Dark Money summary

For the Koch brothers to successfully change public opinion, they knew they had to find a subtle way for their ideas to gain traction. They eventually landed upon a great way to do this: disguising their political agenda as philanthropy.

They soon began spreading their libertarian ideology through nonprofit organizations such as advocacy groups, think tanks and private foundations. It proved to be a great strategy, since nonprofits are both cost-effective and require very little public disclosure.

To effectively influence public opinion and decrease the chance of future resistance, educational organizations and programs became a vital part of the Koch brothers’ conservative fundraising network.

The idea was to donate to respected universities that would return the favor by providing a space to nurture a new generation of conservative thinkers. This would increase their influence on society by churning out future political leaders who’d been taught the Koch ideology – which is why law schools quickly became a primary target.

By 2009, the groundwork for a political movement had been put in place by the Koch brothers. It was now time for those patiently nurtured nonprofits and educational programs to pay off in the form of the Tea Party movement, which finally brought libertarianism to the mainstream.

The seeds of this uprising can be traced back to the Koch brothers’ right-hand man, Richard Fink, and his Structure of Social Change manifesto from the 1980s.

Things took a dramatic turn in 2010, when the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission went before the Supreme Court.

The conservative think tank Citizens United ended up winning their case, and the decision said that corporations have the right to freedom of speech. It was a game-changing ruling, and it opened the floodgates for even more cash to flow into the Koch network.

After the Democrats won the presidential election in 2008 and increased their majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Republican strategist Ed Gillespie came up with a plan known as REDMAP.

The goal was simple: get as many Republicans as possible elected to Congress in the 2010 midterms so they would have the legislative control necessary to then redraw the congressional districts in 2011.

The Kochs’ intense hatred of Barack Obama was regularly discussed at their semiannual donor summits.

In June of 2011, Charles Koch borrowed a phrase from Saddam Hussein to describe the war they were about to enter and their hopes of being able to block Obama at every turn. He called it, “The mother of all wars.” Thanks to the success of REDMAP, and the radical Republican representatives that were elected as a result, they went on to engineer the government shutdown of 2013.

At the heart of the American Dream is the belief that anyone can make their dreams come true, regardless of their background. Yet the work of the Koch brothers has widened the country’s economic divide. The rich are getting richer and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for anyone to challenge their authority.

In fact, their network is so big that it’s practically taken over the Republican party.