The Kochs’ Anti-Civil Rights Roots: New Docs Expose Charles Koch’s Ties to John Birch Society

[deminks]

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/8/kochs_anti_civil_rights_roots

The Progressive magazine and Center for Media and Democracy have released new documents that show billionaire oil industrialist Charles Koch was an active member of the controversial right-wing John Birch Society during its campaigns against the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Charles Koch was following in the footsteps of his father, Fred Koch, a leader of the John Birch Society from its founding. We speak with The Progressive’s Lisa Graves about her new article, "The Koch Cartel: Their Reach, Their Reactionary Agenda, and Their Record." Graves details how the reactionary ideas absorbed during Charles Koch’s youth continue to animate many of his actions decades later. Charles and his brother, David Koch, have used their wealth to push a similar agenda into the mainstream through the tea party and "dark money" political coalitions that allow donors to shield their identity while funding attack ads against Democrats.

(snip)

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Washington, D.C. We’re joined by its author, Lisa Graves, president of The Progressive Inc., which includes the Center for Media and Democracy, also the publisher of The Progressive magazine.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Lisa. Can you lay out what these new revelations are that you have found out?

LISA GRAVES: Yes, well, thank you so much for having us on. And we’ve been doing research in archives across the country, and what we’ve discovered is not just that Fred Koch, Charles and David Koch’s father, was a member of the John Birch Society and in fact helped found it, but what we discovered in archives is that Charles Koch himself followed his father’s footsteps into the John Birch Society. And that society was a very extreme organization. It was an extreme right-wing organization that spent the '60s largely opposing the civil rights movement here in the United States. And so, these documents, some of the documents we're revealing today, talk about—are, in Charles Koch’s own words, funding for the John Birch Society, trying to support its mission. And what we’ve documented is what that means in context in the civil rights movement, how that organization was trying to stop the civil rights movement, trying to discredit it, opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, opposing other progress on integration of our society.

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[TheBlackAdder]

1. Oops! I accidentally clicked on that NRA ad :-) nt

[blm]

2. New documents? Geez - anyone 1/2 way familiar with Birchers knew old man Koch was a central part

of its existence.

[Shoonra]

3. No secret - Charles Koch quit the JBS in 1968 over the Vietnam War

Charles Koch's involvement in the John Birch Society was no secret - his presence in its upper ranks was publicized as proof of the organization's associations with respectability and capitalist success.

Koch - and several other prominent members - quit the JBS around 1968, primarily (they said) because of their misgivings about the Vietnam War (the fact that some of them had draft-age sons might have had a bearing).

[link:https://archive.org/stream/WilliamGredePapersReCharlesKochRobertLove/William%20Grede%20papers%20re%20Charles%20Koch%2C%20Robert%20Love#page/n17/mode/2up|

[riverbendviewgal]

4. WATCH: Rachel Maddow Still Won’t Back Down From The Koch Brothers January 28, 2014 2:26 pm

see the video. Rachel Maddow has on them. almost 15 minutes.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/watch-rachel-maddow-still-wont-back-koch-brothers/