Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America

by Kurt Andersen

At the same time, the Kochs and their gang spent more time and money on their new political dominion, organizations that run attack TV ads against insufficiently right-wing candidates, operate impressive propaganda sites, and mobilize angry citizens to agitate on behalf of the antigovernment economic agenda—a kind of grassroots politics funded and coordinated from Washington that had just come to be known as Astroturfing. In addition to the funding by right-wing billionaire coordinators, large corporations—oil, pharmaceuticals, insurance, tobacco—also chip in. The groups evolve and split and merge and dissolve and reconfigure, but the two most significant, both Koch creations, have been FreedomWorks (“Lower Taxes, Less Government, More Freedom”) and Americans for Prosperity. Without them—money, planning, talking points, facilities, transportation, almost everything—the Tea Party movement, despite its authentic financial-crash-and-black-president-induced hysteria, might have fizzled out quickly and accomplished little.