Saturday, February 21, 2015

Tru'merica: Charles Koch and the John Birch Society

Informed Americans know that the Koch Brothers' father John Koch was a founding member of the extreme right-wing organization, the John Birch Society. The Society was extremely active in the violent white reaction to black civil rights in the 60's and is still virulently anti-union. Charles Koch terminated his life membership in the Society, but his political and social ideas have not evolved though his rhetoric may have changed. Instead of calling his adversaries "communists" they are now "collectivists".



It is instructive to note that the namesake of the organization, John Birch, was an OSS (forerunner of the CIA) agent who served in the China theatre of war. Raised by a missionary family as a fundamental Baptist, a Mercer college classmate described him as, "always an angry young man, always a zealot" He was killed on a mission to rescue American POWs days after the Pacific war officially ended by Chinese communists when he refused to surrender his pistol to them.

At the other end of the spectrum: today is the anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, NE in 1925. Malcolm X referred to Little as his slave name and refused to acknowledge it once he received his black Muslim education. His incendiary speech on the differences between the "house negro" and the "field negro", and the "infiltration" of the March on Washington (1963) is justifiably famous: