2. As is already known, Fred Koch did business with Stalin. As it turns out, he didn't discriminate against totalitarian dictators.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
3. Thing is, I'm not sure that Fred Koch was at all unique among European & American business class. Working with Stalin/Hitler common.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
4. Our sense of the degree business worked with Soviets & Nazis clouded by Cold War scholarship was embarrassed by this history.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
5. As against left view of Hitler as handmaiden to big business, US historians (i.e. Henry Turner) downplayed collaboration.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
6. Turner argument is big business funded all non-socialist parties, not just Nazis. True, but misses what happened after 1933.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
7. After 1933 big business, in both Germany & elsewhere, found Nazis amenable. Crushed unions, maintained (non-Jewish) property rights, etc
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Replying to @HeerJeet
8. Here's a good account of how German big business thrived under Nazis.pic.twitter.com/7bF8KMxipC
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Replying to @HeerJeet
9. So in one sense Fred Koch was behaving no differently than many other European & American business persons in 1930s. But.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
10. But where Koch's history becomes salient (& troubling) is his sponsorship of John Birch Society in 1950s/1960s.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
11. Birch Society, in common with USA right, argued "free market" bulwark against totalitarianism. Koch's collaboration gives lie to that
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12. Another disturbing story needing context is how Koch Brothers tried to blackmail their gay older brother out of family business.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
13. Threatening to out brother unless he relinquished family business took place in 1960s when homophobia common. But still creepy!
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Replying to @HeerJeet
14. I mean there are shades of homophobia. You can be homophobic without trying to use out your sibling to enrich yourself.
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