So Not Surprised

It turns out that the remaining Koch brother is responsible for promulgating the right wing hysteria over Critical Race Theory.

Ever since their daddy made their fortune selling technology to Josef Stalin, they have a plague on the world: 

Once again, the forces of capitalism are harnessing racism to do their dirty work.

More than 25 states have introduced legislation or taken other action that, backers claim, is aimed at banning “critical race theory” (CRT) from schools and government programs. Several states have already passed these bills, and discussion on this topic leads Fox News every night.

The common story about this surge of action is that this is a new “Tea Party” moment—a genuine uprising by grassroots Americans who are furious about CRT and demanding action from their state legislatures. But that story ignores the clear influence of a carefully built campaign by the network of radical free-market capitalist think tanks and action groups supported by billionaire businessman Charles Koch and his late brother David.

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When the right wing talks about “critical race theory,” it is really hijacking an obscure academic concept to attack any approach to education or policy that acknowledges the existence of historic and structural racism in this country. The popular story—heard not just on Fox News but repeated by the The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the The Atlantic—is that CRT became a national issue when a single conservative activist, Chris Rufo, appeared on Tucker Carlson in September 2020. President Trump, an avid Carlson fan, quickly responded with an executive order banning federal contractors for any diversity training that examined systemic racism. Since then, the story goes, the grassroots rage at CRT has boiled over.

Such a narrative is powerful, when true, because it gives an air of populist legitimacy to the cause. But that story doesn’t fit the facts.

Because after that brief moment in September, the debate around “critical race theory” went dormant for months. Almost no legislation was introduced at the state level in this period, according to Education Week. Fox News stopped talking about it, according to an analysis by Media Matters. Then, as the Biden administration took over, something happened. Mentions of CRT skyrocketed on Fox News. At the same time, state legislators started introducing bills. What was behind the surge, months after Rufo’s appearance?

Our research makes the answer clear: It was the Koch network.

As the head of UnKoch My Campus, I have spent years working to research and expose the insidious nationwide network of think tanks, action groups, and academics funded by the Kochs. While the network is often diffuse and hard to track, all of its branches purport to be dedicated to supporting free market capitalism.

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Unkoch My Campus reviewed the published materials of 28 conservative think tanks and political organizations with known ties to the Koch network from June 2020 to June 2021 and found that they had collectively published 79 articles, podcasts, reports or videos about Critical Race Theory.

These articles came out in a trickle last year, but then suddenly became a flood starting in February 2021, as President Biden took office and the threat to corporate profits became real. An average of five pieces per week dropped from late March to June 30, 2021. The pace of propaganda surged in both late May and late June—coinciding with the surge in action by state politicians.

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Why is the Koch network so dedicated to this cause? It is a prime example of how the network has built up an alliance between the three pillars of the right wing: the Republican Party, rich corporate elites, and conservative white and evangelical voters opposed to racial progress.

The CRT fight helps all three. Republicans get a manufactured controversy that motivates their base to keep them in power, and they get the financial support of the Kochs and their corporate friends. The Kochs and other radical capitalists get a false panic around the state of public education, which helps their ongoing campaign to privatize schools, and they gain allies who will push the economic agenda that keeps them at the top. The overwhelmingly white Republican base is rewarded with a story that is easier for them to accept than the true one—a story where they are both the heroes of American history and the true victims of the American present, oppressed by “political correctness.”

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You can see this play out in how the Koch think tanks we studied propose “solving” the CRT problems. They propose solutions like deregulating teacher licensing and relaxing restrictions on which public schools parents can send their kids to, both long-standing goals of the organization. This dramatic mismatch between supposedly existential stakes on the one hand and technocratic fixes on the other exposes their true intentions. They are inciting outrages against racial justice, and then using that outrage as a Trojan horse for entrenching radical free market ideology in every institution possible.

When Charles Koch finally dies, he will finally have done something to make the world a better place, he certainly hasn't so far.

If there is a better example how wealth and privilege are corrosive, I am unaware of it, and this includes Jeff Bezos riding into space on a giant dildo.