60% of the assets of the Athabas­ka Oil Cor­po­ra­tion, a hold­ing com­pa­ny that does no explo­ration or drilling, and is the oth­er major lease­hold­er in the Athabas­ka region where the Kochs hold most of their leas­es. But the intri­cate financ­ing comes from the same sources for both: Gold­man Sachs, with whom the Kochs are close­ly tied, acts as the joint-leader and book run­ner for the PetroChi­na deal. [2] Canada’s Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment has suc­cess­ful­ly rammed through its FIPA treaty with Bei­jing, which gives the Com­mu­nist Par­ty the pow­er to over­ride leg­is­la­tion by Canada’s Par­lia­ment for the next 31 years. [3] The Kochs are well-placed to prof­it from the com­ple­tion of the Key­stone pipeline. But if Key­stone is can­celled, they stand to prof­it near­ly as much, accord­ing to Uni­ver­si­ty of Alber­ta indus­try ana­lyst Andrew Leach, since they con­trol the exist­ing refin­ing facil­i­ties in the north. Iron­i­cal­ly, the Kochs ben­e­fit the most from the uncer­tain­ty cre­at­ed by the Oba­ma administration’s delays and inde­ci­sion regard­ing the pipeline. [4] It’s prob­a­bly not true, as many think, that the Cana­di­an oil is ulti­mate­ly head­ed for Chi­na. But Bei­jing’s Com­mu­nist aris­toc­ra­cy will be prof­it­ing hand­some­ly at sev­er­al stages, and Cana­di­an tar sand oil will dis­place oth­er Amer­i­can imports, which will then be avail­able for oth­er mar­kets, in a game of check­er-jumps which ulti­mate­ly ends up with a rich­er Com­mu­nist Par­ty, and poor­er Cana­di­ans and Americans.

Charles Koch

The vast for­tune that the Koch broth­ers inher­it­ed was built up pri­mar­i­ly through polit­i­cal pow­er, not entre­pre­neur­ship in any “free mar­ket”. The Koch broth­ers no more believe in, or want free mar­kets or com­pe­ti­tion than any bil­lion­aires ever have. Their father, Fred Koch, was no Hor­a­tio Alger, hav­ing inher­it­ed his for­tune from his father, a Texas rail­way and press baron. He expand­ed it by steal­ing a new refin­ing process from its inven­tors and using gov­ern­ment con­nec­tions to out­flank the orig­i­nal inven­tors and oth­er com­peti­tors. Then he sold the tech­nol­o­gy to Joseph Stal­in. Between 1929 and 1931, he built 15 crack­ing units for the Sovi­et Empire. [5] Today’s Koch fam­i­ly con­tin­ues the tra­di­tion of hered­i­tary aris­to­crat­ic wealth pro­tect­ed and ampli­fied by gov­ern­ment pow­er and occa­sion­al recourse to trea­son. Dur­ing the 2000’s, while friend and Koch boo­dle-col­lec­tor George W. Bush, Jr. was hand­ing them plum after plum of dereg­u­la­tion, they made great sums of mon­ey sell­ing tech­nol­o­gy to the Aya­tol­lahs of Iran, cir­cum­vent­ing U.S. sanc­tions through their for­eign sub­sidiaries. The Kochs were not only deeply involved in the stock swin­dles that led up to the mar­ket crash of the 2008, they have bought them­selves effec­tive immu­nity from pros­e­cu­tion, and indeed from any present or future reg­u­la­tion. [6] They are present­ly engag­ing in an accel­er­ated ver­sion of the same kind of swin­dles on the com­mod­ity mar­ket, posi­tion­ing them­selves to walk away rich­er from the next mar­ket crash.

The Koch broth­ers are pret­ty clear­ly clas­si­fi­able as mem­bers of the genus Homo oli­garchi­cus, which has inhab­ited eco­log­i­cal nich­es in every cor­rupt, hier­ar­chi­cal social struc­ture from Ancient Egypt to the KGB and the Davos crowd. Most oli­garchs like to keep a low pro­file, and let ide­o­log­i­cal manip­u­la­tions be han­dled by under­lings. The Koch broth­ers, how­ev­er, like to be seen and heard, espe­cially as dis­pensers of ide­o­log­i­cal snake-oil. While most of the world’s multi­bil­lion­aires buy their politi­cians qui­etly in back rooms, the Koch’s have been unusu­al in the degree to which they’ve made them­selves open, tri­umphant cru­saders for graft. Graft is their religion. 

As ide­o­log­i­cal (rather than finan­cial) empire builders, they have accu­mu­lated an army of pli­able, obe­di­ent suck­ers, in every venue from prep­py uni­ver­sity cam­puses to Appalachi­an trail­er parks. They long ago learned from the Com­mu­nists and Fas­cists that you can tai­lor a move­ment to dif­fer­ent groups of suck­ers simul­ta­ne­ously, with­out wor­ry­ing about its con­tra­dic­tions or incon­sis­ten­cies. Each group only lis­tens to what you tell them, and each group does what you tell them to do, regard­less of obvi­ous con­tra­dic­tions. The Tea Par­ty nitwits march along hap­pily with smug “Lib­er­tar­i­ans”, Belt­way hacks, and suck­ers serv­ing cor­po­rate agents of Bei­jing and Riyadh, toward what­ever cliff the Kochs want them to jump off.

The Kochs began by join­ing and financ­ing the noto­ri­ous, ultra-racist John Birch Soci­ety. Their father was one of the founders of the sup­pos­edly “anti-Com­mu­nist” Birchers, while simul­ta­ne­ously mak­ing a for­tune work­ing with Stal­in. But the Birchers’ main thrust became oppo­si­tion to Civ­il Rights, and an evolv­ing Amer­i­can soci­ety came to see them as a rel­ic from the past. Lead­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als, embar­rassed by them, moved active­ly to dump the group. The Repub­li­can “South­ern Strat­e­gy” of absorb­ing the seg­re­ga­tion­ists and racists of the South by play­ing up to their fears had paid off. Repub­li­cans dis­placed the Democ­rats from their long pre­dom­i­nance. But the plan in that era was to shift the focus to reli­gion, sex and war-mon­ger­ing as “pop­ulist” ral­ly­ing calls, with racism swept under the car­pet. Repub­li­cans repu­di­at­ed both the Klu Klux Klan and the Birchers. The Birchers were now use­less to the Kochs, so they were dropped.

Next, the Kochs fixed their eyes on the nascent Lib­er­tar­ian move­ment, which at first includ­ed at least a few peo­ple who gen­uinely want­ed to cre­ate an intel­lec­tual foun­da­tion for lib­erty. But there was no group of poten­tial suck­ers more like­ly to be bought for hard cash than the extra­or­di­nar­ily naïve and eas­ily con­fused Lib­er­tar­i­ans. The only groups that the Kochs would have found eas­ier to manip­u­late would have been col­lege stu­dent Maoists or the dopes who walk into Sci­en­tol­ogy ses­sions. The move­ment was, in point of fact, begin­ning to fill up with old Com­mu­nists. In short order, the Lib­er­tar­ian move­ment was in their pock­et, and David Koch became the Lib­er­tar­ian Party’s vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Mil­lions of Koch $$$ poured into Lib­er­tar­ian groups on cam­puses, and into var­i­ous think tanks and jour­nals. Soon these “lib­er­tar­i­ans” were busy pro­mot­ing unlim­ited spend­ing of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey on mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al spongers, inher­i­tance laws encour­ag­ing hered­i­tary aris­toc­racy, and the most col­lec­tivist of all con­cepts, the notion that a cor­po­ra­tion is a “per­son.” Mean­while, what­ever vague dif­fer­ence there had been between the Lib­er­tar­ian move­ment and Con­ser­vatism sim­ply van­ished. No Lib­er­tar­i­an I sub­se­quent­ly met ever active­ly did any­thing that did­n’t fall into line with Con­ser­v­a­tive strate­gies, no mat­ter how much they talked about being dis­tinct. It was at this point that I ceased to regard Lib­er­tar­i­an­ism as a legit­i­mate intel­lec­tual move­ment on any lev­el, and rec­og­nized it whol­ly and unequiv­o­cally for what it is, an elite-direct­ed con game manip­u­lat­ing dim-wit­ted suck­ers. Before that, I had some sym­pa­thy for the move­ment. After­wards, not a shred.

But Lib­er­tar­i­ans are most­ly nerdy techies, many of them athe­ists, the kind of peo­ple who used to flock to Tech­noc­racy or Marx­ism. They imag­ine that soci­ety can be re-engi­neered with the appli­ca­tion of a few slo­gans, crack-pot eco­nomic gib­ber­ish, and a pair of pli­ers. Most Amer­i­cans, who are fright­ened by both athe­ism and sci­ence, would nev­er look to them for guid­ance. Their polit­i­cal activism could nev­er have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, which is locked into two tra­di­tional par­ties and a vast sys­tem of cor­rup­tion, or on Amer­i­can soci­ety, which is a web of reli­gious, racial, region­al, sex­ual and occu­pa­tional rival­ries. Frankly, Lib­er­tar­i­ans are not smart enough to be use­ful strate­gi­cally, but not dumb enough to be reli­able canon fod­der. Their only reli­able activ­i­ties turned out to be end­lessly repeat­ing their own slo­gans on the inter­net and eat­ing microwave burritos.

So the Lib­er­tar­ian move­ment was put on the side­lines, and the Kochs con­cen­trated on gain­ing con­trol of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. To do that, they need­ed a mole. You take over a large orga­ni­za­tion by cre­at­ing a small orga­ni­za­tion embed­ded in it, but not sub­ject to its author­ity. You then recruit as many suck­ers as you can — specif­i­cally those who could nev­er have been able to rise in the big­ger orga­ni­za­tion — and set them to erod­ing the pow­er of the tra­di­tional lead­er­ship from the inside. You stage events and push issues that the main orga­ni­za­tion would nor­mally shy away from, but can’t actu­ally dis­own. These are basic tech­niques per­fected by the Com­mu­nists, and used to infil­trate many orga­ni­za­tions and social move­ments when they were the going con­cern. The pow­er and cred­i­bil­ity of the big­ger orga­ni­za­tion will erode. In the case of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, this means los­ing elec­tions. But the Kochs aren’t inter­ested in the polit­i­cal sur­vival of Repub­li­can politi­cians, they’re inter­ested in hav­ing a con­trolled orga­ni­za­tion that will advance their per­sonal agen­da, which it can do in or out of office. Thus, the Tea Par­ty was born, trum­peted as a spon­ta­neously gen­er­ated “grass-roots” move­ment, but actu­ally dis­cussed and out­lined by the Kochs decades before it appeared.

Every­thing depends on there being plen­ty of suck­ers. Suck­ers at every lev­el. Suck­ers in the unem­ploy­ment lines who will vote for the peo­ple who threw them out of work, because they were told black wel­fare-recip­i­ents were respon­si­ble. Suck­ers run­ning small busi­nesses who imag­ine that poli­cies aimed at pro­tect­ing Exxon­Mo­bil are going to help their five-employ­ee muf­fler shop. Suck­ers tak­ing busi­ness cours­es in com­mu­nity col­leges who have been taught by bored teach­ers that the “mar­ket” is a self-reg­u­lat­ing mech­a­nism gen­er­at­ing pros­per­ity. Suck­ers read­ing Atlas Shrugged on a park bench and day­dream­ing of being Super­Doop­er­men. Suck­ers who think that the Rap­ture is com­ing next Wednes­day at 4 P.M., Rocky Moun­tain Time. Suck­ers who live in the fan­tasy uni­verse cre­ated by Fox Prav­da. Suck­ers who want to see the Con­fed­er­a­cy rise again and re-estab­lish slav­ery. Suck­ers who are ter­ri­fied when they see immi­grant chil­dren. Lots and lots and lots and lots of suck­ers, with dif­fer­ent dreams, dif­fer­ent atti­tudes, dif­fer­ent fears, but unit­ed in their gullibility.

The Koch broth­ers are not the only bil­lion­aires to be wor­ried about. All their kin are out to destroy our free­dom. All of them want a world of peas­ants, serfs and slaves ruled over by a tiny aris­toc­racy of inher­ited wealth. But by enjoy­ing the lime­light, and mak­ing them­selves pub­lic ped­dlers of ide­ol­ogy, the Kochs actu­ally help us to under­stand what we should be fight­ing against. Most of the big mon­ey pow­er is invis­i­ble and un-map­pable. It’s nice to have some vil­lains who actu­al­ly twid­dle their mus­tach­es and sneer at us. If there were no Koch broth­ers obvi­ously try­ing to buy polit­i­cal pow­er and enslave us, we would have con­sid­er­ably more trou­ble get­ting peo­ple to under­stand why the sub­urbs of Dal­las and Den­ver and Des Moines are fill­ing up with pen­ni­less fam­i­lies work­ing two full-time jobs, but rely­ing on food stamps to feed their kids.

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[1] Muf­son S. & J. Eilperin, “The biggest for­eign lease hold­er in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon or Mobil.” Wash­ing­ton Post, March 20, 2014.
[2] Sny­der, J., “Sleep­ing Giant: Can Canada’s oth­er mam­moth bitu­men deposit be com­mer­cial­ized?”, Alber­ta Oil [indus­try jour­nal]. Sep­tem­ber 15, 2014.
[3] Har­ris, S. “Harp­er sneaks through Cana­da-Chi­na FIPA, locks Cana­da in for 31 years.” Rab­ble, Sept. 15, 2014
[4] var­i­ous tweets, Andrew Leach@andrew_leach.
[5] Dick­in­son, T. “Inside the Koch Broth­ers’ Tox­ic Empire”, Rolling Stone, Sept.24, 2014
[6] ibid