“ Was I, perhaps, hallucinating? Or was I, in reality, nothing more than a con man, taking advantage of others?” —Robert LeFevre BY MARK known as “Rampart College”), School] is where I was first exposed which his backers wanted to turn in-depth to such thinkers as Mises AMES into the nation’s premier libertarian and Hayek.” indoctrination camp. Awkwardly for Koch, Freedom What makes Charles Koch tick? There are plenty of secondary School didn’t just teach radical Despite decades of building the sources placing Koch at LeFevre’s pro-property libertarianism, it also nation’s most impressive ideological Freedom School. Libertarian court published a series of Holocaust- and influence-peddling network, historian Brian Doherty—who has denial articles through its house from ideas-mills to think-tanks to spent most of his adult life on the magazine, Ramparts Journal. The policy-lobbying machines, the Koch Koch brothers’ payroll—described first of those articles was published brothers only really came to public LeFevre as “an anarchist figure in 1966, two years after Charles prominence in the past couple of who stole Charles Koch’s heart;” Koch joined Freedom School as years. Since then we’ve learned a Murray Rothbard, who co-founded executive, trustee and funder. lot about the billionaire siblings’ the Cato Institute with Charles “Evenifoneweretoaccept vast web of influence and power in Koch in 1977, wrote that Charles themostextremeand American politics and ideas. “had been converted as a youth to exaggeratedindictment Yet, for all that attention, there libertarianism by LeFevre.” ofHitlerandthenational are still big holes in our knowledge But perhaps the most credible socialistsfortheiractivities of the Kochs. In particular source of all is Charles Koch after1939madebyanybody what drives them and who their himself. In a speech he gave to fittoremainoutsideamental influences are. And that’s a shame an audience of libertarians in the hospital,itisalmostalarmingly because, in the case of Charles late 1990s, Koch revealed that his easytodemonstratethat Koch, his influences are in many conversion came in 1964, when theatrocitiesoftheAlliesin ways more interesting, and more he enrolled in Freedom School thesameperiodweremore sinister, than the man himself. in an intensive two-week total numerousastovictimsand Back in the early-mid 1960s, immersion program in radical werecarriedoutforthemost Charles Koch was just another libertarian ideology, where partbymethodsmorebrutal 20-something oil heir. It was property is the basis of human andpainfulthanalleged then that he first encountered a freedom, and the state—along with exterminationingasovens.” libertarian guru by the name of any public organization or even Robert LeFevre. the notion of “public good”—is the Harry Elmer Barnes, In the decade or so before very definition of “tyranny.” Rampart Journal, 1966 gaining influence over Charles As Koch explained in a speech Koch’s world, Robert LeFevre before the Institute for Humane The Holocaust-denial articles in made his living as a professional Studies—the first of what would Ramparts Journal were significant Red-baiter, union-buster, and loyal become countless libertarian enough to be included today on the lieutenant for one of the nation’s think-tanks under his control—it United States Holocaust Memorial most notorious anti-Semites. was at “Bob LeFevre’s Freedom Museum’s “Holocaust Denial Working his way up the fringes of School where I began developing a Timeline.” Also under Koch’s the far-right during the McCarthy passionate commitment to liberty watch, LeFevre created a history Era, he finally landed his own as the form of social organization program headed by one of the corporate-funded free-market most in harmony with reality and biggest names in early Holocaust- gig, “the Freedom School,” (also man’s nature, because [Freedom denialism, James J. Martin. 4 After LeFevre’s Freedom School as “sister organizations” with the mill of the past three decades. collapsed in 1968, Charles Koch Cato Institute, with whom they Today, that fringe-right element continued to promote the works “coordinate their plans and their has been wiped out of the official and careers of Holocaust deniers programs.” libertarian record, buried and through his growing network of When Ronald Reagan won forgotten. libertarian organizations, including the presidency in November Exhuming the lost story the Institute for Humane Studies, 1980, Koch quickly revamped the of Charles Koch’s guru and the Cato Institute and Reason. libertarianism he’d been building up demystifying his libertarian As late as 1980, the Cato Institute for over a decade, cutting free the movement’s ideology by setting it was still publishing works by more extremist far-right proponents in its proper historical context will notorious “revisionists” including from his network. To make his not bring progressives any comfort. Martin, and Harry Elmer Barnes movement mainstream, he cut Rather, the story that follows will (the inspiration for the neo-Nazi his official ties with the far-right confirm many of our worst fears Barnes Review journal, described radicals like LeFevre, with the about Koch’s political intentions, by the Southern Poverty Law libertarian Holocaust deniers like and should raise a bevy of new Center as “one of the most Martin, and with co-founder of things to worry about. It also serves virulent anti-Semitic organizations Cato Institute Murray Rothbard as a wake-up call to progressives around”). Indeed, in the late 1970s (who backed David Duke), among who think libertarians are our Martin even had a seat on the others. He then moved his more natural allies, and yet who know board of trustees at the Koch- mainstream libertarian machine so little about libertarianism’s past, founded Center for Libertarian into Washington D.C., where it has which has been lost in the fog of Studies, which described itself remained the most influential ideas- history and cultural amnesia. 5 stripped of tragedy or comedy or budget deficits, and of taxing what narrative arc. he called “the producers.” This was Robert LeFevre’s first “I think Roosevelt is a Socialist,” Robert LeFevre was born in lesson in free-market capitalism, his father grimly warned him. 1911, and raised in Minneapolis and he hated it. He wanted to be “Coolidge and Hoover had the by a single mother after his an actor or a radio celebrity, so as right idea.” father, a school teacher turned soon as he’d stolen enough money Here was something Steinbeck failed entrepreneur, abandoned for himself, he left his father to never imagined: a laissez- their home when LeFevre was chase his Hollywood dream. He faire tramp; the soup-kitchen just nine. failed, went broke and hungry, and goldbug. LeFevre headed back to Father and son wouldn’t meet contemplated suicide on the ledge Minneapolis, to his abandoned again until the onset of the Great of a Pasadena bridge. wife and daughter, convinced that Depression, when LeFevre, a Oddly enough, it was at this his problems were all the fault of college drop-out desperate for very moment, in 1933, in the FDR and envious shirkers who work, abandoned his own wife depths of the Great Depression were robbing “producers” like and daughter to join his father on and of his own personal failure, LeFevre and his father of their a traveling scam. They puttered that LeFevre had his first rightful due. throughout the rural Midwest libertarian political awakening. together, fleecing housewives by In his memoir, “A Way to Be taking down-payments on picture Free,” he recalled how his father, a frames they never delivered. It was Republican hobo, first opened his Naturally, it was FDR and Big a kind of real-life “Paper Moon,” eyes to the evils of fiat money, of Government that saved LeFevre 6 from starvation. Like his hero shows, with chants such as, “If they Shirts, Guy and Edna Ballard Ronald Reagan, Robert LeFevre be of human creation, annihilate quickly enlisted his senior staff, found a job subsidized by the them!” and plagiarized his books and New Deal’s biggest employment Although LeFevre’s time in ideas to create the “I AM” cult. program, the WPA, which paid the cult has been downplayed or For instance, in the late 1920s, a Minneapolis radio station, spun as a mere eccentric detour Pelley wrote a book claiming he’d WRHM, to hire LeFevre and by libertarians, LeFevre himself had an out-of-body experience launch his career as propagandist, made it clear in his memoirs that and that his spirit met the spirit of product spokesman and cult leader. his time in the “I AM” cult had Saint Germain over Lake Shasta; The irony was lost on LeFevre. a profound influence on him that after Pelley went into hiding, Guy In his memoirs, he is neither carried through to his libertarian Ballard wrote a book claiming he’d grateful for nor interested in the period. To LeFevre, the libertarian had an out-of-body experience WPA program, nor in the larger philosophy he adopted in the 1950s floating over mountains in politics of the 30’s that made it was substantively no different from California, where he met the spirit possible for him to survive. Instead, the “I AM” cult teachings of the of Saint Germain. he only thought of how he might 1930s, except in the rhetorical Guy Ballard claimed he was please his abusive station manager presentation of the ideas: one the reincarnation of George boss: “A word of praise from him— used “logical” language, the other Washington, and his wife Edna and it came on occasion—was the “metaphysical.” was a reincarnated Jeanne d’Arc. one bright sign in an otherwise More importantly, LeFevre The “I AM” cult demanded its flat and empty horizon,” he later learned from the cult how ideas followers avoid a bizarre catalogue reminisced.