The Revolution Was Not Televised
But It's nearing completion, nonetheless
In 1970, the musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron released his iconic and infamous song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
Scott-Heron’s song was inspired by the spirit of the 1960s, when revolutionary fervor was in the air and Blacks, women, hippies, yippies, anti-war activists, and many others were fired up and pushing for radical change in culture and politics.
In Scott-Heron’s song, he explained this revolution to come would never be seen on TV, whether in the news, in shows, or in commercials. Instead, this was a revolution that would change hearts, minds, and consciousness without people realizing that change was happening.
Did Gil Scott-Heron’s vision of a revolution not televised come to fruition back then? I leave it to you to make that determination.
But let’s fast forward 52 years from when Scott-Heron’s song came out in 1970, to circa now, so that I can tell you about the revolution that’s truly not being televised.
I’m sure you’re well aware that the January 6th House Select Committee has held a number of hearings that have demonstrated that former President Donald Trump presided over an attempted coup of the U.S. government in order to stay in power.
While Trump’s coup attempt was not successful, there has been another coup taking place for many decades now, and this one is nearing completion.
This slow coup is part of a revolution that was, and still is, not being televised.
This revolution isn’t the one that Gil Scott-Heron visualized.
This revolution’s most visible and recent victories have occurred in the past few weeks with the Supreme Court rulings that rescinded gun restrictions, allowed prayer in schools, overturned Roe v. Wade, and, in the case of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, blocked the ability of the EPA to regulate businesses that pollute (in fact, the greater aspect of this court ruling was blocking the ability for any government agency from issuing regulations).
The revolution is one last Supreme Court ruling from being complete. That will come next year, when the Supreme Court hears the case of Moore v. Harper. If the Supreme Court rules with the plaintiff in this case, they would be legalizing a radical change in the way federal elections are conducted—they will give state legislatures sole authority to set the rules for contests, even if their actions violate their state constitution.
What this would mean is a state legislature could decide in the case of a presidential election who they would prefer to give the state electors to.
So, if a Democrat won the state, but the legislature wasn’t fond of the results, they could decide to hand the state’s electors to the Republican candidate (they could also decide to hand it to the Socialist Party candidate or Mickey Mouse, but don’t hold your breath on either of those being declared the victor).
And with a Supreme Court decision on Moore v. Harper coming out in 2023, it would be just in time for the 2024 election.
And if they rule with the plaintiffs, the revolution, as I said, will be a done deal.
Some trace this revolution back to the early 1970s, but I believe the revolution began on September 23, 1900, in the dusty, small town of Quanah, Texas.
It was in that town on that date that a man named Fred Koch was born. While young Fred didn’t do much in his formative years to strike anyone as a revolutionary, he was ambitious enough to leave his small town roots behind and seek out an education back east, at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering in 1922.
After graduating, he decided to return to Texas to begin his professional career. A few years later he moved to Wichita, Kansas, where in short order he became a partner in an engineering firm.
Ironically, Wichita is two hours away from Topeka, Kansas, which was the birthplace of the populist movement, a movement that arose in the early 1890s. The movement represented everything that Fred Koch, as his worldview expanded, was not.
This populist movement began in the Topeka area with the People’s Party, a left-wing farmer-labor alliance that came together over the issues of economic democracy and justice.
By May, 1891, the word populist came to describe people who were part of this movement, one that centered around the rights, interests, and welfare of the common folk.
The People’s Party was against poverty, debt, monopoly, and corruption, and for equality among the races, genders, and classes. They also stood for human rights, and against white supremacy, imperialism, and tyranny.
The movement caught on like wildfire in the Midwest—becoming known as “prairie populism”—and spread into northern states like Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The state of Minnesota still maintains a link to the populist movement, as one of the major political parties in the state is called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
A Nebraska politician, William Jennings Bryan, rose from the ranks of the populist movement to become the Democratic nominee for President three times, in 1896, 1900, and 1908.
Bryan never won but he—and the populists—were able to influence the policies of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, leading to reforms that made the country more democratic; these reforms stood the test of time for the greater part of the 20th century—until the revolution that Fred Koch beget took shape.
Meanwhile, Fred Koch and his engineering firm partner, Lewis Winkler, had developed a more efficient thermal cracking process for turning crude oil into gasoline. But because what Winkler had advanced was similar to his former employer’s process, the employer sued for patent infringement.
Unable to find work in the U.S. because of the pending litigation, the Winkler-Koch outfit looked abroad, hitting pay-dirt in 1929 when the Soviet Union signed contracts with them to build petroleum distillation plants.
Fred Koch was ambitious and full of confidence that this was his pathway to fame and fortune. And it was, as they helped Joseph Stalin’s regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries over the next three years. The price Fred Koch paid was bearing witness to Stalin’s brutality and purges of his enemies. These experiences scarred and left an indelible impression on him for the rest of his life.
Having enough of the Soviet Union, Koch secured another contract with Stalin’s arch-rival, Adolf Hitler, to build the third-largest oil refinery serving the Third Reich, a project which was personally approved by Hitler.
Fred Koch’s refinery work was vital to the Nazi war effort, as it was one of the few refineries in Germany capable of fueling fighter planes. Without Koch’s work, the story of Nazi Germany and World War II may have had a totally different narrative.
By the time he was done building refineries in other countries, the patent infringement litigation in the U.S. was settled in his favor, allowing Fred Koch the luxury of settling down in Wichita and raising a family—he and his wife had four sons over seven years— and build on his overseas success. At the same time, due to his experience in the Soviet Union, he became vehemently anti-communist and pro-limited government.
Koch was so forceful in his anti-communism that he published a pamphlet, “A Business Man Looks at Communism,” that warned of the threat of a communist takeover in America.
Koch wrote that one of the “Potential Methods of Communist Takeover in U.S.A. by Internal Subversion” was “Infiltration of high offices of government and political parties until the President of the U.S. is a Communist.”
That potential communist president, Fred Koch believed, was John F. Kennedy. Koch was now no longer just a successful businessman; he was an activist with a cause.
Perhaps because he was born in a small Texas town and had limited, if any, peer interactions with people of different races than himself, Fred was also a bigot.
It was these two defining features— his virulent anti-communism and his racism—that led him in 1958 to co-found the John Birch Society, an organization dedicated to limited government, anti-communism, and xenophobia. Fred once said, in tying the different themes together, that “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to takeover America.”
Fred died of a massive heart attack in 1967, leaving his business empire to be run by his second son, Charles. The younger brother David joined him later and between the two—after settling a lawsuit with the two other brothers—Charles and David became co-owners of Koch Industries, each owning 42 percent of the enterprise.
As of 2022, Koch Industries is the largest privately held company in the U.S., with revenues of $115 billion—greater than Facebook, Goldman Sachs, and U.S. Steel combined—and the two Koch Brothers were worth well over $50 billion apiece, ranking them each as the 11th most wealthiest people in the world.
David died in 2019, but Charles carries on, continuing to run the company from corporate headquarters in Wichita.
It was Charles and David, the well-known Koch Brothers, who kicked the revolution into high gear. They had inherited their father’s disdain for government; this incited David to become the Libertarian Party candidate for Vice-President of the U.S. in 1980.
The Libertarians lost badly in the 1980 election, but for the Kochs, they were just getting started. They realized they weren’t going to get their ideas across by being outside the political mainstream, so they began a movement that brought their ideas front and center.
Their ideas were predicated on a couple of principles: less government regulations, especially those that impede Koch Industries and other companies profit potential; less taxes (which also impede Koch Industries and other companies profit potential); and less government intrusion—into the affairs of business and the lives of the citizenry.
This was the era of Ronald Reagan, and the Kochs saw him as a kindred spirit, what with his famous slogan of “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
The Kochs then built up a network of like-minded billionaires, and used the influence and leverage of the collective massive fortunes to fund a revolution the likes of which the world has never seen—and one that was not televised.
Over the last few decades, the Koch Network has built a prodigious and hugely successful web of influence to burnish their vision into society.
They have done so by virtue of creating the following institutions (or funding certain causes or politicians):
***Conservative think tanks
***University centers—over 300 universities get Koch Network funding
***Right wing foundations
***A donor network of 400-500 fellow billionaires
***Activist networks that have successfully changed laws to favor corporations in various states
***150 state organizations aligned under state policy networks
***The Federalist Society, which led to federal judicial appointments in order to capture the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. This has led to judicial rulings that favor Koch Industries, large corporations, and the ability to spread as much dark money around as possible—it’s this process that led to Citizens United becoming the law
***The funding of political candidates
***The capture of the Republican Party
***A political influence operation in Washington, D.C. that is virtually indestructible ***Climate change denial groups (since Koch Industries is the biggest polluter of water, air, and climate, it’s in their interests to lobby against any sort of climate change legislation)
***The funding of libertarian scholars
***And more, all using the tool of dark money to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars of laundered and hard to trace to its source money to create a world in the image of Charles Koch’s confident libertarian vision.
It’s to the Koch Network and its dark money funded organization, the Federalist Society, that we owe the current make-up of the Supreme Court, with its supermajority of religious fanatics, nationalists, and corporatists that have made decisions that fly in the face of the majority of Americans.
One such example is their horrendous Roe v. Wade decision, a decision that flew in the face of the 70 to 80 percent of Americans who are pro-choice.
In the Roe v. Wade decision, six Supreme Court justices, all Koch Network lackeys and representing .000000002 of the American population, pushed their radical ideology on the masses.
Over the years, the Koch Network has used their sphere of influence to fight tooth and nail against government regulations. Which means it makes sense that the recent Supreme Court ruling in the case of West Virginia v. EPA did away altogether with the government’s ability to regulate business.
We can also thank the Kochs for the Tea Party—it was their money that funded the organization. It was the Tea Party that fought tooth and nail against the Affordable Care Act, the landmark legislation that Barack Obama helped usher in.
It was also the Tea Party that gave license to and empowered the most racist elements of American culture and gave them permission to be most vitriolic with the hate they directed at Obama. The Tea Party gave rise to the Birther Movement, and with it, the candidacy of one Donald Trump.
This slow revolution of the Koch Network of dark money, right-wing billionaires has gained steam since 2016. In that year, they spent $900 million dollars in getting their candidates—both at state and national levels—elected.
And it all came to a head over the last few weeks with the most recent Supreme Court decisions at the end of their 2022 term.
Furthermore, as I mentioned, they are one last decision away from completion, which will come in 2023 with the Moore v. Harper ruling, that, if the Supreme Court decides in favor of the plaintiff, will allow state legislatures to potentially overrule the voters of their state and award electors to the presidential candidate of their choice.
This revolution has never been televised. It has been a slow burn all these years, while the rest of us minded our own business or were too busy making ends meet to pay attention.
But now we are paying attention. The Koch Network and the Supreme Court have spoken.
There is a way out. A way to the creation of a more positive and beneficial society and future—and the Supreme Court inadvertently has shown us the path forward.
Next time I will tell you what that is.