Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Philanthropy has a dark side. In this landmark work of investigative journalism, Jane Mayer exposes how a network of ultra-wealthy American conservatives, led by the Koch brothers, spent decades using tax-exempt charitable foundations to fund a systematic campaign to reshape American politics, dismantle government regulation, and defeat action on climate change. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how private money shapes public life.
In the United States, charitable foundations enjoy extraordinary tax privileges. Donations to them are tax-deductible; their investment income is largely untaxed; and they can operate with minimal public accountability. These privileges were designed to encourage genuine philanthropy, the promotion of the public good. But as Jane Mayer reveals in this meticulous and revelatory investigation, they have also provided the infrastructure for one of the most consequential political operations in modern history.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews, newly unearthed documents, and years of reporting for The New Yorker, Mayer traces the network of foundations, think tanks, and advocacy organisations built by Charles and David Koch and a small group of allied billionaires (the Scaifes, the Olins, the Bradleys) whose beliefs place them far outside the mainstream of American conservatism.
Four decades of funding an alternative political infrastructure
Opposed to taxation in almost any form, deeply hostile to environmental and workplace regulation, and determined to reshape the Republican Party in their image, this network spent hundreds of millions of dollars over four decades constructing an alternative intellectual and political infrastructure.
The book reveals how academic institutions were funded to produce research supporting deregulation; how think tanks with innocuous names generated policy papers that found their way into legislation; how the Tea Party movement, presented to the public as a spontaneous popular uprising, was in significant part organised and financed by networks funded by this same group; and how the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which dramatically expanded the role of money in American politics, was itself the product of legal advocacy funded by the network.
A book about power
Dark Money is not primarily a book about charity: it is a book about power. But for UK fundraisers, civil society leaders, and anyone interested in the relationship between private wealth and public life, its lessons are directly relevant. The mechanisms it describes — the use of philanthropic structures to advance political agendas, the funding of think tanks to shift the boundaries of acceptable opinion, the cultivation of academic institutions to legitimise political projects — are not uniquely American.
The book was shortlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize.
About Jane Mayer
Jane Mayer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and one of America’s most decorated investigative journalists. She has won the John Chancellor Award, the George Polk Award, the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, and the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence.
Her previous books include The Dark Side, an account of the US government’s use of torture after 9/11, and Strange Justice, a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in Washington, DC.
Reviews
“Meticulously, fascinatingly and horrifyingly explains how eccentric American billionaires hijacked our democracy.”
Observer
“Utterly brilliant and chilling.”
Naomi Klein
“Dark Money piles up facts and anecdotes to support its central thesis: the evasion by the very rich of any obligation to rise above self-interest and serve the public interest. The billionaires do all the mischief they can, and Jane Mayer, in this brave and resourceful book, has numbered their abuses with admirable pertinacity.”
David Bromwich, The Nation
“The importance of Dark Money does not flow from any explosive new revelation, but from its scope and perspective. It is not easy to uncover the inner workings of an essentially secretive political establishment. Mayer has come as close to doing it as anyone is likely to come anytime soon.”
Alan Ehrenhalt, New York Times Book Review
Related books on UK Fundraising
- Winners Take All (Giridharadas) for the broader elite philanthropy critique;
- No Such Thing as a Free Gift (McGoey) for similar questions about the Gates Foundation;
- Limitarianism (Robeyns) for the philosophical case against concentrations of wealth and power;
- Philanthrocapitalism (Bishop & Green) for the opposing view.
