Greenwald vs. Goliath.

• Author: Atkinson, Michael
• Position: Robert Greenwald's new film Koch Brothers Exposed

THE NEWEST AND MOST vociferous agitprop from Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films, Koch Brothers Exposed, takes bazooka-aim at the rightwing billionaire duo, Charles and David Koch. As a political documentary, Koch Brothers Exposed is a sign of the times: inexpensively made (many of the talking-heads' interviews are recorded using Skype), digitally disseminated, and set to a high boil from the word go. This is state-of-the-culture, post-Michael Moore media activism for the twenty-first century.

Greenwald lays out the insidious participation of the Brothers Koch in politics on almost every front, and the recounting has all the intrigue of an X-Files DVD box set.

Who needs conspiracy theory? This may be the real and secret story of the last few decades of American life. The brothers have covertly poured hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks, politicians' pockets, election campaigns, protest rallies, TV punditry, and any conduit at all that results in legislative pressure. If you've wondered who exactly these crowds of working-class people are carrying signs essentially insisting that the Wake County, North Carolina, school district be resegregated, or successfully rallying against Scott Walker's recall in Wisconsin, or screaming that Obama is a socialist for passing legislation from which they themselves would benefit, chances are they're people paid for and bused in by the Koch brothers.

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Greenwald front-loads an apocalyptic litany of figures and stats, including an honor roll of universities (Brown, Dartmouth, Loyola, Northwestern, etc.) that have taken wads of Koch money meant to influence their faculty hirings, and a "Koch-funded" murderers' row of politicians and pundits all parroting the same lies hatched within Koch-budgeted think tanks. As Julian Brookes wrote in Rolling Stone, the most relevant question is, "What aren't they up to?"

Their only principle on view is greed. Spending tens of thousands of dollars to alter a piece of legislation in ways that'll net you millions is, after all, just good business. Die-hard libertarians, the Koch brothers would seem to be content with society only if it were reduced to a dystopian wasteland, which they'd presumably rule over from an impenetrable castle in the clouds.

Koch Industries, the country's second-largest privately owned corporation (after Cargill), makes most of its money from oil and petrochemicals. Greenwald shines a light on the cancer-decimated...