Report: Koch family partners with pop stars to “launder” legacy

A new report by The Guardian investigates the Stand Together Music foundation’s use of strategic relationships with pop stars to enhance the brand of rightwing fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch and his family. STM, which lists The Chainsmokers, Machine Gun Kelly, and Pitbull among its partners — as well as Billboard, SPIN, and Live Nation — to further a self-described mission of “wielding your influence for good,” promoting benign, bipartisan issues. But activists familiar with the Koch clan’s modus operandi warn that “these musicians are being used to launder the reputation of Koch Industries, whether they know it or not.”

Stand Together Music was apparently launched in 2022 by Chase Koch, Charles’ 46-year-old guitarist son. It’s part of his father’s broader Stand Together network, whose membership also counts Americans for Prosperity — a political advocacy group that helped catalyze the rise of the Tea Party in the late 2000s. As The Guardian reports, Koch Industries is one of the United States’ top greenhouse gas polluters and donates millions of dollars annually to Republican political campaigns.

The Guardain’s story opens on the scene of the STM-sponsored Ain’t No Fun Festival in Louisville last September, where Killer Mike DJed and reportedly shouted out the event’s free-speech message. When reached for comment, a representative of Killer Mike sent The FADER the following statement: “We were booked to DJ a party the same weekend as a festival that Mike was performing. We were not aware of Koch’s involvement until the Guardian story broke yesterday.”

Nevertheless, STM’s website touts a SPIN writeup on the event, as well as an interview of Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello conducted by STM’s Ain’t No Fun co-sponsor, FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression).

STM’s self-stated areas of impact are addiction recovery (“transforming the way people think about addiction”), education (“making education accessible for all”), free speech and peace (“advocating for equal rights and diverse voices”), criminal justice (“expanding justice through research and resources”), and ending the war on drugs (“seeking decriminalization and productive reentry”). As Dembicki notes, “the banality of these causes is the point: who doesn’t support helping people with addiction and healing America?”

Despite STM’s purportedly positive mission, critics suggest that there’s a more insidious motive behind both the issues STM chooses to champion and the artists with whom it choose to align itself: to “co-opt pop musicians, young music fans, and other hard-to-reach constituencies into a conservative political movement whose ultimate aims include dismantling the government’s ability to regulate polluting corporations like Koch Industries.”

In a statement to The Guardian, STM wrote that the foundation was “honored to partner with incredible musicians who share our passion for solving problems holding people back,” adding that artists who partner with the organization “have the ability to elevate meaningful solutions to problems like addiction, criminal justice, mental health by getting involved with incredible nonprofits around the country.”

The FADER has reached out to representatives of The Chainsmokers, Machine Gun Kelly, Pitbull, and Tom Morello for further comment.

Update, December 8, 7 p.m.: This post has been updated to include a response from Killer Mike’s representative to The FADER’s request for comment.