Like His Dad, Charles Koch Was a Bircher

[RKP5637]

http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/07/187769/his-dad-charles-koch-was-bircher-new-documents

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.

[KansDem]

1. I find it ironic that Father Fred made his billions working for Stalin...

Koch turned his focus to foreign markets, including the Soviet Union, where Winkler-Koch built 15 cracking units between 1929 and 1932. The company also built installations in countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia.[1] In the early 1930s, Winkler-Koch hosted Soviet technicians for training.[12]

Having succeeded in securing the family fortune, Koch joined new partners in 1940 to create the Wood River Oil and Refining Company, which is today known as Koch Industries. In 1946 the firm acquired the Rock Island refinery and crude oil gathering system near Duncan, Oklahoma. Wood River was later renamed the Rock Island Oil and Refining Company.[13] In 1966 he turned over day-to-day management of the company to his son, Charles Koch.[14][15]

And...

In 1928, Koch traveled to the Soviet Union searching for business opportunities, but he came to despise communism and Joseph Stalin's regime,[6][7] writing in his 1960 book, A Business Man Looks at Communism, that he found the Soviet Union to be "a land of hunger, misery, and terror".[16] He toured the countryside with Jerome Livshitz. Livshitz gave Fred Koch what he would call a "liberal education in Communist techniques and methods" and Koch grew persuaded that the Soviet threat needed to be countered in America.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_C._Koch

So Fred despised an economic system that made him billions?

[JHB]

2. Oh, I can't fault someone for despising a Stalinist police state...

...literally, in this case.

I can and will fault him for
1) continuing to work for it after seeing it for what it was;
2) being unwilling, unable, or utterly incapable of distinguishing between the New Deal-era US and Stalinism.

3) see 2
4) see 2 doubly
5) Siring offspring who were just as fully in the thrall of #2