Koch Brothers Exposed (2012)

An expose on the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who helped finance the conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity.

Director:

Robert Greenwald

Stars:

Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch, Fred C. Koch

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Charles G. Koch	...	Himself (archive footage)
David H. Koch	...	Himself (archive footage)
Fred C. Koch	...	Himself - Father (archive footage)
Bernie Sanders	...	Himself - Senator, Vermont
Van Jones	...	Himself - President & Co-Founder, Rebuild the Dream
Bill McKibben	...	Himself - Environmentalist & Founder 350.org
Katrina vanden Heuvel	...	Herself - Editor & Publisher, The Nation
Lawrence Lessig	...	Himself - Professor, Harvard Law School
Ben Jealous	...	Himself - President & CEO, NAACP (as Benjamin Todd Jealous)
Adele Stan	...	Herself - AlterNet Washington Correspondent
Lee Fang	...	Himself - Senior Investigator, United Republic
John Nichols	...	Himself - Washington Correspondent, The Nation
Andrew Biggs	...	Himself - Cato Institute (archive footage)
Veronique De Rugy	...	Herself - Mercatus Center (archive footage)
José Piñera	...	Himself - Cato Institute (archive footage)

Storyline

An expose on the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who helped finance the conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity.

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Genres:

Documentary

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

8 May 2012 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Brave New Foundation

Technical Specs

Color:

Color

User Reviews

Socialist lies, spin, hate, and incitement of violence

In the tradition of socialist propaganda like Der Ewige Jude, the film doesn't even try to make any rational arguments for why its targets are bad - it uses juxtaposition, emotional footage, blurbs taken completely out of context, and outright fabrications.

This hate-u-mentary does not "expose" anything that the Koch family itself doesn't make public, and has been making public for many decades. For example, David H Koch was the Libertarian Party's VP candidate in 1980, running on a platform, as summed by his Wikipedia entry, "to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve Board, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business, and U.S. Federal agencies including the SEC, EPA, ICC, FTC, OSHA, FBI, CIA, and DOE". Does anyone honestly believe any of this was a secret?!

The worst thing you could truthfully say about the Koch brothers is that "they gave money to anti-communist organizations, and some anticommunists also happened to be racists" - the latter is not something the Koch brothers had any power to change. This is guilt by (very distant) association! Like the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", a person who has many connections can be connected to pretty much anybody else.

The film talks about Koch Industries being a "major polluter", but it doesn't talk about what they produce, and it doesn't even try to put anything in context. This is like describing Shakespeare as a major waste of paper, or Mozart as a major polluter of silence! It completely glosses over the fact that Koch Industries produce products that are used by hundreds of millions of people, and that they donate billions of dollars to medical research, the arts, and other apolitical charities. It doesn't even try to analyze the policies proposed by free market environmental organizations like FREE (Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment), which the Koch brothers support - who needs science when you already have an angry mob?

This film should be classified as "hate porn" - it doesn't need to explain WHY its viewers should be aroused, because their reptilian brain already reacts to the subject a certain way. People who are not drunk on class-warfare prejudice and are capable of critical thinking will study the scientific and economic ideas that the Koch brothers promote and think for themselves.

Socialists are welcome to criticize those ideas constructively, but so far they've done nothing but lie, cheat, steal, and kill their opposition.