The headline may seem like a silly question to ask in this era when Republicans are tripping over themselves to support vile scum like accused child molester Roy Moore. But why are the Koch Brothers helping to fund the lying fraud James O’Keefe, who was accused of attempted sexual assault by his alleged intended victim?
That’s just what they’re doing. According to a brilliant piece by Jenn Budd in Crooks and Liars, the Koch Brothers’ “Donor Trust” is responsible for fleecing donors to the tune of $1.7 million to pay for the lies and deceit perpetrated by the ironically-named Project Veritas.
Who is funding the two Donor funds run by the Kochs? Conservative Transparency shows that the top donors to their funds in the past were the Richard and Helen DeVos, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Searle Freedom Trust. All these foundations belong to the top 1%, those billionaires who are driving the current GOP tax cut that will hurt the poor and middle class simply to give themselves even more money.
Would it make any difference to these donors were they to sit down with O’Keefe’s intended victim (allegedly) and heard her story of how she claims O’Keefe drugged her and made a lame, impotent attempt to force himself on his woozy one-time accomplice Nadia Naffe in an isolated so-called “sex barn”, relenting only when she complained enough to convince him to take her to a train station?
Probably not. Republicans are more concerned with irritating progressives than they are with maintaining even an appearance of human decency.
Still, those considering putting money in Pig Boy O’Keefe’s pocket should at least be aware of the sort of “person” they deign to fund.
Chris Farone wrote about Ms. Naffe’s frightening ordeal and the right wing effort to destroy her for refusing O’Keefe’s hamfisted sexual advances. To call O’Keefe’s efforts to violate Ms. Naffe “dumbassed fratboy behavior” would be to defame dumbassed fratboys everywhere.
Within weeks of meeting each other, O’Keefe and Naffe were teaming up to ambush progressive politicians and academics from coast to coast — raising gobs of money from some of the conservative movement’s biggest donors.
And then, in a single night nearly two years after they first met, Naffe’s life became a nightmare. She says O’Keefe took her to a barn and drugged her, then turned on her — setting off a campaign of intense harassment. For bloggers like Breitbart and his followers, hounding Naffe became a crusade. “RUIN HER,” wrote one commenter on a right-wing blog, in just a small example of the flames fanned at Naffe over the past year and a half. “Burn her f*cking world to the ground, and salt the earth as you leave. Make the wasteland a memorial to all who would consider pulling that kind of bullsh*t.” Indeed, Breitbart hounded Naffe to the end of his life. On the day of his death, one year ago this week, his final tweet was a snide jab aimed directly at her.
That one evening in O’Keefe’s barn kicked off a chain reaction in the tightly knit — and tightly wound — conservative blogosphere. When we think of America’s ideological battle between left and right, we often imagine a deadlocked Congress — or Fox News versus MSNBC. But Naffe’s story shines a spotlight on an even uglier crossfire: the one between the slanderous sewer of right-wing smear culture and its doppelganger, a reactionary band of left-wingers that’s equally willing to kick below the belt. Located just beneath the surface of our polarized political system, this unceasing, underhanded war — encompassing dozens of lawsuits and hundreds of petty feuds, fought by hackers and journalists, wingnuts and activists, lawmen and billionaires, attorneys and ex-cons — serves as a proxy, simultaneously feeding on and fueling the circus that passes for our civic life. Even for mature web pedestrians who are acquainted with the barbaric buffoonery of online discourse, the depravity that’s been on display during Naffe’s ordeal is enough to turn an iron stomach. In the belly of this beast, the traditional lines of right and left are grossly distorted, as are the boundaries between right and wrong.
Nadia Naffe could have been a part of the Republican party’s future, symbolizing the appeal of conservative values to new constituencies. Instead, at every turn, she was insulted, abused, abandoned, and ridiculed.
James O’Keefe is a poncy little liar whose every new scheme to entrap progressives backfires and serves to beclown the Breitbart acolyte in new and amusingly-embarrassing fashion. Not so amusing for his victims, the lives destroyed along the way, but what the hell? As long as the “libtards” are irritated, everyone that funds O’Keefe is thrilled and satisfied.