Dark Money

When it comes to US billionaires, you probably think of Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. But there are others who wield even more power, yet remain in the shadows.

The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch run Koch Industries, the nation’s second-largest private company, which was founded by their father, Fred Koch, in 1940.

Fred Koch started amassing his fortune by building oil refineries for the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin, which led to Koch’s company being commissioned to construct a massive oil refinery for Nazi Germany in 1934.

Fred was indeed a Nazi sympathizer at the time. He even hired a nanny who was a Nazi sympathizer to look after his children. In fact, the nanny was such a passionate Nazi supporter that she moved back to Germany after Hitler’s invasion of France in 1940, when Charles was just five years old and David was a newborn baby.

Eventually, Charles and David would grow up to become business partners, and since the 1970s they’ve been building an elaborate network of political donors and fundraising institutions. This network has so many arms, and reaches so deep into the heart of American politics, that it’s known as the Kochtopus.

Ultimately, the goal has been to spread their message of libertarian values. These values focus on supporting a free market and small government devoid of regulations, taxes or anything else that might get in the way of profits.

In 1980, this crusade led David Koch to make a brief run for office as the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate. That year, the Libertarian Party only managed to capture around one percent of the national vote.

But the experience informed the brothers’ future political strategy. They realized that a politician is merely a public voice – real power is creating and shaping the messages that those voices project.

So, the Koch brothers decided to remain behind the scenes from that point onward, and began focusing their energy on an ambitious long-term strategy.