Skip to content Skip to footer
|

Charles Koch, Modern Robber Baron, Exposed

Charles Koch. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

We suspected it all along, but now we have the goods that prove that Charles Koch was a member of the John Birch Society at the height of their attacks on the civil rights movement and civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King.

In the early 1960s Charles moved back to Wichita and followed in the footsteps of his dad Fred Koch who helped found the John Birch Society in 1958. We broke the story on DemocracyNow!, provided detailed excerpts of the anti-civil rights agenda, and launched a new wiki resource called Koch Exposed (of course). Our new Koch wiki follows the Koch network and the complicated Koch money trail that the brothers use to hide their fingerprints. There are dozens of articles up now on the wiki and dozens more in the works.

You can see our full special report in the new “Robber Barons” edition of The Progressive magazine which is hitting the stands this week! This July-August special edition is packed with illuminating reporting on the devastation wrought in this new “Gilded Age” by modern Robber Barons. Ruth Conniff tells harrowing tales as the privatizers and profiteers devastate our nation’s public schools. Matt Taibbi, David Dayen, and Elizabeth Warren update us on the news from Wall Street and new threats to our economy posed by the “too big to fail” crowd. John Nichols tells us how the grassroots beat back the Robber Barons of old, and Bill McKibben gives us hope for countering todays Carbon Kings who threaten the very existence of the planet. Bernie Sanders details how our campaign financing system needs to be overhauled so the voices of average Americans can be heard.

Plus leaders and activists, like Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO and Annie Leonard the new head of Greenpeace USA, give us their picks for the worst Robber Barons of today. (Who would you pick for this category?)

We hope you will pick up our beautifully redesigned magazine or subscribe today to receive our new digital edition making it even easier to read on your Kindle or electronic devices!

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.