“From time to time, we’ve been confused with Koch Industries, but it’s always been an innocent misunderstanding,” the president of the small office-supply company in Iowa, Dutch Koch, told the Des Moines Register. “I initially thought it was humorous to be confused with a multibillionaire. We dismissed it at first.”
But then a threat came in that crossed the line and it wasn’t so funny any more. "We began to take it seriously when we received a death threat," Koch said, saying that because his employees’ safety is a top concern, they‘re considering the threat “very serious.”
The intimidation was subsequently reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local authorities. So far no arrests are known to have been made, but the FBI said it traced the death threat to a man in California.
The small-time businessman, whose family firm employs about 65 people in Iowa and is not politically active, said at least 20 e-mails and 15 phone calls have come in from confused activists just this year. The Iowan Koch told the Register that the angry protesters probably just didn’t do their research. But he hopes they will in the future, especially before spewing more hate at the wrong people.
The true targets of the misdirected statist rage, billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, own one of America’s largest private companies. Founded by Fred Koch, one of the original members of The John Birch Society, Koch Industries has interests worldwide in shipping, refining, energy, agriculture, paper, and more. It employs tens of thousands of Americans.
The two brothers finance a range of liberty-minded and charitable causes with their wealth — including, ironically, many that most “liberals” would support. Normally out of the spotlight, news of their philanthropic efforts has been splashed across the media in recent months after the showdown in Wisconsin between government-employee unions and taxpayers’ elected representatives.
But the recent threats against the wrong Koch brothers completely backfired. Pundits across the blogosphere seized on the mistaken-identity story to ridicule the vitriol-spewing protesters. Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, for example, called them “violent stupid leftists.” Marathon Pundit’s John Ruberry wrote sarcastically that “those peaceful and civil leftists are at it again.”
As The New American reported earlier this year, leftist protesters in Wisconsin were exposed in numerous instances of inciting violence, sending death threats, and even calling for murder while demonstrating against Governor Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill. Despite frequent accusations against liberty-oriented activists of using the same tactics, violent and deranged hatred is actually observed almost exclusively among statist agitators.
And it’s not the first time in recent memory that seemingly innocent victims have felt the wrath of anti-Koch fanatics. At a Tea Party rally in Madison last weekend, a 14-year-old home-schooler speaking at the event was berated with vulgarity and obscenities from raging demonstrators. Among other things, they repeatedly shrieked "Koch sucker" at the young girl after booing the national anthem.
The same government-union-inspired protesters in Madison tried to start a boycott of Koch Industries earlier this year, too. It was later revealed that, ironically, part of their pension funds were actually invested in Koch Industries interests.
It’s unclear at the moment whether authorities plan to charge the person responsible for the recent death threat against the wrong Koch brothers. But even if the confused activist is never brought to justice, analysts say the wide-ranging exposure of the incident hurt the big-government cause more than a prosecution ever could.
