“The Koch Brothers are killing me and my family.”- Norma Thompson, Crossett, Arkansas.
That’s the type of thing you’ll hear if you watch Robert Greenwald’s latest release for Brave New Films: Koch Brothers Exposed. It’s not a film that pulls its punches. It isn’t intended as a balanced portrayal of Koch Industries and the brothers’ role in American society. It won’t take you long to realize this. Right near the beginning, Greenwald nails Fred Koch, the founder of the company and father of Charles and David, for making his initial fortune in Soviet Russia working for Joe Stalin. Two seconds later, he criticizes Fred Koch for his involvement in the extreme anti-communist John Birch Society. It’s hard to maintain that someone is simultaneously to blame for working with the Soviets and for holding paranoid and irrational anti-Soviet beliefs. But Greenwald isn’t concerned with fairness. He’s looking to take any shot he can. The movie utilizes a lot standard propaganda features, like darkened faces, ominous thunder, and scary music to reinforce a negative message. Personally, I think all of these things detract from the film.
And that’s because the Koch Brothers really are killing Norma Thompson and her family. They’re doing it by pumping toxic waste water from their Georgia Pacific plant into canals that flow past Norma Thompson’s home. As the film documents, this is causing all kinds of respiratory distress and otherwise unexplainable cancers in Crossett, Arkansas. Nothing is being done about it because Georgia Pacific is a huge employer in the area and because the politicians are bought off.
The film is structured to show the many tentacles of the Koch Brothers and how they are harming ordinary citizens, our environment, our education systems, and even our democracy.
It begins with an introduction to the Koch family and their businesses. It explains that Koch Industries is the second biggest privately-held corporation in American, and one of the top ten polluters. It explains their political activities and how they exert their influence over the political process. This includes funding think tanks and other organizations that disseminate enormous amounts of disinformation about things like Social Security and climate change. Greenwald shows in pictorial form how Koch-funded people fan out into the media to sell these misleading messages: “Social Security is going broke; we have to raise the retirement age, etc.”
It then moves on to explain how the Koch Brothers financed the takeover of the Wake County, North Carolina board of education by neo-segregationists. It details how the school board initiated a resegregation program, and how people united in opposition and voted out the Koch Brothers’ representatives.
it then moves on to discuss how the Koch Brothers have designed grant agreements with universities so that they can exert maximum control over who is hired, what they teach, what they research, and even what they publish. They have some kind of financial arrangements with over 150 colleges and universities, some of which are well-respected.
The movie then turns to how the Koch Brothers influence Congress by making contributions to members who serve in key positions, e.g., as members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And it segues into a discussion of the brothers’ influence over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his radical effort to destroy public-service unions.
If these sins weren’t egregious enough, the Koch Brothers have also been instrumental in the national voter suppression effort represented by the dozens of Voter ID laws being pushed and passed in the states. The effect of these laws is to disenfranchise as many poor people (usually people of color) as possible.
The film ends with a discussion of the effort to stop the Keystone XL pipeline and the aforementioned environmental degradation in Arkansas.
The overall message is twofold. First, the Koch Brothers have their hands everywhere. They aren’t just worried about being able to pollute. They’re messing around in school board elections, pushing segregation of the races. They’re buying off universities and getting them to teach bullshit to their students. They’re trying to crush the Democratic Party by denying a significant percentage of their voters the right to vote. They’re trying to crush unions, both private and public. They’re trying to destroy Social Security. They’re behind the growing skepticism of climate change.
The second message of the film is that we can successfully fight back. The Wake County school board was voted out. The Keystone XL pipeline was delayed. If people get involved, we can stop the Koch Brothers.
And whether the presentation is a little over the top or not, the film succeeds on making these points. If you want to explain to a friend, family member, or co-worker who the Koch Brothers are, what they are up to, and why they are a pernicious and dangerous influence, this film will help you do that in a concise 55 minutes. If you want to provide some hope and inspiration that the Koch Brothers can be stopped, the film does that, too.
I would have preferred a more Dragnet “Just the facts, ma’am” approach. But the best antiseptic is sunlight, and Greenwald shines a bright light on many ways that the Koch Brothers are fighting to make this a worse country and a more troubled planet.
I recommend that you take a look at the film. The Koch Brothers really are killing people and their families. And they’re doing much more besides.
[Disclosure: I do consulting work for Democracy for America, which is disseminating this film].
