By Alex Kotch

illion­aire indus­tri­al­ist and con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal mega-donor Charles Koch first entered the polit­i­cal world through the John Birch Society, a secre­tive anti-Communist out­fit that cam­paigned against the civ­il-rights move­ment. Since then, he and his broth­er David amassed enor­mous wealth and put togeth­er a pow­er­ful con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal net­work that rivals either major par­ty in size and funding.

A new report from activist group UnKoch My Campus shows that Charles Koch’s ties to white suprema­cy have per­sist­ed through­out his adult life. The report details an array of instances where Koch has fund­ed neo-Confederate schol­ars — a large­ly unno­ticed aspect of the Koch Industries CEO’s ambi­tious project of fund­ing high­er edu­ca­tion. Most alarm­ing is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Florida Atlantic University, the Charles Koch Foundation, and a major pri­vate-prison com­pa­ny, which is led by a pro­fes­sor who was a mem­ber of the research arm of a white-nation­al­ist hate group.

While rak­ing in cor­po­rate prof­its as the head of the family’s oil-refin­ing busi­ness in the mid-1960s, Charles Koch and his top tac­ti­cian, Richard Fink, devel­oped a “Structure of Social Change,” which they would deploy to pull America as far to the right on tax­es and reg­u­la­tions as they could. Koch, a lib­er­tar­i­an, had resigned from the John Birch Society after oppos­ing its posi­tion on the Vietnam War, and cre­at­ed a regres­sive sphere of influ­ence. The first step in this strat­e­gy was fund­ing high­er edu­ca­tion, because, as he said at a 1974 gath­er­ing of the Institute for Humane Studies, now a George Mason University cen­ter that he finances and directs, “edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams are supe­ri­or to polit­i­cal action, and sup­port of tal­ent­ed free-mar­ket schol­ars is prefer­able to mass advertising.”https://www.thenation.com/article/how-charles-koch-is-helping-neo-confederates-teach-college-students/