Even David Koch's Philanthropy Was Toxic

[G_j]

https://bit.ly/2znrB6l

Like other plutocrats, from Andrew Carnegie to Jeff Bezos, the late billionaire used charity to legitimize inequality.

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The much-celebrated philanthropy of David Koch becomes harder to applaud after you learn that the seeds of his fortune were in business deals that strengthened Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. David Koch was, along with his brother Charles, one half of the notorious “Koch Brothers,” both widely reviled by liberals as longtime champions of right-wing causes like climate change denial and environmental deregulation.

But David, who died on Friday, tended to get better press than his brother, because he also donated lavishly to public institutions that enjoy universal enthusiasm. The New York Times obituary gave David Koch a sporting tagline (“a man-about-town philanthropist”) and detailed his benefactions to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other commendable causes. “He gave lavishly to the arts, especially ballet,” tweeted National Review senior editor Jay Nordlinger. “And to cancer research,” added conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “Every single person touched by cancer ought to mourn his passing.”

Such encomiums are premised on the idea that Koch’s charitable giving was so commendable that questions about where his money came from or the general impact of the super-rich on society would be impertinent. This willful lack of curiosity was sharply critiqued as long ago as 1909 by then-President Theodore Roosevelt, who wasn’t impressed by John D. Rockefeller’s setting up a foundation to help disperse his mountain of money. “No amount of charities in spending such fortunes can compensate in any way for the misconduct in acquiring them,” Roosevelt curtly but accurately noted. In the case of the Koch family, there’s plenty of misconduct to investigate.

As Jane Mayer documents in her indispensable 2016 book Dark Money, the father of the Koch brothers, Fred Koch, built the family fortune in the 1930s by helping build oil refineries, briefly for Stalin’s USSR and over the better part of a decade in Hitler’s Germany. Koch’s work for Germany played a major role in allowing the Nazi regime to achieve its goal of economic autarky, freeing it from dependence on foreign oil and making possible Hitler’s military adventurism.

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[redstatebluegirl]

1. EVERYONE should have to read Dark Money.

It was an eye opening look into how our elections are being manipulated. Not just elections, but everything. The Koch brothers have tried to, and in some cases succeeded in messing with the way business and economics are taught in higher ed classrooms. Nothing was beneath them.

[maxsolomon]

2. I've been saying

The Philanthropy is a shield; a glossy veneer on top of the rotted structure of Bircher bullshit.

[LuvNewcastle]

4. Well said; I agree.

They bought a lot of people's silence.

[mbusby]

3. Give them....

...bread and circuses.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. not philanthropy; it was marketing, distraction, investing in p.r.

[EX500rider]

6. I'd say giving to cancer research is a good thing regardless of where your father made $