"The Koch brothers want to destroy Social Security because it's a federal government program that has been enormously successful" (Bernie Sanders)

"The Koch brothers' job is to do everything they can to dismember government in general, and if you could destroy Social Security, you have gone a long way forward in that effort."

-- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

by Ken

Wow, this is megaterrific, this new video from Robert Greenwald and BraveNewFoundation featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders tracing the how and why of the Koch brothers' echo-chambered campaign against Social Security. It's a shame TV networks and stations won't be running this as a "news" story, the way they so often have with right-wing propaganda plants.

There's no propaganda here, just facts, beginning with splendid visuals documenting the amounts contributed by the Koch brothers to their core constituency of "think tanks and other foundations," who form the sounding board of the Koch Echo Chamber, and then we get a gorgeous glimpse of that echo chamber at work, focusing on the assault on Social Security.

The video is organized around three Koch Echo Chamber Distortions, starting with:


Senator Sanders explains why this is important to the takedown of Social Security, and why it's wrong, and the video clips show us the actual ricocheting of the echo chamber.

The Koch brothers fund organizations, and you have economists and political scientists working there, and they are very, very good in getting on television [clips of Andrew Biggs of the Cato Institute, Veronique De Rugy of the Heritage Foundation, José Piñera of Cato, David Johns of Heritage, then a montage], and people will not know they represent an organization which is heavily funded by corporate interests. They are very effective in getting their positions out into the media [a host of network-talking-head clips sounding the theme, "raise the retirement age"].

At the same time the Koch brothers are putting huge amounts of money into campaign contributions [clips of Paul Ryan, $63K, "Sunny John" Boehner, $30K, Rand Paul, $17K], so you have an echo chamber which starts repeating a lot of misinformation. [Video graphics: "Position Papers," "Media," "Pundits," "Politicians."]

And then the whole thing is repeated for:

Koch Echo Chamber Distortion #1: Need to Raise the Age of Retirement

and

Koch Echo Chamber Distortion #3: We Should Privatize Social Security

I know it can sound awfully, even farfetchedly, abstract when we rail against the propaganda machine of the Right in general and the Koch brothers in particular. This video manages to give us a brief but powerful glimpse at the nuts-and-bolts of it. I hope everyone will watch the video, pass it along, and support BNF's continued efforts to fight the propaganda with truth.

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