First you need to get all the players straight because this issue is complex. The American Enterprise Institute, (AEI) and Young Americans Foundation, (YAF) is bankrolled by Charles and David Koch and Helen and Richard DeVos. Richard and Helen are the parents of Dick DeVos, husband to Betsy Prince DeVos, sister of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and mentor and benefactor (read "bankroller") to Vice President Mike Pence. See how the dots are connecting? Connect this one. Robert and Rebekah Mercer are major contributors to the Young Americans Foundation (YAF) and of course where you find the Mercers you find Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and his production company, Glittering Steel. Glittering Steel has bankrolled different speakers on campuses, including Milo Yiannopoulos' recent engagement at Berkeley which broke out into a riot. Glittering Steel is currently under investigation by the Secretary of State of the State of California for failure to register as a business entity. This complaint was only lodged recently, but could result in civil and criminal charges being brought against Bannon for income tax evasion, among other things.
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Who do these right wing billionaires sponsor to speak on college campuses? One of the stars on the right wing roster is eugenicist and hate-monger Charles Murra, author of "The Bell Curve," who argues that inequality in income exists because white men are genetically superior to black people, Latinos, women and the poor. Not surprisingly he he has been labeled a white nationalist by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Murray is just one of the stars in the right-wing firmament. Pleae believe me when I tell you that the right-wing Koch and DeVos families and the Mercers and Steve Bannon are funding hate speech on college campuses across the USA, according to RawStory:
Murray has been a scholar at AEI since 1990, four years before The Bell Curve was published. In 2013, AEI founded its college chapter program, and now there are “executive councils” at more than 80 colleges and universities. At a leadership training program available to executive council members this summer, Murray is teaching a course called “The Building Blocks of Human Flourishing.”
Murray is a frequent invitee of AEI campus groups. He’s now touring the country to talk about his 2012 book on the “state of white America” and gave talks at Duke University, Columbia, NYU, the University of Notre Dame and Villanova University in late March.
Regarding the recent Murray talk at Middlebury, AEI Executive Council member Alexander Khan told the Washington Post, “Our goal was not to create a controversy, but to start a discussion and a dialogue.” Khan did not return requests for comment.
n March 2, eugenicist Charles Murray attempted to give a lecture at Middlebury College in Vermont, with little success. Protesters shouted him down and he was sequestered in another room to answer questions over a livestream. Afterwards, Murray left the campus, but not before protesters blocked his car and injured a professor. [...]
So why is someone with such fringe ideas invited to speak on college campuses, and who pays for it? It’s unlikely that many university departments would invite such an obviously racist and discredited figure. While co-presenting the Murray talk, the political science department did not invite Murray, nor did it contribute any funding for the event. The Middlebury student chapter of a far-right libertarian think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, asked him to speak, and AEI picked up the tab.
Dissenters see things differently. Nearly 500 Middlebury alumni wrote a letter to the college preceding Murray’s attempted talk, saying that traditional free speech arguments fall flat in justifying his appearance. Murray’s shoddy theories are “the same thinking that motivates eugenics and the genocidal white supremacist ideologies which are enjoying a popular resurgence under the new presidential administration.”
The new presidential administration has also empowered the Young Americans Foundation which booked Ann Coulter to speak at Berkeley recently. The engagement was cancelled by the Berkeley administration because it was feared at another Yiannopoulous type incident would ensue. Here’s a sample of Coulter, which compelled the administration’s decision:
“We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity,” wrote Coulter in the National Review shortly after the 9/11 attacks, referring to allies of the 9/11 terrorists. An alumna of the YAF National Journalism Center’s internship program, she often makes headlines for her outrageous racist and anti-Muslim statements and regularly writes for the white nationalist website.
If you're not alarmed at this point, take a look at what Charles Koch poured over $142 million dollars into. They are hell bent on proselytizing their agenda and they're paying cash. RawStory again:
In response to fringe, far-right speakers often facing student protests, conservative legislators in many states are pushing “campus free speech” legislation. Two think tanks funded in part by the Koch brothers and Robert Mercer created a model bill, on which many of the state bills are based, that calls for harsh penalties, including expulsion, for students who disrupt guest speaking events.
While enabling hate speech at colleges and universities, billionaire mega-donors are cracking down on students who publicly object to such speech. Meanwhile, the same wealthy conservatives’ family foundations fund ideological higher ed programs that serve their business interests. The Charles Koch Foundation, for example, gave $142 million to hundreds of colleges and universities from 2005 to 2015, largely toward free-market centers, professorships and courses. From these programs, Koch-funded think tanks and political groups recruit their favorite students to join the Kochs’ mass libertarian sociopolitical movement.
The Kochs may label themselves “libertarians" but that is a false front. The Kochs will co-sign anything that the Mercers and DeVos’ are on board for and that is a right wing evangelical dominionist oligarchy of billionaires, plain and simple. And the yous and mes will be the serfs toiling in the fields and factories, in front of the computer screens, what have you, and the Kochs, Mercers, DeVos, and their golden boy Bannon (and of course Mike Pence, let’s not forget him) will be in charge of everything. That’s the plan and if you don’t think so, you’re naive.
These “think tanks” that are placing hate-mongering propagandists on college campuses across the country are sponsored by the billionaires who have seized the reins of power in our government as never before, even into the White House and the cabinet, and they are dedicated to the long game. They have their figurehead in the White House and their top man, Steve Bannon, pulling the strings at least for now. But the long game is to get the youth involved in their dominionist oligarchy agenda. They want to plant the seeds early and deeply so that they get a good, solid crop. They are twisting and debasing First Amendment rights in order to justify hate speech on college campuses. This cannot be allowed to continue. The first step is waking up to the fact that it is indeed going on. We’re not paranoid if they are in fact out to get us — and they are. They want to take over.