The Disinformation Machine

 Nancy McLean. The Disinformation Machine. Orion Magazine, 2022.  https://orionmagazine.org/article/koch-network-climate-change-misinformation

In 2013, James Buchanan died at the age of 93, and I was able to gain access to his unprocessed archive at George Mason University (GMU), his last institutional home. In his records going back to the 1940s, I found my developing understanding of all this confirmed—in a way that had me again and again reminding myself to breathe. Just one example: in his private office, I found a pile of documents stacked on a chair that exposed how Charles Koch and some of his most trusted operatives—GMU economics faculty, the dean of the law school, the president and provost, and a politically appointed Board of Visitors presided over by Ed Meese III, Ronald Reagan’s long-time ally—had collaborated to establish a basecamp for a political project at a public university, just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C.

COMMENT

Uncataloged archival material provide evidence for how billionaires and right wing politicians created a political disinformation machine.  This well-funded torrent of science denial has become a serious problem for librarians.  It's alarming to realize just how much political power and money are stacked against our information literacy lectures.