This chapter examines one source of the strategic disinformation now rife in American public life: the Koch network of donors, allied organizations, and academic grantees. The architects of this network’s project to radically transform our institutions and legal system have adopted this tactic in the knowledge that the libertarian agenda is unpopular and therefore requires stealth to succeed. In the 1970s, Charles Koch and his allies determined that changes significant enough to constitute a “constitutional revolution” would be needed to protect capitalism from democracy. In the light of these foundational efforts, subsequent active disinformation by this network become more comprehensible when understood as driven by a mix of messianic dogma and self-interest. The project could not succeed by persuasion and organizing alone. Later cases include climate science denial, promotion of the myth of mass voter fraud to leverage racism to restrict the electorate, and the use of concocted memes of violent mobs requiring restraint in order to win passage of new legislation to criminalize protest, particularly against the fossil fuel industry (legislation that includes SLAPP lawsuits and laws penalizing alleged infringements on “academic freedom”).

This chapter and the two that follow cover the period from 1838 to enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act in October 1850. The chapter begins with an examination of the covert networks that helped fugitives from enslavement traverse the Borderland in at least a dozen places between Quincy, IL, and Chester, PA. It then discusses the cultural roots of the violence of mastery, and dozens of incidents in which slaveholders and slave catchers brought the violence of mastery into the Borderland, rampaging through entire communities, breaking into homes, and on a few occasions killing and dismembering escapees who resisted. The chapter explores the impact of this violence on the lives of abolitionists, free blacks, and Underground activists in the Borderland and the manner in which the Underground Railroad adapted its operations to meet the challenge by embracing speed and stealth. Finally, the chapter discusses the dynamics of fugitive rescues in the Borderland, noting particularly the different dynamics of urban and rural rescues and the rarity of interracial cooperation in these efforts.

Democracy can be eroded by governments that use only constitutional means to monopolize power and gain discretion in policy making. Opposition can be effective only if citizens are forward looking, anticipating cumulative consequences.