KOCH BROTHERS AND THEIR FATHER
“Jay Conner particularly admired Fred Koch, a Bircher businessman
whose travels in the Soviet Union during the nineteen-thirties engendered a
hatred of Communism and organized labor. Claire Conner's treatment of
Koch's now famous sons, Charles and David [Koch], devotes no attention to how
they have moved away from their father's more outre positions. She tends
to ring the sort of conspiracy bells her parents once did, as when she describes
the funding of President George W. Bush's Inaugural balls in 2001:’Much
later’ - really? – ‘America learned that a lot of that cash had come from big
corporations that did business, or wanted to do business, with the federal government.’ "
whose travels in the Soviet Union during the nineteen-thirties engendered a
hatred of Communism and organized labor. Claire Conner's treatment of
Koch's now famous sons, Charles and David [Koch], devotes no attention to how
they have moved away from their father's more outre positions. She tends
to ring the sort of conspiracy bells her parents once did, as when she describes
the funding of President George W. Bush's Inaugural balls in 2001:’Much
later’ - really? – ‘America learned that a lot of that cash had come from big
corporations that did business, or wanted to do business, with the federal government.’ "
Thomas Mallon, “A View from the Fringe, The John Birch
Society and the Rise of the Radical Right,” in the New Yorker, January
11, 2016, pp. 63-69.
